Making Friends - Coffee with Chrystal #alittleQC

Hey! Good morning, good morning, good morning, y'all. I was trying to make something work this morning and it wouldn't work. Ugh. Okay, good morning, good morning. Let me turn this off. Good morning, Instagram. So y'all, I figured out over the weekend how to put my good camera, good sound on Instagram so that Instagram could hear the music, so that Instagram could see the lower thirds, and I figured it out. I even paid for a service because I used the free version and the free version had a watermark. So I paid for it and everything, and then it wouldn't work this morning. So Instagram, I'll have it working tomorrow so that way y'all feel like you're actually fully a part of the situation. Um, because sometimes I play things or I show videos or I show um, pictures, um, or I show lower thirds and y'all can't see them. So I was trying to make sure y'all could be a part of the party. And, um, yeah, so anyway, that's what I was trying to do this morning. And you have to allow flash, which I already did, but I guess I had to do it again. So anyway, some of y'all on Instagram, let's see, it was Friday. Was it Friday night? Yeah, it was Friday night and it was 3 AM, like 2:30, 3 AM, and I was testing it and y'all were awake. I was just shocked that there were like 30, no, not 30, there were like 60 people that were on live with me while I was testing. While I was up at 3 AM, it's because the boys had a cousin come over and I told them they could stay up late and play games. And if— and in theory they should obey, in theory. But I was like, I want to be awake when it's time for them to go to sleep so I can make sure they go to sleep and don't stay up all night. So I was up messing with my tech while they were messing with their tech, and, um, we all had fun. So if you're here for the first time this morning, my name is Chrystal Evans Hurst. You can find out more about me by going to chrystalevanshurst.com. And unfortunately, shucks, I didn't get anything to drink this morning. Actually, I have a big bottle of water, but it's over there. I was so enthralled with trying to get my situation working this morning. I didn't grab it, but I've been drinking it. I'll keep drinking it after we're done. So this is Coffee with Chrystal, where hopefully you have your coffee, your tea, your water, your morning green juice, you know, whatever works for you. Because we need to stay hydrated. We need to stay hydrated. How about that? And, and if you are new here, I just wanted you to know what this is. This is a little QC. It's just a series that I've been doing live every morning around 7-ish AM. And QC stands for quarantine content. It's a little quarantine content so you can exercise some quality control in your life. We have talked about everything from cooking to child rearing to relationships to how to have joy to doing what you love. All the things, all the things, all the things. And, um, this is what I'm saying is going to be the last week because, um, because of a lot of things. One is, um, I have a book to write. I'm working on that, so I want to go full throttle, full attention in that direction. The other reason is because, you know, you got to live your life. You got to get up in the morning. And I know some of you right now are in the bed, in the bed watching. I know it. I already know it. And it's not like, it's not because you're in a different time zone and it's 4 AM. It's straight up 7 or 6 or 8 and you just lay in there. Valerie, you said your caffeine headache is completely gone, free of caffeine and starting to exercise and drinking water. Awesome, awesome. Yeah, we've talked about a lot of things. I see you, Legal Birdie. And so I see where you're coming in from. I can see all the comments. There's a lot of them. So every now and then you'll see me glance away from the camera because I'm looking at Instagram or I'm looking down at the comments from Facebook, Periscope, or YouTube. And then we'll see, we'll see. Marsha said, me, I'm still in bed. I'm still in bed. So here's the deal. Unless you're in a different time zone and it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon or it's 3 o'clock in the morning, my goal is to get you, get you going, get you going. I said I was going to come on every day and talk for about 15 minutes. That's not what happened. I've been on here like an hour plus every day, um, except for Tuesdays because Tuesdays I have to jump off and have a team meeting. But I do want to tell you about a few things. One, Instagram. I'm going to pause for just a second because I just need to make sure I have enough juice on my phone to get through this thing. Okay, there we go. Yeah, because my cord is not over here. Okay, so basically, um, yeah, the last week— this is the last week. Oh no, y'all are giving me grief. You're giving me grief. I've seen your requests. I've seen your requests. Uh, you're saying, can Chrystal— can you just get on sometime? Once a week, maybe? Um, once a something once a month, twice a month. I've heard you, I've heard you. I just gotta figure it out. I gotta figure it out because, you know, all the things. But the other thing is we're getting ready for something big this weekend. Many of you've heard me talk about it. So this weekend we are having the, um, the Sister Circle online event. Really excited about that. Where did it go? Uh-oh. Can you see it? There we go. Uh, you can find out more about that at chrystalhurst.com/tsonline. There will be over 30, I think we're closing in on 35-ish encouragers is what I call them. Teachers, speakers, workshop leaders, session directors. Basically, it's women who know something about something. This may be their expertise, it may be their skill, it may be their life experience, it may be their passion, but they know something about something and they want to come on and encourage you in your life. So will there be some like keynote kind of things? Absolutely. But really what this event is about, besides rah rah rah, because there will be some keynote kind of main session things It's about breaking it up so that you can get specific about mothering your toddlers, or so that you can get specific about learning how to pray, or so that you can get specific about organizing your photos, or so that you can get super specific about making friends, dealing with difficult relationships, uh, dating online, like super specific. Because here's the thing that I believe I believe that as women who love Jesus, women who want to be on the right side of God, as I call it, um, I think it's great that we subscribe to Redbook and Real Simple, and I think it's awesome that we, um, that we pick up glamour magazines when we need beauty tips and, you know, all that. That's fine, do what you want to do. I'm just saying we shouldn't have to find help for everyday things, always outside of women who love Jesus. Like, there are people who actually love God who want to talk about dating online, you know what I mean? Like, so it is designed to be practical, practical, practical, practical. Uh, yes to marriage help. There's marriage help. So, um, so that's the goal. The goal is a lot— yes, yes to Jesus. And there's a, there's a, there's the day is divided into your spiritual life, your emotional and mental life, passion projects, things that you want to do with your life, the relationships in your life. And then there are main sessions sprinkled in between because I know, because I know how these things go. I have bought things, y'all, bought things online where I have forever access and never done them, never done them. So this is available live that day, meaning that the teachers the encouragers will be live to say hello, live in the comments, and then live to answer your questions. Their teachings we recorded just so that if technology goes wrong, we still have their teaching, right? But, um, but then if you can't make it live, no worries. You have access to all the stuff till the end of the month. Why the end of the month? Why not till December 31st? Because I know most of y'all, if I say you can have lifetime access or have access till the end of the year, you'll never get around to it. You'll never get around to it. So it's a little bit of accountability for you to get in there and learn what you need to learn. Okay. We are talking about ways we can make some of this stuff available ongoingly, but we're not there yet. We got to take one thing at a time, one stinking thing at a time. Now, here is some other stuff that if you're like, I can't do that right now. It's no worries. No worries. Because I understand. I understand. We have actually had, we, I mean, it's great. We've actually had women connecting with other women to say, I know you can't afford to go, but I'm actually, life has not changed for me. My job is still paying me. Things are still okay. I'm sponsoring you. Um, and that has been really cool, really cool to watch. Uh, women, they literally say, I want to, I want to sponsor a sister. We've got some of that happening. So if that's you, then, you know, do that for somebody else. Do that for somebody else. It's 35 women and we are giving, all of us really are giving away a lot of free content because everybody's doing free stuff like this online. But this is a way for us to aggregate together, for me to put together the tech, for me to make it a thing. And I hope those of you who are able to join us come because we have so many exciting things planned for you. Okay. That said, if you're like, I just want to get connected, check out the Facebook group. Oops, you can see I was playing around this weekend. There we go. Let me move this down. ChrystalEvansHurst.com/facebookgroup. That is the Sister Circle Online. And so sometimes I jump in there, like I'll probably jump in there today and, um, and talk about what I'm about to talk about today. Um, because I have my thoughts, but here's the deal. When we all put our thoughts in the pot, when we all say, this is what I learned, this is what I do, this is how I've grown, y'all, we learn from each other. And so the Sister Circle group on Facebook, totally free. You can join that. And, uh, we talk about something, um, every week. Um, I will kick off the conversation today with this topic. So if you have something to say about this, please join us. Okay. And then, um, I'll stop there for right now. There are other ways that you can get connected with me, but I want to jump into what I have to share with you this morning. And I want you to know that, um, Instagram, I'm going to figure it out because, um, right now on Facebook and, um, on YouTube and on Periscope, they are hearing, um, audience applause because I have fun things, you know, they are hearing, um,, you know, a bullhorn, a DJ horn. Right now they are hearing, um, you know, like a party, like a blow thing in the background, you know, because all these things, it's like, you know, I want to have fun and I want y'all to be a part of the fun. So Instagram people, y'all are like, what are you doing? I'm giving myself my own hand. That's what I'm doing. I'm giving myself my own hand. So I will figure it out, and then by tomorrow Y'all will have better video, better audio, and you will see all the things on the screen. Okay. All right. Hey, Tiffany Johnson. Okay. Every now and then I see people that I know in real life in the comments, and honestly, it freaks me out a little bit. I'm like, they know me and they're watching. Okay. All right. All right, so here I go. I wanted to jump into something I promised you I would jump into last week. Um, there are so many things that I want to talk about. So we, we said that we would— there were 3 things and I wrote them down and then I moved the paper. One was talking about building your own sister circle. The other one was talking about, um, geeky— we're gonna have a geeky girl show this week. And then I had a guest, and unfortunately my guest last night uh, reached out to me and told me that she was not feeling well. She wasn't sure she had food poisoning or what. So we'll rearrange and, um, have her on another time this week. So, um, Cheryl, you said you're gonna have to teach Priscilla about being tech savvy. You know what? She's actually, she's actually doing pretty good. She's just not like, you know, hey Joy Lynn, she's, she's actually, she just doesn't care. Like, it's not like I love the stuff. You have to understand, like, it's not like I'm more tech savvy than her. I actually just really enjoy it. I really enjoy it. Like I have fun figuring things out. It's like a puzzle. So, you know, it is what it is. Okay. So, so, but she does call me. She does call me when she needs me. So anyway, I, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what it looks like to make your own sister circle, basically making friends. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about making friends. You said y'all are just waiting for Priscilla to jump in. Yeah. All right, so, um, let me talk to you a little bit. Let me pull up my notes here so I can be intelligent. Okay. All right, so some of you are wanting to build a sister circle. You're wanting to make friends because you feel like you don't have any, like you literally feel like, I don't have friends, I don't have any, I don't have any people to go to, I don't have any people to call when I need, uh, somebody to listen, I don't have anybody who can trust— who can, um, be trusted. And you know, first of all, you have to define what you mean by friend, because there are people who I would consider to be a part of my sister circle who are more like acquaintances than we know each other very, very well. There are people in my sister circle who I hope don't ever jump online and tell all my stuff. There are people in my sister circle who they only know one side of me, and I have multiple sister circles, multiple sister circles, because the sister circle is an idea. It's an idea, okay? It is, it is the idea that you have people that are a part of your sphere of influence and they are a part of your sphere of influence. There is an episode on my YouTube channel if you want to learn more about what one of my friend groups did to build their friend groups, uh, to build their friend group. You can watch, you can go on my YouTube channel, um, youtube.com/chrystalhurst, and then just search, or you can just search YouTube for Chrystal Hurst and Tammy Franklin, because there was a whole episode on a group of women that Tammy is friends with, and they started their sister circle built around praying for their husbands. They actually weren't all friends. They didn't all know each other, but they had one common goal. So you can kind of decide how you want to build friendships and at what level they are. And you get to define the level. It can be casual. It can be deep. It can be designed for longevity. It can be designed for a season. So you kind of have to— and sometimes you go in for a season and it becomes longevity. So on YouTube, Periscope, and Instagram, I showed a picture, um, I showed a picture of me with, um, me with my sister, my sister-in-laws, and my cousin, and my cousin Winter. Me, my sister, my sister-in-laws, and my cousin Winter. That was a part of the graphic of this morning's, um, of this morning's live. And I would consider that to be my my for real, for real ride or die, we're from the same family, don't mess with our kids sister circle. I have another sister circle, we call ourselves the tribe because we've all known each other for at least 25 years. Um, but I have 3 sister circles I would consider on Voxer, a group of women who we've been on Voxer, uh, Voxer is a walkie-talkie app, talking to each other about developing our blogs, our words, our businesses., but we've also seen each other through the loss of parents and difficult marriage, marriage situations and, uh, things with kids and moving and all the things because we've been on there together so long. Um, I've got one that just strictly talks business, strictly talks business. And when I went out for the event that we're putting on, um, the Sister Circle online event, I reached out to women from all different types of Sister Circles. Some, I just met you because we spoke at an event together. We're in a sister circle as acquaintances because we're both speakers. Or I asked you because you're my ride or die and I know enough about your life to say you have something to say about this. So let me pull you out. Um, so I, there are levels. They don't all have to be the same and they don't all have to be for the same purpose. When I am, um, when, if you are in a PTA and you are involved with your child's school, that is a sister circle, but it's a certain level. Like, y'all may not go all the way deep, but y'all are together. You're together for a same, a singular purpose. Or you might say, okay, these are the women I'm studying the Bible with. So for the duration of this year, because they're going to be hearing what God is telling me as I read the Bible, this is my sister circle, you know. I mean, like, you don't have to call it that. I'm just saying circles of friendships, acquaintances, levels of influence, levels of trust. These are all things that can be— that's why we can have a group on Facebook that has 5,000 women in it, over 5,000 women, and call that the Sister Circle. Um, Facebook isn't always the friendliest for you finding your people. So we're working on ways that we can make it easy for you to kind of see based on topics who is interested in what you're interested in. And there are lots of different technologies that we're checking out to see how we can serve you. Better in that regard to help you connect. But listen, there are apps for this, for you to be able to go to a new city and find the people that are actually your jam. Um, when you get a small group going at a church, um, that is, uh, that is maybe for that season a sister circle because y'all are going to be studying something together. So you get to define, okay, how you begin and grow deeper with the girls that you choose to surround yourself with, okay? The girls you choose to surround yourself with. And some sister circles are just for a season or for purpose, and that's okay, okay? That's okay. But I wanted to just give you some ideas for how you can start, seek out, or develop friendships. Or another way that I like to say it, your own sister circle, okay? And what I want you to do, uh, Christina I see you on Facebook. You said, I have spent so many years in relative isolation as I'm an introvert, um, that my circles are small. How do I grow that now? And I love that, that you want to grow it. But here's what I also want you to know. Okay, this is super important. Super circle— super circles— sister circles, y'all, don't have to be big. They don't have to be large. You know, the Bible says where two or three are gathered, there I am. Where two or three are gathered, there I am. I put that picture back on the screen with me, Priscilla, Andrea. Um, Priscilla and Andrea are on my left side in that picture, and Kanika and Winter are on my right side in that picture. Um, I'll post it on social media after this, on Instagram, okay, so y'all can see it. Um, and basically you— they don't have to be big, right? So if you only need two or three to go to church with If Jesus only took 2 or 3 on the mountaintop for the Transfiguration, you don't have to have a whole lot. You don't have to have a whole lot. Okay, some women would say, yeah, I see you, Joyce from Jesus. You said sometimes small is better. 100%, absolutely. Um, um, and it's okay. I should have had my cousin come on because she's an introvert to talk about her Sister Circle. I'm gonna have to ask her. Shucks, she's I don't think she's up. She might be up. I may text her, be like, my computer can't handle it. Y'all, sidebar, stream of consciousness. I went and looked at a computer this weekend and I almost bought it, but it's not the one I need. Like, I went to Costco to do grocery shopping for my family and they have, of course, the MacBook 16-inch and the MacBook 13-inch. And I wanted to buy the 16-inch, because let me just play with it and let me just see if this can work because it's large. But 16 won't cut it. I have 16 on this Mac. And my Mac is struggling. It's also 5 years old. It's also more than 5 years old. And so the technology changes. So I've been upgrading my computer all weekend trying to get the latest and greatest operating system on here and backing things up and still, it's still struggling. But I was going to buy it, y'all, and then bring it home and test it out, and then either resell it or take it back. Because the one that I need, I would have to order, and it would take 2 weeks to get here. So we will see. We will see. I've been trying to justify who else in my business— I'm like, who else that works on my team needs a computer? Like, I could justify it as a business expense. Like, I could get it. And try it out and then give it to one of the girls on my team who needs, you know, who needs, who needs a better computer and just say, hey, this is, use this computer. I've been trying to justify it anyway, but I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I was like, let me not, let me not do that. Let me not, let me not buy something like that to take it back. Yeah, but I have to custom order it because I need— in the Costco, they only go up to a 512 hard drive. I'm geeking out. I'm going to come back, y'all. I need, I need— I have one, I have one and it's almost full. So I need to go ahead and get a 2 terabyte and it is what it is. I'm rocking a 2015 MacBook 13. That is my ride or die. And then I have another computer in the office that most of the time I'm not using. Another person is using, and it's a 2013. So I've been, I've been hanging in there with my technology for a while. So anyway, anyway, um, ah, Shay, I see you. You said, please pray for my sister, she had a heart attack last night. Let me just give you a quick breath prayer right quick. Lord, we pray for Shay's sister. You know her body, you created it, you know how to heal it. And you know how to make sure that the right doctors for this right season see her and are able to make things right in her body. So Lord Jesus, would you please bless their family? And would you please give Shay and her sister peace this morning? Okay. Okay. So anyway, coming back, coming back, coming back. So anyway, my cousin Clarice is an introvert and she used to say that, that she struggled with getting friends. You can look up her episode. I've interviewed her a couple of times. About being single. She's also a mom, foster— she's also a mom, she's a foster mom. Um, never been married, didn't have any kids, and decided she wanted to start fostering. So that's a whole thing, but we can reference her in the resources. Um, that's one of the reasons why I always am telling you guys to join my, um, to join my email list, because there's no telling what I might say. And what— whenever I say something that has a link or has a whatever, then I— then we, we write it down, we take notes for you so that you don't have to take notes. And then hopefully We take our time during the week getting the resources together. And then when we send out an email, we say, hey, did you miss it? Here's a resource. So we'll put Clarice in the notes as well. All right. So getting back to that, I do understand that different personality types make this difficult, but let me just tell you, I think it's just as difficult for extroverts as it is for introverts. Let me tell you why. Introverts, when they make the decision, in my experience, when they make the decision, the decision to have solid friendships. Oh, email list. I'm sorry, y'all, just go to chrystalevanshurst.com. Instagram, sorry, you can't see. chrystalevanshurst.com, drop your name in the little email thing and then you'll be on it. You also get emailed about prayer, but you'll be on it. Um, so introverts will make friends and they'll be deep and they'll be lasting. Extroverts a lot of times make shallow friendships. They have a lot of friends, but none of them go very deep. And everybody, all of us, we have the deep desire to be known and seen and valued for who we really are, not what we just let you see. And there's a difference. There's a difference. So I think learning how to make friends and deciding what the level of friendship is that you're going to have, it's a skill and we all can learn it if you don't naturally have it. And it's okay. It's okay if you've got to learn it. All right. So let me just run through some ways to, um, Dahlia, I see that you said you're not getting the email, so just email us. You can email hello@chrystalhurst.com. All right. So here's some ways that you can think about making some friendships. Okay. Um, now this puts the burden on you, puts a burden on you to be proactive in doing the things that can develop relationship. The first rule of thumb is do as, do unto others as you would have people do unto you. What kind of friend do you want to have? Be that kind of friend. Are you the kind of friend that wants to— do you want to have the kind of friend that lets you just come over and plop on their couch and just stay there all day Saturday? Like, just, I came over and I wanted to be here and just hang out. Then be the kind of friend who makes people feel welcome in their home, who gives them a reason to stay, order food, cook food, whatever. You know what I mean? Like, have a setup in your living room that makes it convenient and comfortable for people to want to be there. Have good Wi-Fi. You know, there are things that matter in life, okay? But that's just a, just a golden rule: do unto others as you would have them to do unto you, okay? But here we go. Let's, let's assume that you don't have any friends, okay? Pick one thing that you want to do with some level of regularity, okay? One thing, and do it with frequency, and then say, or plan to do it with frequency, and then invite other people to join. So let's say Like, I live in Dallas, and one of the things that never amazes me is how many things that people who are new to Dallas discover that I don't know about. Because I live in my little neighborhood and I do my little things, and of course I'm busy with the kids. But then they come and they'll say, have you ever been to XYZ? And I'm like, no. And I've lived in Dallas all of my life. My cousin came from Germany and she said, can you take me around Dallas? And I had to look up what do people who come here to Dallas do when they tour. I don't know, I don't do all that stuff. And so I went around the city and it dawned on me that in my own city that I should probably approach it like a tourist and once a month do something that I haven't done, go somewhere I haven't gone. So some of you, because maybe you're single and you just moved and you're new to a city, you just want to get to know the city. So when you ran into somebody random at church and you have a conversation after church while you're waiting in line, maybe to get your kids if you're married, or maybe when you're at a little singles mixer or singles event, you know, you say, hey, I've just moved here and I've kind of made it a thing where I just want to get to know the city, and I'm trying to come up with, you know, find 2 or 3 people who want to do that with me. You know, I'll plan the events. I don't even know what we're going to do, maybe totally boring, but at least it would give us something to do and help us to get to know the city. Is that something you'd be interested in? Plan a monthly outing. Okay, it could be anything that you want to do, or if you have a certain hobby and you already know what you love, you already know that you love bowling. So then once a month you wanna go bowling. We've been talking in the 21 Day Experience. This is the week where we talk about your interest and your passions. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, there is another group. It is a group of women who said, I wanna support what you do. It's the Inner Circle. And we do extra stuff with them. In fact, all of these lives are basically extra stuff. And we take the extra stuff after it's lived a little bit online and we pull it down and we put it in the Inner Circle library. So they have access to it for as long as they're a member of the Inner Circle. But we've also been walking through a 21-day journey in there. And while only certain levels can do it, and those levels are closed, if you go there, one level is open if you wanna kind of get in and see what it's about. But for the other levels, we've been going through this 21-day experience, 21-day journey where we talk about who are you, who are you really? And taking the time to slow down and look at you. And we're on the week where we're talking about our interests and our passions. And it never ceases to amaze me How many things we discover or rediscover are our passion that we don't prioritize? We don't make the time for it. We don't do it. We talk about getting back to it, making room for it, and life is busy, or we've minimized it and we're simply not doing the things that we love. And everybody doesn't love the same thing. And a lot of what you're doing in life should be what you love, because what you love is different than what other people love. It's just It's just a part of honoring the gift that God has given you of having life. So when you love something, you should make room for it. And when you make room for it, then you should make time for it. And often you can invite other people to that thing. Do you love to crochet? You know, tell people, hey, I'm looking for some friends who like to crochet. I just want to have like a monthly gathering where we just get together over coffee, maybe have lunch and just do our thing together. Or you like to bowl, or you like to run, or you like to write and you just want to find your people. Last year at the Sister Circle retreat, in-person retreat that we had in October of 2019, right before the main event started, we had a whole event, a whole day for writers and speakers. And so again, I brought in women from my Sister Circle that know something about writing and speaking. And I said, hey, can you come in here and can you please teach them what you know? From that event, I got to see women who came to an in-person separate in another year workshop for speakers and writers. They came back to the retreat and you know what had happened? But since the last time they were together and this time that they were together, they stayed connected because they ran into each other on something that they all loved. Common experiences. Yes, Heart Convo, common experiences. So they got together and they said, we all are about building our speaking skills, our ministries, our business building, our writing, getting that story done, finishing that book. And I met you at an in-person thing, and I came back to another in-person thing so we could be together again. In fact, there were a group of them that roomed together because the whole time since 2018 to 2019, they kept in contact, but they met each other doing something that they loved. So often you can develop lifelong friendships because at one point in time you had a common denominator. There are friends that I've known for 25 years, and you want to know how I got to know them? In the choir at church. We met, we were in our 20s, I started a choir, I directed, I sang, I played the piano, and some of those girls from that choir, I got to know them. And to this day, we're still friends. We're not even in the choir together. We've gone off and had children, gotten married. We live in all different parts of the city or in the parts of the country, but for a season, we were together. So figure out what you love and figure out how to be together with other people that learn, know the same thing. It doesn't even have to be something that you already know how to do. It can be something that you want to learn. So you find the class and invite other people to come along with you. So the thing is, you don't have to freak out if you're an introvert and thinking, oh my gosh, I'm gonna— they're gonna want to be my friend. You're just getting to know them. You're just getting to know them. And on Voxer, all of my, my groups We have different levels of intimacy where I don't have— all of them don't know when I'm having a hard day, but one or two of them do. So I want you to know that you don't have to be afraid to go deeper. So plan a regular activity, monthly, weekly, start a new hobby, join a class, meet other people that love what you do. Reach out to old friends, you know, the friends that you were friends with in high school and y'all have kind of gotten gone apart. If you're still in the same city or not, because I mean, you know, whatever, we have technology, reach out and say, hey girl, I'm just trying to reconnect with some old friends and wanted to know if you wanted to just join this weekly Zoom we're going to have just to talk about how we're doing during quarantine season. You know, reach out to people that you already know but don't know very well. Y'all, here it is, a text or a cold call. Okay, so there are women in my life, because with COVID-19 I've been thinking a lot about women who of course are widowed, who are alone, who are single. And I, as women come to mind who are in that stage or season of life, I write them down. I have a little list of women who I want to stay connected to. And it's not even like we're a circle, like together, but they are a part of my circle because as I've called them to check on them, they've started texting me to check on me. So you, it's, you know, it's kind of that give and it will be given back to you concept. So when I make banana bread now in my life right now, I always double whatever I'm making because there's somebody that I can bless. So if I make banana bread— there's a lady, um, she works at my dad's ministry and she lives two streets over. So I was like, hey, I'm, I'm out front of your door. And y'all, and I'm so low maintenance, I'm such a low maintenance person. I'm the kind of person that'll put the bread on your doorstep in foil and write on it with a heart, if I even write on it. But that day I was like, I know what it's like to get an unexpected gift. So I put the banana bread in foil, but I put it in a little gift bag with some tissue paper with a card and just said, I'm so thankful for you and I just want you to stay happy and healthy and stay in touch. Let me know how you— okay. So when you are the kind of friend that you want to have, you'll be surprised at the kind of friends that you, um, that you can be. And so yes to texting, it breaks the ice, but it also is kind of a safe way to just see if a conversation gets started. And then you can take it beyond that, literally call some of y'all millennials. If you're a millennial, give me a fist bump. I want to know if you're millennial and you're here. Um, while I'm calling up my millennials, if you're a dude, if you're a man, give me a high five. I want to know if you're here. One of my girlfriends yesterday said, girl, I need you to know that every morning my husband watches you. And after he comes in and he says— and these are friends of ours, long-term friends— he comes in and tells his wife, 'Girl, did you hear what Chrystal was talking about this morning?' So they have a, they have a marital conversation based on the conversations that I've had in the morning. Oh my goodness. Oh, okay, there you go. There are my millennials. I see you, Carmesha and Marielle and Angela. I see y'all, I see y'all. Here come the dudes, the guys, the males. I see your high fives. This is fun. It's always fun for for me to see who's on here. There you are. Keep Calm, Love Endure, Jazz, Jazz, Jazzif, Jazzy. I see y'all. That's fun. It's fun, fun, fun for me to see you here. Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. All right. So we've talked about monthly activities, weekly activities, starting a new hobby, doing what you love, reaching out to old friends, just texting, like break the ice. It's like a little bit of a cold call. Of course, social media, connecting with people, just kind of being on, you know, we always kind of downplay the beauty of Facebook and Periscope or whatever, because, but the reality is I've seen you all say that even here, y'all feel like you got a little QC community because the same people show up after a while and start commenting. Right. And so even here, you start to get familiar with people. That's what we see happen in the Facebook group and in the inner circle, people start connecting over the same topics that they're interested in. So it's not a bad thing to be on social media and connect. Also, kind of what I was describing just a moment ago, don't think that somebody to be your friend, to be a part of your sister circle, needs to be your age or needs to be in your generation. So one of the beautiful things about small groups is that it can allow you to think generationally. What if some of the people that you need in your life are a little older than you? And what if some of them are a little younger than you? I am friends to this day with a woman who volunteered in our church's youth group. And to this day, we're 11 years apart. We are great friends because she was there for me in a season where she was pouring into me. And then as life continued, we've had seasons where I poured into her, but she's known me since I was 14 or 15 years old. She's, she's known me for 30 years and she's, she's not in my generation, so to speak, but that does not mean we're friends. So I want you to know that if you can think beyond the box, like, yeah, I know you want your friend to go to the mall with when the mall opens again and to go to the movie with, but what if deep connection and friendship is not limited to your generation? And I would actually encourage you to think beyond your generation because you need, you need an upline and a downline. Like think multi-level marketing. You need somebody who has been in a little longer than you and can teach you the ropes., and you need somebody who you can teach the ropes as well too. Um, because here's the beauty of having multi-generational. If you, of all your friends, if you're a mom of small kids and all your friends have small kids and you are dying and you need a respite, yeah, your friends with small kids can help you out, but your friends that don't have kids may have greater availability. That mother who is, her kids are gone and who's a generation above you or beyond you, she may have greater bandwidth. So you widen your opportunity to not only be a friend, but be ministered to when you widen the level of friends that you're looking at. So that really is easy in a small group. But if you started a book club, that's another great way. If you like reading, that doesn't matter if the people who love that book are 25, 35, or 65, it doesn't matter. They just want to read the book. So just think beyond your age. Okay. Now, once you get friends, you know, you want to keep friends. You want to go deeper with those friends. And so, you know, then you have to say, okay, how do I, how do I do that? A good way to do that is by growing together, meaning reading, studying the Bible, taking a class, doing something together. So there's one girl who I always call her an honorary member of my team. She has been an intern, she's been a paid person, she's operating a consultant position. She has helped me develop product because she's just a really smart chick., and I love having her around. But, but we realized one day in talking that our husbands both like barbecue. Okay, this is random. We are both geeky girls. We love YouTube. We love computers. We talk RAM for your hard drive and how many megahertz is this operating at. Like, we enjoy that. Um, we also work together in ministry because she's employed in a ministry that— I mean, so we, we've been, we've been, we've had multiple touch points. And I think that's the thing that happens when you want to go deeper. You decide you're going to create additional touch points, meaning, I know we met about our blogs, but I would like to go to coffee because I'd want to hear more about your family. Okay, I know we connected because we're in a small group at church studying the Bible, but I heard you mention one time when we were in our discussion that you like playing golf. Well, I like playing golf. Let's meet up and go play golf, right? So you develop multiple touchpoints and multiple opportunities to get to know the whole person. So my friend, when our husbands, we realized that they both love barbecue. One weekend we made arrangements and they came to our house at like 5 o'clock in the morning. We got in our car, drove down to Waco for barbecue because my husband and her husband both have this barbecue place that they idolize in Waco. And we drove down. So we let them sit in the front. And man each other up. We let them do all that. And we sat in the back with our laptops and our journals and had a great time. Then y'all, we spent the night in Austin. And I said, Waco, in Austin, we spent the night, we found an Airbnb. So like we went to dinner together, like, you know, it became more, but it only became more because we've, we've had enough touchpoints, right. To say, um, what, what, where else we might connect. So then when you start spending time with people and you get to see, the multifaceted nature of their life, you get to know them differently. You get to know them differently, right? So, um, the same thing— these, these— there are girls on Voxer. Let me plug in my phone. There are girls on Voxer that we connected. We connected over blogging, over websites, okay? That's what we connected over. Fix this Instagram. Uh, that's where we connected.. But then when you have access to people in a group where you can talk about anything at any time, okay, when someone had, when their husband had a, um, when he, um, passed out, uh, and had a heart issue and was in the hospital for weeks at a time, we figured out even long distance, how could we minister to her? Sending a card with money in it, sending them gift cards so that she didn't have to worry about food. And this is somebody that lives in Florida. But then she would get online in our Voxer group that was about, that was about, was about technology and talked about how her family was doing. You know what I'm saying? So I think you just, you, you, you, you start with one thing and then you figure out your multiple touchpoints. And then you're willing to say in those groups where you want to go deeper, you know, hey, I know we run together, but before we run together, like I'm actually, wanting to be better about praying for my friends. And I know we're kind of, you know, we're acquaintances, we run together, but I don't want to run with you, you know, 3 times a week or once a week and not know that there's something going on in your life that I could be praying about. And most people, even if you're running with people who are not saved, they're not going to not give you their prayer requests, right? That becomes actually a tool for witnessing when you're trying to share your faith. But the problem is, is that a lot of times We connect on a unilateral point with people if we connect with them at all, and then we don't explore the other touch points. That is how you make friendship stick. That's how you make friendship happen. That's how you make friendships go deeper. So you just have to be creative and look at what am I already doing? What do I want to do? How do I want to grow? What do I want to learn? Who do I want to be? And find people who wanna grow, wanna learn, want to be, want to have fun. Find people who can connect with you on one or more of those points. So you may be studying with a group because you're in college, when you were in college face-to-face. Okay. What if instead of just studying together for that calculus exam, what if, and you find this is why this happens in college, because you're limited on a college campus and you're going to see these people all the time. So you start out because you're in a class together, but then you hang out and you go to a party together. Or you, you know, you invite them over for dinner or y'all sit and have coffee. And in between studying for the thing, you talk about this guy that you're interested in. And that's why a lot of us who went to college have college lifelong friends, because we were forced to be in a situation where we connected over one thing we were learning, but then we had the opportunity and we made the room to connect on other things. So study group, your sister circle might be found there. Doing what you love in a city, your sister circle might be found there. Your interest and your hobbies, it might be found there. Social media, uh, there's a group that, um, that is on, um, Christina Abraham— Christine— Christina— Christine Abraham— and it's the Women's Bible Study Cafe. And there are women who for years have been doing a Bible study online, and they actually have small groups, and your small group meets at a certain time, and they discuss the Bible study in the comments. And there are women who have found their people doing that. To realize that, oh my goodness, these people who I am connecting with about this Bible study, they, some of them we've realized live in my city. That's actually happened. So in the inner circle, so when not the beginning inner circle, because there's the co-producer level, you're like, hey, tip jar, Chrystal Hurst, I love what you do. I just want to put a little, put a little something on it. The other levels, they connect and they get more benefits. So in the inner circle, they get access to a private Facebook group. So there's the Sister Circle group on Facebook for everybody. Anybody can come in., but then there's this private one. So when we started our 21-day journey, a lot of them started saying, hey, are there any other girls who are in the inner circle who live in California, in Northern California? And they started finding each other. And then I found out that some of them actually had a Zoom call because they were like, we're doing this 21-day journey together and you live in my city. You live in ATL, you live in, uh, you live in Baltimore, you live in Austin, Texas, or whatever. And I want to connect. In real life with women who I'm having a shared experience with. And all they did is say, hey, we don't know each other from Adam. I don't know who you are. I don't know if you're crazy or not. However, we are doing something together and I want to take it to the next level. I want to take it to the next level. So you have to figure out what are your connection points, and they need to be natural affinities, okay? It could be studying the Bible. It could be that you have kids. It could be that you're single. It could be that you love to travel. It could be that you love to sew. Uh, it could totally be that you love technology, that you're in a neighborhood, your neighbors, that you have kids in the same school. It could be that you go online and you follow somebody who's always talking about natural hair. And there's another person that you always see in the comments and they always seem to know something. So you decide, you know what, I'm going to reach out to them, DM them and say, and you just never know where things can go. Now you need to be wise. You don't need to tell all your junk to everybody. Don't be so desperate for friendships that you're not. Uh-oh. Oops, I don't know what happened. I messed up something on my Instagram, y'all. I don't know what happened. Instagram disappeared. I was on a rant and then it said pause because I'm not using the app, but I am using the app and it just freaked out. It's Is my phone freaking out too? I refuse to get a new phone. I just refuse. I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. Technology, y'all. I just can't. Okay. Yes. So be wise. I don't know what happened. See if I can get it back. It won't come back. Sorry, Instagram, because it's almost over anyway. So I hate that. I'm gonna have Instagram figured out tomorrow. Okay, so yes, so you want to be wise, you know. You want to, you want to be wise, but you also have to take some chances. You know, to have loved and lost is better than to have never loved at all. And that sounds whack when you're dealing with a boyfriend. I'm still on Instagram. Oh, I'm still on. So hold on, let me— I mean, I can't see comments. I can't— maybe it'll come back. Okay, y'all can tell me if I'm still on Instagram. Okay, because I can't see y'all's comments. I don't know what happened, but I'll keep talking. Oh, there you are! It came back. Yay! Okay, my rig situation. Oh Lord Jesus. Uh, okay, okay. Yay! I don't know what happened. I don't know. Okay. So anyway, um, new Apple everything. I know, do you— y'all know that Apple, they're crazy. I mean, I love, I love the platform, I love the stuff, I love how everything works together, I love it. Uh, and even one of my geeky friends, she just bought a PC and she was thinking about getting a— she's thinking about getting a laptop, a PC laptop, a Mac. And I said, girl, just cross over, cross over. She's like, girl, it's too expensive. So she bought her PC and I said, well, good for you. It'll last a couple of years and then you can consider getting a Mac again because you know it ain't going to last that long. She's like, you're right. So my Mac is, you know, it's 5, 5 and a half years old. The one downstairs is 8 years old. My phone, I've had it now for 4, 3 and a half years, 3 and a half, 4 years. And I'm waiting. I'm waiting till October. So anyway, so anyway, my point is I'm getting sidetracked. My point is that you have to be willing to take a risk. You need to be wise, but you have to be willing to take a risk. Because the reality is, in order to be known, you have to be willing to put yourself out there to know someone else. Okay, you have to be willing to put yourself out there and know someone else. And that means taking chances, and it will mean that somebody somewhere probably hurts your feelings, whether they intend to or not, because this is what we do as people. We are, we are broken. And we bring our brokenness to everything— our friendships, our marriage, our dating relationships. And so we have to have grace. Now, you do have to know when somebody's toxic and when somebody's— it's not wise for that person to be in your life. You do have to know that. But the reality is, um, you won't realize where the gems are unless you go digging. And if you go digging for diamonds, you're going to run into a lot of rocks along the way. Does that mean that the diamonds aren't worth it? It totally doesn't mean that. But it does mean that you need to know the difference between a rock and a diamond. And it also means that when you get to the rock, you don't let that distract you from your pursuit of the diamond. Okay. And I understand that's what you're afraid of, Valencia Hunter. Totally makes sense to me. I understand that. And I get that. I mean, it's real. But here's the thing, you know, to be afraid of A lot of things will keep you from experiencing the joy of living, okay? It'll keep— it'll keep you— you know, if we— if you were too afraid right now to go out, like, ever, to talk to anybody ever, to have anybody come within 5 feet of your front door, you would starve to death. If you're able, you can go to the store, you get masked up, gloved up, or you have Amazon deliver stuff, or DoorDash, or whoever— Sprouts deliver things to your door. Somebody still has to come to your door. They still have to touch something. If you were fearful of ever connecting with anybody, you would miss out on the opportunity to have connection at all. So at some level, even if it's minimal level, um, then you need to, you need to try. You got to try, but try safe. Try, you know, And again, church is a great place to start with people who love Jesus, but that may not be the best place to start if you want, want to learn how to sew. And I see you all in the comments on Facebook, on YouTube, sharing things with people. So somebody said, I want to learn how to sew. And Onika Brown said, here's an online school. See, this is what a sister circle does. A sister circle says there's something that you know that I don't know, and you're willing to share what you know with me so that I can grow. That's all, that's all it is. It's us sharing life together. I— sharing life together. Okay, uh, Nadia said, I isolated myself for years because of trauma. That's real. When someone hurts you, it makes you very tender to connecting with anybody on a lot of levels. But she said, I took the first step, and because I did, I have a small circle that I treasure. Nadia on YouTube said that. And that's the thing, it is a risk. You do want to be safe. You want to learn how to have friends, how to be a friend. There is a, um, I have to find the name of it. It's Apples, Apples of Gold. I think it's Apples of Gold. Marissa, you'll have to do the homework and see if you can find it on Amazon. It literally was like how to have a small group in your house, and it had a Bible study and it had recipes in the back. Because the whole Bible study was, I'm nervous, I don't know what to do with y'all, I'm nervous about talking. So when you got together to do the study, a part of your time together was cooking together. So you spent time in the kitchen cooking together so that you were together doing something. Then as you put the food to cook, then you sat down and enjoyed discussion. Then after the food was ready, then you enjoyed a meal together. Because a lot of us, y'all, when we get together, we don't even know— like, we don't even know how to— we don't, we don't know. We don't know how to even— what do we do? And we feel stressed out by being the leader of the pack and having to make sure everybody, you know. So take the stress off. When you find something that you enjoy together, it takes the stress off because then you're not supposed to, uh, you're not supposed to have all the answers. Um, Daphne said, I want to buy a bike so I can go for long rides. Chrystal Hurst encourages me with her story. Anybody know where to get a good bike at a good price? Most were out of stock when I searched. So we kind of have a little— I mean, like, this is kind of a little sisterhood because I've seen some of y'all say, I love our QC community, and I'm like, it's a community. But some of y'all are doing this. Okay, here's another one. Lenita Anderson on Instagram said Just Open the Door by Jen Smith. That's another great Bible study. I mentioned Apples of Gold, and then there's Just Open the Door by Jen Smith. And see, some of y'all are going to tell her right now where to find a bike. Kelly Mentors Bible studies are also good and they include recipes. There you go. So, um, so there's a little bit of a community here, but then if I'm not live, then y'all aren't together, right? So when you find something that you are— you connect on, maybe you find somebody and y'all, um, you know, y'all connect and then you DM each other. You know, but that's why we have, uh, the Facebook group. So that way, beyond this, beyond this, and when I finish here, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to jump off of here and I'm going to jump into that Facebook group and I'm going to say, all right y'all, this morning I talked about tips to having a good sister circle, developing friendships. What have you found works for you? What have you found? How do you find your own sister? So I should be like, I could totally record it right now. So then, then I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna like talk for 2 minutes, do a little video, and then I'm gonna let y'all talk. I'm gonna let y'all talk about it. So be sure, and I just saw somebody share their phone number and email address on Facebook. Sweetie, there are 10,000 people that are going to watch this by the time this is over. So I would advise you when y'all want to share your personal information to do it in your direct messages. Just because I want y'all to be safe. All right, uh, let me see if there's anything else I want to say. Uh, yeah, and literally we talked about sending a message to somebody you don't know. Okay, here's the last thing that I want to say about this, and there are a lot— I mean, like, you could Google, like, how to make friends. Like, there are a lot of, a lot of ways. Um, you know, we— I didn't talk about asking for help, like putting yourself out there when you need something and somebody has what you need, to just say, hey, I've been wanting to learn that. Hey, I see that you do so and so. Hey, I see that you have kids that are older than mine. Can I ask you questions? Like, you know, mentorship is kind of the sister circle too. We didn't even get into that. But, um, because, you know, here's a reality— Instagram's going to cut me off in a minute. Um, so, um, you know, there's so many things I could say. I mean, you know, use social media, think beyond your age, uh, stay study groups, doing the things that you love in your city, connecting over social media. But here's the big one: asking questions. Everybody wants to be known. Everybody wants to be known. Let me say that again. Everybody wants to be known. You want to be known, but everybody that you're connecting with, they do too. They want to be known too. And the way that you make sure that people know you see them, that you care, that you are interested in them even beyond your initial connecting point? Here it is, here's the trick, here's what will make you a great friend. And if you are a great friend, you will attract great friends. Here it is, here's the key, here's the most important thing you need to do at every level of friendship. Ask questions. Ask questions. One, it's a great way for you not to be the center of the conversation. It's a great way though to communicate to the other person that you care about what's happening to them. When you ask questions, and you don't have to be the one talking, you just have to keep them talking. Most people will answer questions because most people want to be known. Even if they only know something at a shallow level, they will start to tell you more about themselves. That tells— teaches you more about them and what they need and what they want. Okay, it's a sign to them that you're interested in them, and it will also be a sign to you whether or not You're interested in being a friend to them because if you ask questions, you may discover some things about them where you're like, okay, I'm going to love them because Jesus tells me I need to love them, but we are actually not on the same page as much as I thought we were. You know, somebody said, give us some questions, sis. All right, Marissa, write that down. Team, write that down. We may need to come up with a list of questions to get to know other sisters. It's another printable idea. Y'all give us all the ideas. Erica said, putting myself out there is terrifying. I get that, I get that. But again, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. And that of course applies to marriage, relationships, and dating and all that stuff, but it also applies to friendships. And you just need to know. Now I am a question asker. That's why I have interviews. That's why I have a podcast. By the way, great podcast going up tomorrow. We couldn't get it up last week. We're working so hard to get this online event going. For those of y'all who just turned in, check it out, chrystalhurtz.com/tsonline. I am a question asker for sure. I love asking questions, but y'all, it's not hard. Here's how you ask some more questions. When they tell you something, say, so how did you feel about that? You don't have to make up anything like rocket scientists. You know, when they say, yeah, you know, I've been applying for jobs, be like, how many did you apply for? How many interviews did you get? It's just like the next thing, whatever they tell you, you just ask the next thing. You're getting to know somebody, you know, y'all are running. Yeah, we've got 3 kids. Well, what are their ages? What was your favorite season of raising kids? How long have you been running? Do your kids ever run with you? Then you shut up and you listen, because I see your comment here. Um, there's an art to silence, Sicily. I agree. Okay, Instagram cut off. Um, it won't give me the choices. See, here's the problem. Instagram is doing this new thing where you're supposed to be able to share it to your stories It's not giving me that option anymore. It only gives me the option to share to Instagram TV. That's all it will let me do, which is whack because anyway, technology. All right. So anyway, um, ask questions. That is the key to really, really going deeper in your friendships, in your relationship, and figuring out where your sister circle should actually be, who you actually want to go deeper with. And, uh, okay, this is not the way I want to do this, but whatever. I'm gonna put making friends because it's supposed to just let me share it to my stories. It's making me mad. Uh, all right, so I'm here for all the questions, y'all. That's basically all I want to say today because there's, you know, again, Google it. If you, you struggle with making friends, Google it. For real, and get some ideas because there are so many ideas online. And that's what I did when I was trying to think of what to talk to y'all about this morning. I Googled it and I was like, which of these things that somebody else has said resonate with me and which ones have worked for me and which ones do I want to tell them about? Okay. All right. Okay. That worked. All right. Question. And oh, it does help me when y'all type QUESTION in all caps. It just helps me to see the difference between questions and comments. All right, okay, somebody said share to Instagram TV, you can do the stories from there, okay. All right, Tiffany Johnson says a good book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Listen, that's a book you can read, and if you have older children, read it with them. I make my kids read that book. So read it with them if you don't know. What if a person wants to go deeper and you're not interested? That is a great question. So let me give you my answer. When people say to me, Chrystal, I need a mentor, they'll say, I need a mentor. This is what I tell them. And I mean it, it's honest. I say, I would love to mentor you. I would love the opportunity to pour into your life in that way. And you could replace mentor with friend. You could say, but I would severely disappoint you. That's what I tell people who want me to mentor them. I'm like, I would be such a disappointment to you. Because the availability that you need and the— what you need in order to really grow from what a mentor should do, I just can't do in this season of my life with my kids and work and my existing friendships and the women I'm already committed to, to mentor. I just would disappoint you. And I just— I want to— can I pray with you right now so that God would bring the people that you need into your life? Because we only have it— we're like Legos. We only have so many connecting dots, you know. We only have so many. Um, yes, Rose, I love this. You said, I've gotten to a place where I'm not looking for more friends. I'm trying to better nurture the ones I have. That's great. It's awesome. All right, let me refresh. And if you ask your question, you may have to ask again, okay? Uh, Young Spiritual Warrior from YouTube said, will you ever translate any of your books into different languages? Well, I know Kingdom Woman is in Spanish. She's Still There is actually in Spanish. It is also in Mandarin Chinese. It's in Chinese and it's, and it's in Dutch. But those are decisions that are made by the publisher. They make the decisions about where, where it goes. Okay, looking for other questions. Can you think of staying in with this QC until the end of May? You can even have it at a later time if that'll help. Actually, 7 AM is the perfect time because my kids are asleep, so I'm not interrupting my life. And as soon as I jump off of here, I go downstairs, I make them breakfast and get them up. So it actually works perfectly. It's just that it's a matter of bandwidth and lanes. But I mean, I'm praying about what it looks like for me to go. I mean, I've bought all this software, I got my setup. Y'all should see my— y'all see my mic? I got my setup. So it's not like I don't— I love doing it. I mean, that's why I do it every day. Okay, so somebody's asking me, what are the names of the groups again? Okay, so here we go. The Sister Circle on Facebook is free. Anybody can get in it. There are over 5,000 women and we will, we will collect around certain questions and help each other out. The Inner Circle is for people who are like, I want more extra content from Chrystal Hurst. I want to support you in what you're doing. There are multiple levels. All levels are not currently open. Because we're on a journey together, but one level is. And so that allows you to get involved with getting access to stuff like this, the Inner Circle Library, the core, the core content in the Inner Circle Library. Okay. So hopefully that answers that question. Let me go look for more questions. Can anyone recommend a book on active listening? So I don't have a recommendation on that, but if somebody else does, Sarah on Facebook has that question. I'll let you guys help each other out on that. Okay. All right, question: where can I get the Black Woman Oil? Oh my goodness. Okay, so y'all, there's this oil. If you've never heard this story, somebody wore it, I enjoyed it, and I started wearing it all the time. It comes in a little vial, and I started wearing it all the time. So then when I would go speak or when I would go somewhere, people would say Oh my gosh, you smell so good. What are you wearing? And I would say, it's Black Woman Oil. And they would be like, what? And so where to get it? And I get it from this little place down the street. It's this little like, they don't have an online shop. So what I worked out a deal with them where I buy it from them and make it available in my shop. So that's, that's what it is. It's not only for Black women. That's the name of the fragrance, y'all. And I thought about changing the name of the fragrance and I was like, it is what it is. So, you know, there you go. Okay. How do I make friends with people my age and not people that are married with kids? Okay. Where are people your age going? Okay. So there are a lot of people that will go to a church, that's their church home, but then they don't find people that are their age and their season in their church. So they find another church that has a great singles group. With people their age and they go there for their outings, for their gatherings. You gotta find your people. Where are people your age? Now, if you're working with people your age, instead of just working with them, hang out with them on the weekend. You know, that's what happy hours are all about, y'all. It's about people who work together and then they're trying to do something besides work. So they go get drinks together at a time when they can get drinks cheaper. And restaurants have capitalized on this by saying, hey, We'll give you a place to— I mean, Cheers. Y'all remember the show Cheers? I want a place where everybody knows my name. You remember that? That was what it was, getting out of your environment and just meeting people. So you're going to have to be proactive, but think, where are people are? Okay, great question, Tracy. I'm only on YouTube. How do I get a reminder that you're on in my time zone? I found you by accident. So the best way to do that is if you're on YouTube, subscribe to my channel. And when you subscribe, click the bell, and that will mean that every time I go live, you'll get a notification. YouTube will send you an email, or if you have notifications turned on and YouTube on your phone, it'll send a notification to your phone. Same thing is true on, um, on Facebook. If you like my page on Facebook and you want to be not— it'll, it'll ask you, do you want to get all notifications? So that's the way you make sure you don't miss out on anything. All right. What do you think about a hybrid sister circle? Some of us are in the same city and other of us are in another part of the country. Do I think that's effective? I totally think that's effective because the group that I was telling y'all about on Voxer, where we collected about all the tech things, but then one of my friends, her husband was ill and we're, we, we're all over the place. There are some of us that are in a 3-hour driving distance of each other in the, in Texas. There's some of, 2 of us are in Florida. 2 of us are in North Carolina. And one is in Virginia. So absolutely, and with technology, it makes connecting better. But I really do think— oh, such a good question, Donnie. I really do think that you want to have in real life people in your real life so that when something is going on in your real life, you can have in real life connection and support. Donnie said from YouTube, uh, how do you know when a season of friendship has ended? Now I want to say that sometimes friendships don't end, but they have, they have seasons of intensity. So you do want to know the difference between a friendship ending and a friendship needing— you know, it's a wave. So when my friends who all had kids, when our kids were little, we got together all the time. We took our kids to the park, we helped each other out, we got together for playdates. And then as our kids got older and started getting busier, then we didn't have time to do that anymore. And we all didn't live necessarily in the same community, so our kids weren't playing soccer together. They weren't. And you know, that's the value in getting involved in your community, especially if you've got kids, because that becomes a connecting point because there are things for you to do together in your community. You know, sports is a big one. But I think you got to know, so during the season where our kids got older, it's not that we weren't friends anymore. We just weren't friends in the same way. So now that our kids are getting older and they're starting to graduate, we're spending more time together. We're reconnecting. And so that's okay. But you know a season of friendship has ended when the— when sometimes, um, people change and there are some things that maybe have happened in their life and you just— the connecting point was that you were— they were married and you were married, and the reason why y'all got together is because their husbands liked each other and the wives liked each other. So now they're not married anymore, and you and the, the girl, maybe y'all liked each other, but y'all weren't like the best. You know what I mean? And so you can still appreciate somebody, and you can still love somebody, and you can still think about somebody and not have to be in their face all the time. Also, if that friendship has gotten toxic, if it has become not beneficial, and you need to put an end to it— but listen, I have old boyfriends, y'all, where I can see them, see something, you know, because we have mutual friends, see something that happens with them in their life on social media and be happy for them. That doesn't mean I need to talk to them. Sometimes in life you have to draw hard lines because of season changes and health, and only you would know that. So if it's not naturally easy for y'all to stick together, and it's not— you don't feel motivated by God in your heart to say, but I need to show up better for this person, if it's just that the seasons have changed, um, but I would say when it's toxic and it becomes unhealthy, then you end it. Okay, let me look for some questions. Thank y'all for putting the word question in front. Hey Heather Lomax, first live, give you a shout out on screen. Um, you've been praying for new godly women friendships. Well, I'm glad that you're here and I hope that some of the tips from today's live have been helpful to you. All right, all right. Oops. Um, Valerie Rose said, do you openly say love to your closest friend? Like, do I say I love you? You know what, I— yes, I do. I do say I love you. Um, I say I love you to a lot of people, and sometimes I feel like that may water it down. I do love you. Um, what, what I mean by love though differs depending on who I'm talking to. So I've been thinking actually about that very thing. Should I actually say that to people? Because they may think it means something that it doesn't mean. Like, they may attribute love to a certain level of But I'll be getting off the phone with friends and be like, girl, okay, talk to you later, love you, girl. It's kind of a thing. But then there's Michelle, you know, my friend Michelle. And there were episodes of— I think they've been retired now to the Inner Circle. But Michelle, she'll— I can be on the verge of tears on the phone with her and she'll be like, Chrystal, because you know I love you, right? I love you. And I'm like, I know, I know you do. I mean, it's different. So I do say it. But it does have different connotations depending on the person that I'm talking to. And, you know, all right. Yes, you need to watch the replay, Brown Arrows Homeschooling. This has been a great conversation. All right, going back, trying to find comments, y'all. Like, it scrolls quick, so if you do it, sometimes you just copy and paste it again. All right, um, first time, Shamika. Shout out to Shamika. Um, comment. Thank you for this conversation, Alexandra says from YouTube. I moved to a new city about a year ago. I thought that was the only— I was the only one going through this at 35 years of age. No, no, you are not alone. Here's the thing in life we have to learn, y'all: none of us are alone. That's actually one of the isolating tactics of the enemy, to have you thinking it's just you. And, but if you can just realize that it's not just you, then it makes you feel better about yourself. Anita saying, will it all be available for replay? It will be available for replay till the end of the month, till the end of May. Then I have given the option. I'm giving the option to the women who have shared content with me to keep their content alive. But I don't know which one of those are going to keep their content alive. That's another option. It's another setup, and I have to, um, talk to them individually about that. So right now we're just trying to get to the event, but it'll be live for full— I guess it's 8 days after that to give you plenty of time to consume the stuff you want to consume, and then it will go away, and then we'll see what comes back because I have a whole vision I'm working on here. These chats, Tammy says, are therapeutic. Awesome. And I see all of y'all chiming in in the comments. You are not alone. Okay, la maestra, la maestra, I'm not sure. I got the VIP for this weekend conference, but I'd love to upgrade to the summit. How do I do that? Email us at hello, or TSC, I'm sorry, tsc@chrystalevanshurst.com. So if you have questions about the event, I think I have that somewhere. Maybe I don't. All these things I can put on the screen and I can never find them. Oh, look, here it is. You can email tsc@chrystalhurtz.com. All right, a few more questions and then I'm going to jump off at 8:30 because I've got to get dressed today. Unfortunately, I'm actually going to be recording some Better Together episodes today and I got to get dressed and put some makeup on, eyelashes. Pray, pray to me, God. Pray, pray with me to God that I don't get the glue in my, in my eye. All right. Oh, oh, oh, that's a lot of— okay, so Sheila, you said you were trying to find the 21-day journey on my website. It's not there. You can't get in it. You can't find it. It is something I made available to Inner Circle members. I opened the doors on May 1st, and then I shut them on May 3rd so that as we go through, we're focused on the women who are going through, and we're not spending administrative time letting people in, getting them started. Where do I start? Because that takes a lot of time. So we did that. Now the doors will open again on June 1st. Now what it will open for, we're not sure yet. We know we're going to do a 90-day experience. We may do another 21. We're working that out, but you can always come in and take advantage of bonus content in the Inner Circle. But what we're doing, that depends on whether or not you can participate, if that makes any sense. Because it's kind of like, you know what I mean? It's like going to Disney World or Six Flags, and they, they, Disney World, they have a train, you know, that goes around the whole thing. So you can come in Disney World, but there's only a certain time that the train is at the pickup station. And if you miss it, you gotta wait until it comes back around again. So you can still be in Disney World. So you can still be in the Inner Circle, getting the bonus content and the fun stuff. But in terms of certain rides, you can only get on them when the train comes around. So if you're interested in the Inner Circle, you, that's just chrystalevanshurst.com/innercircle. Yes, Willa. Miss Willa, I know Miss Willa in real life. She said a lot of us need healing so we can stop bleeding all over each other and have productive relationships. 100%, yes. Always be in pursuit of being a better person and letting, letting the Holy Spirit teach you about you getting the log out of your own eye so that you can be a better friend to others. Um, Okay, Don Lewinson said, how can I search for you on Better Together? Um, go to TBN, it's on the TBN network. And if you go there, it's one of the shows that they have. It's a weekly daily broadcast and, um, they have different women that are on it all the time. And so, um, I'm not on there today, I'm recording today. Somebody's asking, is there anyone here in the UK on Facebook? All right, the banana bread recipe. Okay, hey Denise, you've asked before. I'm sorry if you've asked before, I didn't see it. Um, you know what, let me see, let me see if I can share it right here right now because I think Marissa, you've asked me for it and I think I just keep forgetting to give it to you. Marissa, I just need to give you the log into my online recipe book and then when I mention recipes you can go in and grab the link. So y'all, my recipes, I keep my recipes in a place called, um, it's a website called Plan to Eat. Now everything that's in Plan to Eat, I actually print off. So I have a physical book in my house as well. Hold on. Because here's the magic in this, y'all, is the sour cream. Um, but it's so cool to have all of my recipes on my phone. Now I think when I give you this recipe, it's going to show you that it is from Plan2Eat. And when you get it, if you're interested in Plan2Eat, you can get it from the link that I give you because then that will help me pay for Plan2Eat. So let me, let me do this right now because if I don't do it right now, I'm going to get busy and then it is what it is. So how do I share? Oh, here it goes. I think this will do it. Let's see if this works. Oh, I'm not. Okay, I'm trying to share it. Give me a minute and I'll share it. I got it. I'm firing up systems on my computer that are not cooperating. Y'all already know my computer is like, Chrystal, we cannot. So the banana bread recipe is coming. I see y'all on here, um, meeting each other. You're on your email but getting the links. We only send out an email once a week with those links because, you know, we got a lot of things going on, so that gives us time with a week worth, a week's worth of videos to gather all the links and put them together. So I just shared the link, y'all. Let me know if it works. Let me know if it works. All right, I see y'all talking to each other. This is so great. Somebody said, I love the way you communicate. Terry Turner said, very thorough with a few words. Girl, I thought I had a lot of words, so thank you for that, because I've actually been working on trying to be more concise. Okay, Dolores is on here on YouTube saying, I'm looking for women who have lost their husbands. So if that's you and you don't mind connecting, taking that step and connecting with somebody who you do not know from social media, check out Dolores's comment. Y'all figure out how y'all can connect, okay? Tiffany, I see you said that you're not signed up for the conference yet. Girl, email me. Email, email me. tsc@chrystalhurst.com. And then, uh, Monique, tell, tell her to let her in. Y'all, Tiffany, I've known her for— how long have we been friends? Girl, please. Okay. So I might be— y'all might want to make sure you are following me for sure. Oh good, you got it and it works. Yay. Okay, so Marissa, you can put that on the thing. All right. I see y'all. Anybody in California? I see y'all. Listen, I see y'all over here trying to make friends. Okay. I see it. I see it. I see it. Okay. If you have questions about the event, any questions, I see a lot of questions about the event. I want to encourage you to email tsc@chrystalevanshurst.com so that way you can get your questions answered and I don't get in trouble. All right. How do you learn how to podcast? Um, so I actually teach on that when I'm teaching on it and when I'm not teaching on it, I'm not, I would encourage you to go to Libsyn.com. That's where I host my podcast content. And they have a lot of how to get started. I would also say if you Google how to get started, uh, Pat Flynn is a guy who has it. Social Media Examiner has, I mean, there's so many people out there who will walk you through step by step. Kathi Lipp, K-A-T-H-I Lipp. She has a course that she's created on how to podcast. So that's, those are my recommendations. So make sure we add those recommendations in the, in the resources. Marissa got 5 more minutes on here before I clock out. Maybe, maybe 5, and I'm constantly scrolling. Lakendra says, as a woman in ministry, I'm getting life from you, all caps, LIFE. Thank you. Make some room in these circles because I want more than a tip jar space. Finland, wonderful! I cannot believe Finland is on here. That is so fun. I love this. So Marissa and Monique and, and Brittany, we got to figure out a way in the Sister Circle group for people to connect with the people near them. We're gonna have to figure that out. You're asking me how do I organize my notes, Susie. I don't know what notes you're talking about. Are you talking about my speaking notes? Um, if you're saying that, I actually— anything that's current is in my Apple Notes, but I type them out. I, I use Evernote. I use— I've been trying to play with Notability because I like the ability to write on things. I'm playing with them, but normally things start out in, in my notes and then they migrate to somewhere where I can add color and do things to make things stand out like Pages or Notability or something like that. I see y'all sharing stuff on here. I see y'all. Listen, I love that. So depending on what notes you're talking about, that determines that. All right. All right. Yes, we will put the link to Plan to Eat in this week's resources. Beijing, I'm loving this. I'm glad that you're here. That's awesome. Y'all, I would encourage you if this episode has been useful to you to share it with a friend, like literally hit the share button and share the link with other people. So if it's helpful, I would love for other people to find it. And sometimes the only way people find things, well, there's two ways people find things on social media. Three. One is it feeds it to you. YouTube is pretty good about that. Not Facebook, not so much. You pay for it. Like people pay for Facebook ads. To make sure that more people see their things. I don't pay for Facebook ads unless it's like a book launch and my publisher's paying for it. I typically don't, I don't pay for ads just for content. And then the third way is that you share it, that the people who like it actually share it. So I want to incur, encourage you to do that. All right. I see y'all getting to know each other. This is great. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Let's see. Facebook has a new option to make rooms. Yes, I saw that, but I was checking it out and the room is like, it's like a video room. So you, you have to then select who goes into the room. So I've been, I saw that, but it's video, right? If it was just, if it was just texting, like, you know, chatting, But then you have to figure out who people want to get online. So I saw that. I saw that. And I am, we're, we're, I've been thinking about how we can make that work so that people who want to connect on certain things can just connect, can just do it. So we have big conversations in the big room and then people can have smaller rooms. Yeah. There are also units. There's all kinds of things. But what we do when you come in the Facebook group is we ask you a couple of questions. One of those is your email. So that way outside of Facebook, we can connect with you, but we know that you came to Facebook. And so we want to make it as easy as possible to connect, but we're, we're actually looking at, um, um, other ways to connect outside of— we have a lot of ideas, one thing at a time. Some things require financing. Some of those things require people, like resources, like staff to make them happen, because I can't do them all. Um, anyway, Eva, you're looking for Dolores. She was on YouTube, the lady who lost her husband. She's on YouTube. Okay, um, I see some of y'all looking at book club, magnetic lashes. Can you connect through Zoom? You could, you could. I'm glad you share these chats with family and friends. I see y'all just sharing stuff. Wow, Zoom could work. Yes, but when you make breakout rooms Yeah, some of this stuff, y'all, is not that it's not easy, it's that it's me and Monique and some interns. So we have to do what we can. We're growing, which is one of the reasons why we have an inner circle, because in order for there to be people and technology to do all the things y'all want to do, it's called growth and financing and capital. So I appreciate y'all who support. Okay, listen to y'all. Y'all are like for real sharing. This makes me so happy. So I'm gonna stay on for 2 more minutes to let y'all get all your sharing because I don't want to cut you off. Um, this is awesome. I love that. And this is what I believe. I believe women just need a place where they can connect. If you just set up a place for women— see, men don't do this. Men don't do this, but if you create a place for women to connect, we will figure it out. We will figure it out. Um, Heidi said, have I researched yet about Facebook Stars? I have not yet because I spent all weekend shopping and playing and doing things with my family. Um, so, but I will, I will. In fact, if there's anybody on the intern team who wants to go ahead and play around with looking it up, you can get me a head start. Janice says, I'm trying to connect with parents of special needs children. Yep. I know about that life. I know about that life. And finding people who get your kid and your situation is important. Um, what software do I use for my live? Ecamm Live. It's only for Macs though. Ecamm Live and what I'm going to be using to get Instagram on is Lula, Lula.tv. Yellow Duck also works, but you're kind of breaking the system to do it. And I've heard people say Instagram doesn't want to be live. They don't want to be— they don't want to have lower thirds. So be careful about what you use. So I'm going to test it out though and see. All right. Mm-hmm. Okay. I see your comments. It's so good. So good. Don't forget, we do have a place that you can continue to connect, and I will jump in there right after I jump off of here. It's the Facebook group, chrystalhurst.com/facebookgroup. Okay. All right, y'all. So much fun. So much fun. I hope you all have a great day, and I want you to get out of the bed if you're in the bed. I want you to get busy if you have not been busy. I want you to start your day well, and I want you to— I want to see you back here tomorrow. Tomorrow, 7-ish AM, I'll be here. Talk to you later. Bye.