It's Time to Thrive - Day Three

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Chrystal Hurst if you're just finding me, and I'm here to talk about what it takes to Thrive in your life. I'm a speaker and an author who occasionally jumps online and shares some encouragement with you. So if you're new here, that's what we're doing. We've already spent 2 days talking about why we're not thriving and one of the barriers to thriving, and now I want to actually talk to you about what you can do to thrive. So I'm gonna look down in the comments and see who's here. So I discovered something yesterday, y'all, and I want to, I want to see if I can do it. I don't know if I can do it. Let's see, I may not be able to do it. No, I can't do it on there. Let me see. Thank you, I appreciate it. I love my hair too, mainly because I don't have to do it. Somebody say amen. I'm so sleepy. You see my bags under my eyes today? Have you ever had a night where you just sleep hard? You just sleep hard. And I think I ended up sleeping on my stomach last night, which meant I was like this. And then I got up and was like, girl, what's wrong with your eyes? Anyway, okay, so this is what I'm gonna do. So if you are a member of the inner circle, like, you, you know that you are, right? Let's see. Ah, if you want me to know that, you can— if— well, I don't know Android. If you're on an Apple phone, an iPhone, if you type out the words yellow circle you can then— it'll give you a yellow circle, and then I'll know that you're from the inner circle. You see what I did there? But anyway, it's a Saturday morning. I'm so thrilled that y'all are here because I feel like you should be asleep. I'm really impressed that y'all are here. So yeah, there you go, Khalila. See, there you go, just like that. So that way, if you're saying something and you want me to know before you say what you have to say, that this is coming from an inner circle member. Look at y'all, come on, yellow circles! Yay, that's awesome! Hey Melanie, hey Michelle, all right. Hey Tracy, Melissa, Dawn Harp, Karen Booth, I see y'all. Yay! And most of your names, you know, I'll recognize, but every now and then I need a little help, so the yellow circle will make me know that that's you. Awesome! Hi, Lisa Bartley. Okay, so I want to be practical this morning, and I don't want to take long. We actually are packing up this morning, and I'm not packed. So I was up last night waiting on children to come in. I was texting them like, where art thou? Where are you? Don't you— I mean, and it's a great thing when your kids can kind of be free to roam and you're not, you, you're like, you still need to communicate, but you're not really worried. That's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. So last night at 1 o'clock in the morning, I'm like, what y'all, what y'all doing? And then I turned over and went to sleep on my face, hence all the craziness going on under my eyes. Okay. Hey, good morning, Rochelle. Hi, Pat. Hi, Mary Breeding. Mm-hmm. All right, so we already talked about how most of us are in one way struggling in one way or another in this season, because this season is a new season. None of us have been in a pandemic before, and we have to recognize that we've been a part of a collective trauma, that it weighs down on us even if we don't realize it. It just does. Does. And we talked about how being in our new season as the world begins to open back up, uh, it's like being a fish out of water. And we get to decide where we want to live. Like, this is our time. This is our time right now to push the button and say stop. Like, pause. I'm going to make some decisions about my life. I'm not going to mindlessly do what I was doing before just because that's what I was doing before. And we talked about the reality that normal is really a new normal. Our normal will never happen again. That went away in 2020. We've all adapted and adopted to new ways of doing things and new ways of operating. Um, and we have to be mindful of that. And if we're not mindful of that, then we'll end up struggling to breathe. So one of the things that I want to— hi Patricia, I'm so glad you joined the Inner Circle yesterday. Oh yeah, let me tell you that the reason why I'm going live is because right now, whenever I was going live before last year, I talked about, hey, if you want more of this, join the Inner Circle, and then we closed it. So I didn't want to keep saying that, then you can't get in. So right now you can join the Inner Circle, and the reason why I'm talking about Thrive is because That's what's on my brain. What's on my brain is thriving because we're about to spend a 90-day journey thriving in paying attention to our life and making decisions about what we're going to do. And we're also going to add on an optional health challenge because if you're like me, 2020 did a number on your numbers. I've heard about the grand, you know, the 20, the 20, 20, 20. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so you can find out more about the Inner Circle. But just know that, you know, this encouragement is great, but it's like going to church. If you go to church and hear what the pastor says and you don't actually do anything with it, it didn't help you. So I want to talk to you, but then the opportunity in the Inner Circle is if you want to do something with this and you want to do that in great community and you want to do that in an opportunity to deepen your faith and you want to do that by crushing your goals, setting goals and then crushing them. Alright, so Here's what I want to talk about today. There are 3 ways that you can thrive in this new season. I'm going to talk about one of these ways today, one of these ways today. So my oldest daughter, she hates when I say it, I always say she's 30. She's not technically 30, she's 29, but she will be 30 this year. And when she was about 9 years old, we lived in a little— it was like a it's a condo, not a condo, it's more like an apartment. But we, we lived in a little complex that probably had like 20 units. It was very small area. And as you went in a circle to go around the neighborhood, the circle went straight and then it went down, right? And then it came back up. So it went around and it went down and then it came back up. And she used to love to go down that hill. She would go down the hill in roller skates and— he's fine, they're fine, yeah, they're fine, yeah— go down the hill in roller skates and I would always tell her, "Slow down, slow down, you're gonna fall." You know, she didn't listen. So one day she fell, she fell really bad. She had this big gash in her knee and it was bleeding, it was deep, you know, and to this day at 29, You can still see the mark in her leg near her knee from that fall. And so it happened. We can fall at any time. But I knew that was going to happen because she was going down the hill, going too fast. And going too fast meant that she was not going to have control of her movement in a, in a, on a path that required her to be more attentive to how she, how she stepped. Number one, how you can choose to thrive in the season, how you can choose to come out on the other side without injury and without negative marking, how you can choose to enjoy the ride without having pain associated with the ride or being in a position that you never intended to be in. I need you Better yet, I need me to slow down. I know that you are desperately gasping for air, trying to figure out how to fit in the new rhythm at work, the new rhythm with your kids, the new rhythms at church, the new rhythms with your family, the new rhythms in your life. I mean, you, you went to the grocery store for the first time and were like, I don't even want to be around these people. You were at church thinking, don't hug me. The presence of the Lord is here, but we don't need to touch and agree. Seriously, like going back to work, you were like, traffic is a whole thing. I know that we have all, whether we enjoyed it or not, in 2020, in the beginning of 2021, we went all the way down from running a million miles a minute into a crawl. And the best thing that you can do as you decide what your pace is and what your new normal is, is to move slowly. Just because it's open doesn't mean you have to go. Just because you're welcome doesn't mean you have to show up. Just because you're needed doesn't mean you have to do the thing. You have to slow down. And I'm saying this to myself too. Now, there are times when, um, I'm a fairly high capacity person and there are times when other people around me will say, girl, you have to slow down. And the thing is, is I know my pace, right? I know my pace. Um, you have to know your pace. So what that means is for a person who runs Let's just say they're a half marathoner or they're, you know, they're a runner and they run that race and their pace is a 7-minute. They average a 7-minute mile. That's great. If I run a half marathon, I'm going to average a 12-minute mile. What slowdown means for them as a 7-minute miler and what slowdown means for me as a 12-minute miler are two totally different things. But do we both need to slow down? Yes. So you have to know your pace and then you need to know that in this season you have to slow down. And slow down doesn't mean do less. It could mean, but it also means make decisions, take more time to make them. It also means take more time between the question that you get and the answer that you give. It also means give yourself some grace to take a little longer, to take the scenic route. You learn to live in 2020 and in 2021, taking the scenic route, doing things differently. And if you decide to jump back on because everybody else says the train is moving, you will not have— you'll be able to do it, but you won't be able to decide. And this is what thriving allows you to do. It allows you to decide how you want to grow now. How you want to live now, how you want to bloom now, where you want to be now. You get to make some decisions now. And if you're not slowing your pace down in order to do that, you'll just go, you'll just try to keep up with the pacing group in front of you and be out of breath, or you'll be keeping up with the pacing group behind you and be frustrated because you'd be like, I don't— this is not how I roll. You have the opportunity now to decide how you roll. So cancel something, reschedule it, do it differently, do it another week, do it with another group of people. The world can wait on you. What's important when you're running a race is that you finish. And if I cross the finish line of my marathon in 7 hours and somebody else crossed it in 3 or 4, guess what we both get? A medal. We get a medal. And we get that medal whether we finish it slow or finish it Speedy Gonzales. You want to win your race. You want to finish your race and you want to hear, "Well done," and that will not happen if you don't finish. And if in the course of your race and in the course of your ride you need to change your pace so that you can finish, that is what matters. There will be people in your life who want you to speed up a little bit. Your kids will be like, why can't we do this, this, that, and the other? The answer is because we're just not. There are gonna be people in your life that say, girl, you should feel okay. You've gotten your vaccine, you know, and there's something about you that's like, yeah, I know, but I'm just not quite ready. And it's okay to say, yeah, I know, I'm not. It's not something I want to do right now. It's okay for people to need answers from you and for you to say, I'm so sorry, I'm taking the week to shut everything down. I'll have an answer for you on Monday. You don't have to say you're sorry. You have the right to pick your pace, pick your timing, and But here's the reason why you want to slow down. It's not just about— it's not just slowing down for slowing down's sake. If I'm in a car and I'm driving and I'm driving slowly, I can drive slowly and pat myself on the back for driving slowly. I'm driving slowly, look at me, I'm driving slowly. But the beautiful thing about driving slowly is is that now I can take in the scenery. Now I can take in the scenery. I can look out the window and I'm slow enough for it not to be a blur. Let me tell you why most of us struggle to thrive in our life, period, and especially in this season. One of the main reasons we're struggling to thrive is because we're not taking in the scenery, the scenery of our lives, the conversation, the people, the love, the hugs, the gathering, the appreciation, the enjoying your home, enjoying your yard, taking a walk, being present when you read the Bible, reading a book, doing something you love. That is all a part of the joy of living. And you miss the joy of living when you're not taking in the scenery of your life. So for the last year and a half, even though we were very, very slow, there was nothing to look at. So we were not thriving because there was nothing to look at. We lost a lot of the things, and while we gained some things too, we lost some things. So now that the world is opening back up, it's a beautiful place to be, and you're encouraged to speed up and do all the things. Here's the problem. Now you've got scenery, you've got decisions to make. What do I want to engage in? How do I want to live? Who do I want to connect with? If I'm gonna go out and share some coffee, who do I want to do that with? Where do I want to make that time? How do I want to now get engaged in my life and reconnect with my scenery? If your world is too noisy, you don't notice anything. If you're moving too fast, you'll notice it, but you can't see it well. But if your world is moving slower and you're deciding what you want to pull over on the side of the road and take a snapshot of, you will be the better for it. People that go on a road trip with me, namely my husband or my friend Michelle, hate to take road trips with me because I— if I see something beautiful I'm gonna want to pull over and look at it. And better yet, I'm gonna want to pull over and take a picture of it. I'm a picture junkie. I have way too many pictures on my phone. I think at this very moment I probably have 20,000 photos, and that is from 2018 forward. It's not even all of my photos. It's a problem. And then I don't do a good job, like, cleaning out the photos on my phone and putting them in a scrapbook. But I do enjoy, which is what I'm going to do right now, I do enjoy looking back and seeing where I've, where I've been and what I know that I've done and what I will prove to you that I've done in just a moment. Oh, maybe I won't. Maybe I won't because maybe I cleaned off my phone and it's no longer on my phone. I think that's what happened. I think I cleaned off my phone. Ah, I did because there were too many pictures on my phone. Well, anyway. I was driving to— I went to Montana to drive Michelle, drive with Michelle from one nurse assignment. She was a traveling nurse to another. And so we drove through Montana and Wyoming, had never done that before, and mostly was very boring. But there were places there that were gorgeous, gorgeous. We went to Yosemite. We drove through the Wind River Canyon. I mean, it was crazy beautiful. And I was like, Michelle, pull over, pull over, pull over. She was like, she said she would just look at me like this, because in her mind we were trying to get somewhere. In my mind, we were trying to get somewhere and enjoy the journey. That's what slowing down will allow you to do. It will allow you to enjoy the journey. And in order to enjoy it, sometimes you have to go slow enough to see what it is that you want to change and adjust in your life. And then pause and take a snapshot. You journal because you had a good day and you're moving slower. You relish a conversation with a friend because you're moving slower. You take the time to try a new recipe and just move through that without rushing to get dinner on the table because you've decided to move slower. You linger on a Saturday morning with Chrystal Hurst because you're laying in the bed with your phone and you've decided to move slower. You play in the dirt with your kids because you've decided to move slower. You go on a walk and pause and talk to your neighbor because you've decided to move slower. You don't just pass the yard sign on your way to wherever you have to be today. You take the turn and you go to the garage sale. Move slower. You sit after church and have a conversation with a friend because you're moving slower. Or even better yet, you look at your notes from the sermon you just listened to and absorb it. Just sit there and take it in. We all know what it is to have a great meal and for the food to be so good and you just want to turn it over and over again in your mouth and absorb all the flavors. Well, your life can be flavorful. And you don't want to rush and eat, and you don't want to rush and live. So how can you thrive in your life? You need to slow down and look at the scenery. And one of the things that we're going to be doing in the Inner Circle over the next 90 days as we slow down together is to pay attention to our scenery and to talk to each other about what we see, what we notice, and what that teaches us about life. And the reason why we're doing this in the Inner Circle is because you and I both know that often in our lives, if it's just us, if we're not in the car with friends taking a trip, we're just getting where we're trying to go. We're not that great about slowing down to look at our lives and to be attentive as to what we learn and to make decisions about our future. Based on what we learn about our life today. And so if you would like to not just know that you're supposed to slow down, but also take the journey with friends, look out the window, share what you notice, and be challenged and encouraged by what other people say, I would love for you to join me in the Inner Circle. Um, when you join us, there are 3 different levels that are not always open. The doors close on July 7th. It's a membership, but you can cancel anytime. If it's your first time, you get your planner for free, and that's the tool that we use to go through this journey together. Here's what I know will happen in your life, whether you do it with me or whether you do it on your own. When you slow down and decide, what do I love about my life? What do I miss about the life that I've had before? How am I going to enjoy the scenery, the people, the places the positions, the things that I can enjoy because I'm alive, because I'm breathing. What's important to me? When you slow down and you pay attention and you wrestle with the good stuff, the bad stuff, the hard stuff, the easy stuff, the beautiful things, the ugly things in your life— when you slow down to look at your life and then take control in your life and make decisions about what you're going to do to live when you go through that process, it changes how you enjoy your life. Now I'm here because I sent an email to people who were on my email list last week. They're on an email drip, or they were on an email drip, and I just walked them through all this stuff. And then I just said, there's so many people that aren't on my email list, let me go ahead and just share these principles with them. But if you want to take the next step that and enjoy that journey with me and other people, then check it out. Check it out. ChrystalEvansHurst.com/innercircle. And just know that even if you don't, I'll be here every day until my birthday. My birthday is Wednesday, and I'll be talking about thriving. Tomorrow we're going to talk a little bit about taking inventory, and I'm going to ask you some questions that I hope will help you to think about your life and get to know yourself a little bit better. I'm amazed, y'all, at how much we know about ourselves but that we don't really know about ourselves. I'm amazed. And one of the beautiful things about getting older, if you will allow this to happen in your life, is that you just by fact of time, you get to know yourself better. Just, you just know yourself. And that's why, you know, in your 40s, and I'm knocking on the door of my 50s, you're able to just kind of say what it is because you kind of know yourself. You know what I mean? It's a beautiful thing to be able to say, this is it. No, that's not what I meant. No, that's not what I want. Yes, that's the way I want to do it. Yes, this is where we want to go. Yes, this is what my opinion is. You kind of, you know, it's kind of good. But here's what I've also learned. This is, I was saying this yesterday. Here's what I also have loved about having younger women in the inner circle, and we have lots of different women of different ages in the inner circle, is that the younger women go, I'm learning so much about me now and how I want to live from being in a room, in virtual rooms with women of all ages, to hear what the decisions are in, in the 20s that affect women in their 40s and 50s. And for women in their 20s and 30s to be able to say, oh, I've learned something. From you. So let me reorganize my life accordingly. It's always an, an opportunity to invest in you. When you take a class, when you take a course, when you go on a trip, when you spend time with friends, when you spend time with people that are not in your age range, you get to learn from other people. And so one of the things that we have found in the Inner Circle is those that have chose to join us and to make the decision to invest in themselves are not just learning from me, from our wonderful group of interns and from the wonderful content that we put together. They're learning from each other. And oh my goodness, the confidence that you can get in your life that you borrow from other people is amazing. So what am I telling you you need to do? First of all, you need to slow down. Slow down your pace, slow down your brain, slow down your mouth, slow down your breathing. Take in the scenery. We have never been— you and I have never been on the other side of a pandemic before. We haven't. We just haven't. It's new scenery, and I'm gonna need you to enjoy it and to decide where you want to get out and take a snapshot. How do you want to define your life in this season? You get to decide. There may be a lot of things you don't get to decide, but there are a ton of things that you do. And that's why I'm here, because I want you to decide and I want you to choose you. Choose you. Choose you. I've said it before, I'll say it again. You have never been here before. Literally, there has never been nor will there ever be someone just like you. The gift of you in this world is amazing. Do you know the gift of you? Are you able to give the gift of you? Are you able to enjoy the gift of you and spread the joy of the gift of you with other people? Well, you should, and that's what I want to encourage you to do. So I'll be here tomorrow morning same time, 7-ish, to encourage you. And when I show up here, I'd love to see you here too. If this has been encouraging to you, if you share it with a friend, that's how other people will know this video exists. And I will also say that if you missed 1 and 2, it's a good time now to go back and watch them to get caught up. And then I'll see you tomorrow for day 4. All right, y'all, here we go. Let me play this thing. Ah, there we go. Music. There's the music. See you tomorrow.