Slay Your Day - Coffee with Chrystal #alittleQC

Good morning! Good morning! YouTube, Facebook, Periscope, Instagram, you're all here. Awesome. Yay! If I can fix my view on Periscope and YouTube and Instagram. Oh my gosh, it's always something. Hold on, there we go, there we go. Good morning. Thank you, Legal Birdie. We can't see you on YouTube yet, I was working on it. Good morning, UK, Nigeria. Thank y'all for giving me my heads up. This morning I was actually aware of what I was supposed to be doing, but buttons were eluding me. I was like, there's too many buttons here. This is what happens when you're your own producer. If you are logging on for the first time this morning and you're like, who are you? Well, let me tell you. My name is Chrystal Hurst, and you can find out more about me by going to my website, which is chrystalevanshurst.com. And also you can go there and jump on my email list because we've got some things to send you today. Yesterday was hectic. Can somebody say, yeah, hectic? Heck tick. And so the email that I was supposed to send you yesterday did not go out. However, it is going to go out today. And if you want to make sure you get all the things about the email list that we share on the email list, you want to make sure you are signed up. Also, good morning, New Orleans, Nassau, Bahamas, DC. I see y'all. Good morning. Good morning. So confession, y'all like this color right here? I like this color. This is my splash of color this morning. Because every now and then you just need to get up and have a splash of color. And y'all, my hair looks like I just don't care. But the reality is, I mean, that's the whole beauty of having your hair in twists is you don't. You just, you just get up every day and you just roll. But I was asking y'all about my splash of color because I'm trying to— I forgot my earrings this morning. But I did, however, I didn't do coffee or tea. I do have my water with lemon. A lot of the times I have lemon in my water, most times, but I have it in my— I have it in a container where you can't see the— you know, you can't see the lemon. So this morning, you know, I just— I did that, did that, did that. I have my vitamins here. I'm all set and situated for the day. Um, hey North Pole, you said you finally caught my live. It's 4 AM in the North Pole, North Pole, Alaska. Well, congrats to you. I'm so glad that you're here. I hope getting up at 4 AM doesn't totally jack your day. I was like, because you know, you know, it's a lot. It's, it's replayed later, but you wanted to catch me live. So New Zealand, it's only midnight in New Zealand. Listen, I am, I am just appalled and honored all at the same time. Sydney, it's 10 PM that y'all are even here. I have friends who are like, you know, you could have your, your lives at a time that's more amicable for global timing. I'm like, listen, I'm the one getting up every day doing this. It needs to be at a time that's amicable for me. So I, I'm sorry that the time is not as amicable for you all, but I just, I just had to do it when it works. And it's 7 AM my time, my kids are asleep, and so I'm not interrupting anything. They do have to get up early today because today's co-op day, which means that their teachers— thank God, even though they're homeschooled, they have other teachers— they keep them busy for today for the most part. So I get to do me. Today's a breathing day for me. Um, ever since I started homeschooling, I've always had my kids in a co-op for something, particularly science and art. Those are not my forte days. And as they get older, they do more, they do more with other people and less with me. And so, um, Wednesdays has been a day for a long time where I drop my kids off and I have the day. So when we all got our kids to come home because of COVID-19, some of y'all got your kids home every day. My kids were already home every day, but Wednesdays was my day. And so I'm so grateful that my teachers, that our teachers were still willing to teach them on Zoom because, or Band, or, you know, Google, whatever the new thing is, because it still gives me a day to be me, but I do have to get my kids up in about 25, 30 minutes to herd them downstairs. And every Wednesday, cause y'all know I meal plan, Oh man, I left my meal planning sheet downstairs. I was going to show that to y'all. Every, every, I try to meal plan. And so this morning, Wednesday mornings, I always have eggs, bacon, and toast, some version of that. So I will disappear. I won't be on. I say that and then I'll take a break and take out with me, fix breakfast or something dumb like that. But anyway, that's what my Wednesday is all about. It's hump day. Come on, people. In the world, no matter where you are. It's hump day. Thank you, Jesus. Um, I see y'all saying hello to each other in the comments. Yay, Canada! Yay, yay, yay! Okay, so I wanted to give you all a chance to get on here. And every morning, you guys could probably be my, my, uh, my awareness team, because I say this every morning and I feel bad about saying it because I don't want to sound salesy or self-promotional. But the reality is it's always somebody's first day. So if you're here and you don't know anything about me, I just want to make sure you know that you can connect with me and other women because we're better together in the Facebook group, chrystalhurtz.com/facebookgroup. It's where when we want to have conversations that live beyond the morning, where you guys can go, you girls can go because it's just for girls. So guys, y'all can sneak in on these lives, but you can't go to the, to the girl group. It's, it's, it's, it's the girl group. And so, um, if you want to have chick, chick chat conversation, um, you can go to the Facebook group and there we have conversations that matter to you. And then there's the Inner Circle. So right now there are like 4, are there 4 or 5 levels in the Inner Circle? The first level is open. It's $5. That names you as a co-producer of my podcast, my video shows, all the things, and you get bonus content. Basically, that's what this is, is bonus content. But we all need bonus content because we all need a little break in our days. Somebody say amen. And so, um, but after a week or so, the bonus content goes into the Inner Circle Library to lay down and not die, but rest in its final resting place. And basically, if you want to support the content that I produce, there you go. The other levels, the reason why they're not available is because We just launched an inner circle experience with the other levels. And so for 21 days, we are getting to know who God says we are so we can uncover what God wants us to do with our everyday life. And, um, we're having a good time so far. It's fun. Um, let me tell you one of my little secret things. That's, that's a little fun. So I love Voxer, so I do it with my family. I do it with my husband. I do it with my team. I do it with my interns. I use it because you can talk. It's like a walkie-talkie. So I started a Voxer group for the, for the 21 Day Experience. And it's so great because I set up a group where only I can talk. It's like only, only I can talk. And so I'm dropping in every morning. In fact, when I finish here today, I'll drop in there, give them a little encouragement. It's kind of like a voice text, you know. But what's fun is I get to, wherever I am, I get to have friends or family drop in and give a word of encouragement too. So I feel a little bit like Santa Claus. I feel like I'm dropping in every day with a surprise and maybe a bonus, a bonus gift. And so that's been fun. Um, I say that because, um, I want you to know that you have the power every day to be somebody's bonus. Somebody's bonus, meaning you can drop a card in the mail, you can send a text, voice text, you can, um, you can show up on somebody's doorstep with their favorite drink just in conversation one day. Like, you can send somebody a text and say, hey girl, listen, I've been missing my favorite Starbucks drink. I think I'm going to go get one today. Do you ever go to Starbucks? Then they're going to say Yeah, yeah, I do. Girl, what's your drink? And then they just tell you, and then you grab their drink too and drop it off on their front doorstep and just text them and say, hey, I dropped your favorite drink on your front doorstep. Like, we're in a season, y'all, where this is, this is tough, but, but I think by now we've kind of sort of figured out where we have control. Kind of sort of. Like, you have the power every day, whether you're still going to work, going back to work with your kids home still, You know, we're kind of in this quasi-season because the world is starting to open back up, but it ain't all the way up. Listen, I was like, the world— I will know that the world has opened up when Starbucks opens. Because I was like, oh wait, I woke up Monday morning, y'all. I woke up like this. Oh my goodness. Oh wait, wait, Starbucks is open. Starbucks. Like, the world is open up. And then come to find out, they're not. They're not going according to the world's rules. They're like, we will open up when we're, when we're good and ready. Because I was like, oh Phenomenal. I can now go to Starbucks at 5 AM, stay there until about 7:30, come home, celebrate my family, celebrate my kids, make them breakfast, get them going after I've had 3 hours to myself. And they're not open yet because y'all, I ride at Starbucks. So I, I haven't even yet figured out like a good spot where I can consistently like get in, you know what I mean? Get in. But I think what I'm going to do tomorrow morning. This— I'm gonna try them tomorrow morning. I'm gonna try to turn on my Starbucks music because I'm sure there's got to be a playlist somewhere. In fact, I might see if I can show y'all. You know, I start thinking of things. I have, I have a little outline, a very small brief outline, and then I just get on here and yap with y'all. Um, but I'm going to show you I gotta find the name. Anyway, I do have playlists in my, in my, uh, in my Spotify account. I have not yet— here's a fun question. I promise I'm not this chaotic in my brain this morning. I just am talking. I'm going back when I go back outside with a mask. With a— yes, I would sit in a corner with a mask on at a table by myself. That's what I would do. And at 5 o'clock in the morning, ain't nobody— people ain't People don't come and sit. They come in and get their drink. They don't come and sit, uh, Renee, at 5. I need a she shed. You got that right. Y'all are distracting me. I gotta stop looking at the count. Okay, I want to know— I gotta stop looking at the comments. Here's the question of the morning: are you a Spotify or Apple Music person? Now I know some of y'all are Tidal and some of all these other things, but let's keep those— let's keep it to those mainly those things. Okay, Spotify or Apple Music? Let's see who you are. I wish I could run a poll on this. I can't. We should run that. Brittany, if you're watching, Marissa, if you're watching, my interns are watching. We should run that poll in the Sister Circle group, maybe throw on a couple other ones for good measure, you know, maybe a couple of titles, title-ish kind of things. Or none of the above. Hey, Andrea, you're an Apple Music person. I just feel like all of my, my playlists are already in, in Spotify. You know, Apple Music took too long to get it together, so now I'm like, I don't want to transfer. I don't want to start over. And who wants to pay two services a month? I'll tell you what I don't like about Apple, and y'all, I'm an Apple person. I, I have never sold any one of my phones, so I I have 5 iPhones. You know, like they're old and I just keep them to give them to the kids to play with or whatever. 5 iPhones. So I've never, I've never had an Android phone. My last non-Apple phone was a Motorola flip phone, Motorola flip phone, which I probably still have that too. And then I, I have, I have iPads. I have a Mac. My, my son built a PC. So we do have a PC in the house. And then my old PC, I have that. I still run Quicken on it. So I kept that, but I, you know, I just, I'm an Apple girl, but I don't like, this is what I don't like about Apple. Once you're in their ecosystem, it's hard to get out. It's hard to get out. You could have your whole, your whole music situation in Apple. And then if you decide one day, I want to go get an Android phone, which I don't know why you'd ever do that. I'm about to make Shonda mad. Shonda, my honorary team member, she's hyper. You Apple people are crazy. But anyway, um, then all your stuff is locked in Apple. So I love it, and they make it easy. Their ecosystem is easy. That's why I have kept— that's one of the reasons why I've kept Spotify. Plus you have both Lord Jesus, save the budget, save the budget. Somebody said Android Nation. Listen, y'all, why are we so— why are we so committed to our phones? What? Why? Like, it's like a thing. It's like people are like, no, I'm Android. Like, we kind of snub each other for our phone of choice. Yes, Apple is a little exclusive. The— all their stuff works together nicely. But you get locked in. So I've had to learn how to live in an Apple ecosystem, the, um, the, the non-generic way, the, or the generic way, meaning I'm getting all my photos out of Apple Photos. I mean, I'm, I'm still going to use it, but the final resting place is not Apple Photos. I'm going to pull them out and do what I used to do, which is organize them structurally with folders. Because the worst thing in the world is to have them in the Apple ecosystem. See, a lot of y'all got your photos going up to the cloud. That's fine until you don't have Wi-Fi and you can't get down the photo you need right then and there. So I, I think there's a way to live in either ecosystem and own your stuff. Uh, I was committed to Apple, y'all. I was doing the iPhoto thing. Then I bought Aperture, y'all, and then Aperture went goodbye. So at whim, they decided that their program was going to leave and all my stuff was in that program. So I was like, you know what, I love you Apple, but I got to come up with a system that lives outside of y'all. So Spotify is my way to have a system that lives outside of the Apple ecosystem. All right, I've talked enough about nonsense. I mean, y'all are like, y'all are like, I mean, somebody said I just switched to Apple, and then another person said welcome to the Apple family. Y'all are like This is a whole situation. I might need to have somebody on who can have an Apple-Android conversation. I mean, y'all are going to blows over this. Yeah, and then that's the other thing. You put your, you put your photos in the cloud and then you're constantly having to buy more storage. My youngest son, my oldest son just came to me and said, Mom, we need to, uh, we need to, uh, I'm having problems. Can we fix my storage? I said, what do you mean fix your storage? He said, I need more storage. I said, well, that's your problem, that's not mine. You need a— you, you have a bill, sounds like, son. Sounds like you need a job. If you don't have that much stuff where you need additional storage, son, I bought your phone. I bought your phone. Somebody say amen. Yeah. So if you need extra storage, that's your bill. That is not mine. Yes, Dropbox has excellent storage. You can turn on Dropbox automatic storage and it'll suck everything in. That's a good way to back up your storage. Absolutely. Yes. Yes to backing up. This is not what this conversation is about. I'm going to have to have— I have a whole girl that does photo stuff. I actually paid her $50 and said, walk me through how I can organize my photos. Outside of Apple. Give me a system. She gave me a whole system. Now I'm working on implementing it. I had to go buy a 2 terabyte drive because photos and videos are a problem. Oh, I'm getting so sidetracked right now, but y'all are apparently really into this conversation. Okay. So Amazon can back up your photos too, but you have to pay if you want to back up your videos. So it only sucks up your photos to a certain amount. So then you have to pay again for another storage. I mean, the bottom line is, y'all, storing your photos, if— here's the deal. If you will back up your computer, okay, if your computer can hold your photos, have an offsite backup service and an online backup. So you need a local drive that you connect to your computer every so often, every week, every month at the most, back up your hard drive on your computer. When you do that, you need to also back up any external drives that— I'm geeking out for a second— any external drives that also have other stuff on there, okay? Somebody said, when is the class for photo organization? Apparently we need to have a class about photo organization. Is that what I'm hearing, y'all? Do we need a photo organization class? I feel like that's what, that's what this is telling me. Okay, then you're back, then you're off-site organization. So yes, uh, if you have Time Machine for a Mac, that is on-site organization. Okay, but if you have, uh, if you have Backblaze or CrashPlan or something that's off-site So here's my laptop. So y'all can't see it, but here's my laptop. Okay. And basically I have my photos won't fit on here. My photos are a problem because I got photos for work, videos for work, photos for home. And then I've been, I've been a photographer in my head from all of my life. So basically I have a 2 terabyte drive that can hold my photos and my videos. Okay. That 2 terabyte drive, I connect it to my laptop. My laptop is also being sucked into Backblaze. That is my, I should totally be an affiliate for Backblaze right now. But anyway, so when it says, Chrystal Hurst, your computer is on Wi-Fi. We're going to back it up. It backs up everything that's on my computer and anything that's attached to my computer. So my 2 terabyte and my laptop are backed up in a cloud somewhere. And the beauty of Backblaze is that if your laptop crashes, you can download everything. But honestly, 3 terabytes of information— my laptop is 1 terabyte— would take forever to download. They will also, for a fee, send you a drive. Okay, in addition to all that, I usually have an 8 terabyte— you can get them at Costco for a little over $100. Yes, that's right, an 8 terabyte drive that sits on my desk. I plug that in and then I say the same thing, 8TB local drive, back up my laptop and the connected external. So I have a local drive that has my laptop and my external backed up, but I have to manually plug that in every week, 2 weeks, or whatever. Then I have Backblaze that has an offsite. Then because I'm paranoid, I have a second external drive for my photos and I switch them out. And I used to, whenever I would go out of town, I'd leave one photo drive in the house and I'd take one and put it in the car. So that way if these jokers burn the house down, I have my photos. It's a whole situation. Somebody said, I'm so lost right now. Some of y'all got it, you'll rewind it. But if you just Google, uh, Photo Backup 321, it's called— it's a 3-2-1 strategy. Somebody said, I'll have to watch this again and take notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I forgot to, you know, I forgot a whole lot of things. Monique, you're gonna have to remind me. We gotta put the little thing back in the inner circle where we get to take their comments first. Have I been on? Geez Louise. I have been talking to y'all for 25 minutes about nothing. And I actually had a plan this morning. I actually had a plan this morning. Okay. All right. Some of y'all are like, I got other things to do. Google Photos is an option, but you need to know Google knows your whole life. It's so scary that they can find, you can say, find a tree in every photo that has a tree with red flowers on it. It'll find. It's very scary. It's Google is like, hey, we see that you just uploaded a photo of this person. Would you like us to send them a photo of this person? How you know this person's email address, Google? Because we watch your life. We watch your life. That's why. Okay, I really did have something to talk to you about this morning, so I, I feel like the whole Slayer Day, I just screwed that up because I've been talking about photo organization. Now I'm not sure if I should continue to talk about tech stuff or move on into Slay Your Day. I don't know what to do now. I'm like, I could just totally change my title graphic. Somebody said, oh, we needed that too. We just needed like girlfriend conversation. So here's one more photo tip that I do not do. Priscilla's pretty good at it. And this Somebody said move on daily before you go to bed because you're on your phone anyway. Do a daily delete. Go through and delete all the screenshots, all the bad photos, because half of the reason why we're running out of room, y'all, is because we, we put too many photos on our phone that we actually don't need. You know what I mean? We don't need. Okay, so that's it. We'll come back, talk about tech stuff on another, on another day, on a whole nother day. Okay, um, yeah, let's talk about tech stuff on another day. All right, so here's the thing about slaying your day. Let me, let me get to my notes here. Sorry, y'all. Thanks for telling me I look pretty yesterday. Did you see I had this down? I'm pulling up my slayer, my slayer day notes. These are notes I make at like 6:25 in the morning. I think about it and then I come on here and talk about it. So these are not like deep, but I don't, I don't want to get sidetracked, but apparently that didn't help me this morning. So this is what my hair looked like yesterday. I had on fake lashes, you know, I took out a few of these twists. I'll start taking these out so it looks like I have my hair has another life. And then as soon as I come home, y'all, why, why would you have your hair down? Why would you do that when you could go through your day without hair on your neck, looking like a cockatoo. Okay, slay your day. We'll come back to photos and tech, y'all, a whole nother day. Okay, we'll do it another day. All right, so slay your day. This is the first thing I want to say that has nothing to do with slaying your day, but it has everything to do with Mother's Day coming up. I just want to give you permission to tell your people what you want. Tell them It's Wednesday, y'all. There, you know what's going to happen. They're going to get to Saturday night and Sunday morning, and then your husband's gonna run out and run to the store, and all the flowers are going to be gone. So he's going to come back with whatever chocolate he could find, which isn't going to be your favorite chocolate. I'm telling you right now that if you know there's something you want for Mother's Day— Creative Live, if you're trying to get your creative life together, has it running a sale right now. You can get a pass for $150. I might give, give that to myself for Mother's Day. Whatever it is that you want, if there's a book that you want, you want an Amazon gift certificate, oh my goodness, your massage parlor opening back up, your hairdresser. Tell your people, don't let them guess, don't let them be stressed. Say, you know what, I know that Mother's Day is coming and you're always so great. This is how you do it. You're always so great at celebrating me and making sure the kids remember that. But I know sometimes it's stressful because you're trying to figure out what to do. So you can do whatever you want to do. But if it's helpful, if it's helpful to you, here's something that would— here are 3 things. That I would love if you all— if this is something that you want to give to me, you know, as you honor me. You don't have to, but if it makes it easier for you, I'll just tell you. And I also want you to get it in your mind, if they don't give it to you— let me say this loud and clear in this mic right here, see, in this mic, right? Give it to yourself. There you go. That's what I want to say. Give it to yourself. All right, so here we go. Slay your day. All right, we talked a little bit about this when I was talking to, um, my brain just died. What's his name? Sean Cannell. Cannell. Sean Cannell. Um, I want you to, uh, somebody said us men are bad. Hey David, you said we're bad at mind reading. It's all right, you don't have to read my mind, I'll tell you. We talked a little bit about this, but I wanted to go a little bit deeper, okay? Because I want you, Corona should not, you need to come out of Corona different than you went in. So if you found yourself rushing every day, if you were not a morning routine person, if you were not a routine person at all, if you have pulled back, okay? And for all of us, I feel like there's something in this pulled back season that we have learned about ourselves, about our family, about our habits, about our discipline, uh, who we are without any boundaries or restrictions. I feel like now is a good time for us to start coming out of Corona. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, you gotta, you gotta decide how you're gonna come out of this. And when life pressures start back up again, okay, you get to define what pressures you take on to a certain degree. Like, really, truly, you get to decide if you will ever go back to 4 kids being in 4 different sports in one season. You get to decide that. I don't know whoever told us that we had to run around like that, but some of us have been running around and it's been killing us, literally, metaphorically, emotionally, mentally, all the lease. You get to decide right now if ripping and running with your life is how you gonna live. You get to decide if you're gonna go back to getting 6 hours of sleep. Or if you realize that I'm actually a better person getting 8 or 9, and this is what I'm gonna do. You get to decide if you're gonna go back to running through Chick-fil-A and getting that good cane sauce, because listen, the cane sauce is a situation. Or if, you know what, cooking at home was so much better for my budget and better for my waistline. Some of y'all need to get on a scale and realize that since you've been eating at home, you've been losing weight. Now that does not apply if you have also been eating ice cream every night. Does not apply. But you get to decide if how you came into this is the same way that you're going to come out. And I want to encourage you to get in front of your day. Yes, Rose, Sean was totally awesome. And if you have not watched, watched Monday's live with Sean Cannell, You need to, you need to watch that. He was mind-blowing. All right, so how to slay your day. These are things you need to consider. Number 1, you need to determine what your routines are because routines will save your energy. That means there's less for you to think about because it's the things you just do. You just do it, okay? You just do it. I can guarantee you right now, if you're getting in the bed every night with your phone on Instagram, that's part of your routine. That's, that's your routine. If you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your phone That's your routine. If you get up in the morning and the first thing you do is go sit on the pot, that's your routine. I have a person that I know of who every day after work came home, got on the toilet every day and just sat there for an hour. Um, that was the routine. It really didn't matter what needed to happen. That was a part of the routine. Read the news, you know what I mean? Caught up on social media. That was a routine. So I'm telling you that you get to determine what your routine is. And you need to decide, some of us, that some of the things you've been doing routinely don't need to be a part of your routine. If you are getting on the phone first thing in the morning and getting on the phone before you go to bed at night, I can tell you now, that should not be your routine. Because you need to not let other people email your phone, ringing your phone, texting, your social media. Other people should not speak first into your day. And when you give away your day with media on your phone, that's what you're doing. You're letting other people speak into your day. That's the problem. So determining your routine— now I'm not going to get it. I'll give you a little bit of my routine, but I, um, that I've done that a little bit before, so I don't want to hyperfocus there. You should Google morning routine, evening routine, and make up your own. There is a planner that I have here, and I think Marissa, Brittany, Dana, when y'all watch this, Monique, make sure they know we should put in our planner for round 3 because we're working on round 2 right now Volume 2. Volume 1 we did. Volume 2 we're about to come out with again. Um, a space to work on your morning and evening routine. Now this is, uh, Michael Hyatt. I signed up for some book that he did and is a part of his launch, Full Focus Planner. It's kind of an executive level planner, and in his planner, um, he actually has a section where you work on your morning and evening routine. I believe I could make— I mean, I could be making that up, but I'm almost sure he has that in here. Oh yeah, he calls them rituals. So he has a whole page where he says, here are my daily rituals. And he has my morning ritual, my workday ritual, my work startup, my work shutdown, and my evening ritual. He says, this is how much time it's going to take me because he said, you know, you need to think about how you start and end your day. Personally and how you're starting and ending your day professionally. So you need to put some thought into that is what I'm saying, because anybody— so many people who you would consider to be successful by the world standards, they have routines. They have a game day routine. I watched this Tony Robbins documentary, which I'm gonna tell you now, y'all, the language is horrible, horrible. Don't watch it with your kids, and you got to determine if you're going to watch it by yourself. But it was amazing because it just showed him, um, how he does his motivational events. But y'all, even before he speaks, he has a routine. He has a, um, a freezing pool. It is, it is big enough for him to jump in and go under. You know, he's a really tall guy. It's like this 9-foot hole in the ground, looks like a well. And the day he speaks, he has certain things that are in his routine. He, one of the things is he works out he goes into this outside— he has— it looks like sauna size, like a, like a hot, hot sauna. And he, um— oh, somebody said show that book again. This is it, Full Focus Planner. That's what it is, Michael Hyatt. I'm not— I haven't used it. I should probably give it away. I said I was going to use it to see if it worked, and then I went and made my own planner. Um, but, uh, so he goes outside, y'all, and he jumps in this pool. It's cold. It's like, it's like polar bear diving. And he gets out like, ooh, ooh. And you wanna know why he does that? Because he wants to be fully alive when he gets in front of his, in front of his audience. He was like, I want every nerve cell in my body awake. I don't wanna get in front of them and have to work myself up. I wanna be ready. So then he goes and he takes a cold shower. Then he goes and he gets dressed and like he does all these things. I'm like, right before he gets on stage, There's a, there's a, um, what do you call them when they're like single trampolines? Single trampolines. I'm talking about slaying your day. Um, we're talking about morning routines, but this guy Tony Robbins has a routine. So it's a single, it's a rebounder. Okay. So he gets on the rebounder and literally 10 seconds before he comes out on stage, he jumps on that rebounder. So when he comes out on stage, y'all, and everybody's like, he's so hype, such a big personality. And how is he always like this? He said, I'm not always like this. I have a routine so that no matter No matter how I woke up this morning, I show up to my day ready. Now, I'm not suggesting that you get into a Sub-Zero, uh, sauna pool situation or jump on a trampoline, but what I'm telling you is, is you get to determine how you show up to your day, and you get to determine what you do in the morning that makes you ready. If you know that you want to meet your family, for example, with a smile, what will put a smile on your face before you ever meet your family? One of the things we do every morning is turn on music. My kids know turn on music. I can stream my receiver, uh, in my, my home theater system. My receiver has a, uh, a Wi-Fi connection, and I can stream Spotify through my, through my receiver to all of my speakers. I also— it had an app built in. It was called the HEOS app. I know nothing about it, but it's on my, on my, all of my devices. So from my phone, literally right now, I can open up the HEOS app and turn on Travis Greene or turn on Bethel or turn on Hillsong, which means before my kids get up, I've already had time with Jesus. Before my kids get up. And if my kids wake up in a bad mood, I mean, I totally turn on Spotify's clean list. They got a clean list. I turn it on and they're like, why? And I turn it all the way up. And my kids said, why are you— why is the music so loud? Because I need y'all to have better attitudes. Wake up! That's what I say. So I'm saying that you get to determine what things you put in your day to wake you up and to make you smile, to wake you up and make you happy, to wake you up and make you productive. You get to put those things. So I don't want to get into so much the, the ideas of the routines. I want you to do that homework. That's, that's my assignment for you in this 21-day experience we're doing in the Inner Circle, y'all. Every day they're getting an assignment. This is your assignment. I don't get to check on you and hold you accountable, but this is your assignment. You need to Google morning routine and just look at what other people do and then start to say, this sounds like me, that doesn't sound like me, no, I'm not doing that. You need to decide if you're waking up and you're going to go run, go exercise, ride a bike, if you're going to do push-ups, if you're going to stretch, if you're going to do devotionals in the morning, if you're going to, um, text your husband because he's already at work and say good morning, I love you, start the day, start your marriage right. If you're going to drink water with lemon in it, coffee, tea, like, what is your morning routine? And you don't have to start with 5,000 things. 3 things, 3 things. Start somewhere. So the first thing is— somebody said, where's Priscilla? I know, it's time for her to interrupt. We're waiting on her. She had a— she— we had a long taping day yesterday getting ready for church on Sunday and taping some speaking engagements. She, she's probably tired. Okay, so start with the morning routine. Science says, okay, this is a scientific fact, your willpower Whatever willpower you have is highest in the morning. So whatever you need to get done, whatever is most important to you, do it in the morning. Start strong. Now, some of you I know don't wake up until a little later and your rhythms may be different, right? So figure out when your willpower is the strongest and put the hardest things there. There is this principle Mark Twain actually said, eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. There's actually a book by that title. I love it. It's skinny. It's easy. You can get it on Kindle. I actually had it, marked it up, and I don't know where it went. So I ordered the book again because I'm going to read it again. Like, it's that— it's that good. It's called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. He's a productivity motivational expert. Um, Twain said, eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. So, um, basically do your biggest task first. Do your hardest thing first for your family. Do your hardest thing first for your work day. Get it out of the way because then the rest of your day will look pretty great by comparison. Um, so that's a principle. And if you're not great in the mornings but you're great at certain things— so maybe you're not great with people but maybe you're great with tasks— knock some stuff out. Um, I actually don't like doing my dishes at night. I do them throughout the day, and at night I'm tired. I want to go to bed. And so my boys, they were working on a research paper, so I let them be free of the dishes. And then in the morning, I get up and do the dishes. I turn on my music, and all of a sudden doing the dishes doesn't seem like a big deal. And I soak them overnight, and there you go. So figure out what you want to get done and do it in the morning. So that's number one: determine your routines. Start with a morning routine, end with an evening routine. Bring tomorrow's decisions into today. So if you're going to work out the next morning, leave your clothes out the night before. If you're going to get out the next morning and study your word, okay, then go ahead and put your teacup, uh, with the tea bag by the hot water thing in the kitchen. So when you get up, you don't have to go get the cup and the tea bag. It's right there, ready to roll. Put your Bible and your notepad on your desk. One of the biggest things getting ready for these lives is that the night before, I make the graphic the night before. I don't do the notes until the next morning, but the night before, I set everything up. Got everything now. Got my mic here, got everything plugged in. I set things up so when I sit down in the morning, I'm just here, ready to roll. So morning routine and evening routine— determine your routines. And it doesn't matter what it is. What, what it matters is that it's however you want to show up to your day, that you decide that ahead of time and plan for it ahead of time. Okay, so how to slow your day: determine your routines. Number 2, prioritize your pit stops. Because here's what we'll do, y'all. We'll get busy, we don't stop for lunch, the kids need us, we realize we haven't eaten or drink— drunk anything all day. Okay, you have to figure out what am I eating, when am I eating, What am I going to drink? Give yourself a little water bottle and say, my goal today is 3 of these. Uh, there's an app called WaterMinder that will remind you to drink your water. Cause the worst thing that can happen is, as you're working at home and schooling at home and, you know, going out to work and running to the grocery store, is that in trying to get it all done, you don't take care of you. Working out, going for your walk every day, running exercise, getting outside, getting some fresh air. Vitamin D is not optional. Staying hydrated and eating. I am the worst for missing a meal, the worst. And I actually don't like people that say I'm not a breakfast person. Oh, I totally am a breakfast person. I love breakfast. But the reality is, is that sometimes I get up and I just get going and then I wait and then I realize it's lunchtime and I'm like, did I miss breakfast? And then I fixed lunch for the kids and I may or may not want what they ate. And then I'm like, I'm going to later have a salad. I'll come back in 30 minutes, have a salad. Then I forget, and then it's 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and then I haven't really eaten anything, which is not good. So meal planning helps with that. I showed you Plan to Eat before, and I printed it out this morning to show you, but that's a problem. I did it this morning, not last night. So I will go over here and pull it up on my computer and show it to you. Planning your food in advance helps because then you make sure that whatever you meant to eat, you grocery shopped for.. And then you don't have to think. You can get up in the morning and say, I can do some prep this morning for whatever is a part of my meal today. And then you don't have to be caught dead at 5 o'clock trying to figure out what's for dinner and having to stand on your feet for an hour or make something quick. But the same thing applies for you and your food. So one of the things that I do is to batch meal prep for me, meaning my— I'll make a whole pot of pinto beans, a whole pot. My family may get it for lunch one day with cornbread and for dinner one day with something house. But I can eat pinto beans, and I'm one of those people that doesn't mind eating the same thing. Um, I've learned to eat them for breakfast because protein is a better way to start your day than carbs. I've learned to eat them, you know, and I, I'll just— and I bag them up separately, so I put them in quart bags in the freezer. So this week I may only have it twice, next week I may have it 3 times, the week after that I may not have it at all, but I've made it a big pot one time. Same thing for salad. I buy the romaine from Costco, I come home and I chop it up. I'll chop up 3 of the heads and leave 3 of the other heads, but 3 of the heads will last me for 2 to 3 meals. Put a paper towel on there, or somebody just taught me you can put a piece of bread in there, it'll keep it dry, it'll keep, it'll keep it from being wet. And then you just pull out the lettuce, then you don't have to cut it up every night. So batch prep. And on the weekend, some people do like weekly, they, they prep for the week, they meal prep for the week, meaning that all the meals are done. I'm not saying that. I'm saying prep your ingredients. If you know you're going to need some chopped green onions, when you chop your green onions, don't chop what you need for just that recipe. Chop it— chop the whole thing up and then put it in a baggie in your deli drawer. So the next time you need green onions to garnish a dish, they're already cut up. So in terms of meal planning, what I want to show you right now is what's on my meal plan for the week, if I can do that really quickly. All right, all right, so here's my meal plan for the week.. And you can see, sorry, on Instagram I can't show you, but I'll talk you through it. So basically every morning we have the same thing. For lunch this week, we had a homemade version of Hamburger Helper on Monday. We had freezer wings and broccoli and baked beans on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I call it a co-op lunch. Co-op lunch means fix your own lunch because when they would go away on co-op, um, to co-op, they fixed their lunch. I was like, I'm not fixing your lunch now just because you're home. On Thursday for lunch, mozzarella sticks. The last time they put them in the oven. This time I might deep fry them for them just to give them that fresh from the restaurant feel with fries and broccoli. Friday we're going to have chicken muffins. Chicken muffins is basically meatloaf with chicken, ground chicken, but all the same things basically in there. I got a recipe. I'll share my link to my plan to eat because, you know, then y'all can sign up for it. And I think you can even access some of my recipes. She said, I gained 3 pounds with this stay at home. Yes, because eating out of boredom can be a problem too. Um, and then you can see what we're having for dinner. Monday I totally crapped out. We just went and picked up Little Caesars. Uh, yesterday we were supposed to have chicken enchilada soup, but I had a gift card for Olive Garden, so that's what it was because I had to do something unexpectedly. But tonight I am going to make poppy seed chicken. Tomorrow I probably am going to make meatloaf. Friday I am going to make homemade barbecue beef sloppy joes. Saturday I'll pull one of those salmon out of my deep freeze. Wild coho. What is it? Wild coho? What is it? Whatever it is. Salmon. And we'll do that with baked potatoes, probably green beans. So, but the point is, is I thought about it already. That's the point. That's the point. I thought about it already. And I want you to— I want to encourage you to think about things in advance. Okay, think about things in advance. Your routine, but also your pit stops. Determine your routines, prioritize your pit stops, because you're going to have to stop every day to eat. You're going to have to stop every day to make dinner for your family. You're going to have to stop. So instead of figuring it out every time you stop, prioritize it, think about it in advance so that when it's time to stop, a lot of the time we, we don't stop because it's too much work to think about it. And I'm telling you, if you get to walk in there, take something out of the fridge and then just heat it up on the stove or pop it in the microwave, it's easier. Okay. Determine your routines, prioritize your fuel stops, build your blocks. So one of the things that I've learned about working from home is that I block schedule my day. Um, in, in the mornings I work, in the afternoons— I'm sorry, in the mornings I try to focus on the kids' school, in the afternoons I work. It doesn't always work out that clearly, but I can tell my kids, you have me until lunch, whatever you need, ask me before lunch because after lunch I'm disappearing. I block schedule my mornings. I will write, think, work in the mornings. I jump on here, y'all, with y'all live, and then my kids get up and I jump into kid land. That helps block scheduling your day. But I want you to also block schedule your playtime. I need you to say at 5 o'clock, because here's the thing a lot of people who work from home struggle with, and I'll have to do a whole nother thing on meshing, fleshing out working at home strategies. But they don't stop working. Your work, you never leave work. That's one of the hardest things about working from home is you never leave. And some of y'all have learned that now because you can send an e— you know, you can take leave, get off the computer at 3 o'clock and hang out with your family, but then at 9 o'clock you come back and you start working. And then, you know, and so, um, so you want to block your day because you want to make sure you have room for everything in your day. So what needs to be in your day will work um, but also time with your family. And I would say play. You need to make sure that you leave room to play. Um, one of my things I said, everybody's going to stop quarantining and then they're going to be like, where did Chrystal Hurst go? And it's like, oh, we all went back to work and I quit working and started quarantining. Yeah, I'm just going to go silent after this is over. After being live on every day, probably through the end of May, I'm just going to be like, I'm done, y'all. I'm going, I'm going silent. I'll see you in July. But one of the things I want to make sure that I do is come out of quarantining with something that I've always wanted to do. Meaning I've always wanted to get back to playing the piano. So I've been tinkering around a little bit. I've always wanted to get my photos organized. That is in progress. Thank you, Jesus. Um, but I've always wanted to clean out my bathroom drawers. That was a goal going into the 90-day experience that I did with the Inner Circle, and I still haven't finished it. So there are certain things that it would be a crying shame, crying shame if we come out of this season, many of us, not all of us, of having more disposable time, not having done those things. So what I'm saying is you need to batch your time for those things as well, as well, that 8 o'clock at night, 9 o'clock at night, this is my project time. And what's your project? So you need to ask yourself that question. When I come out of quarantining, what will I regret not having done? Okay, so you're gonna work because you got to keep your paycheck, but block schedule it. You're gonna do your kids because you got to do it, but will you— oh, is what you want— will you have actually spent time reading, playing those board games, going for family walks? Okay, block schedule that and say, at this time of day, it's for my family. I shut down my phone, I shut down my computer, I turn off the TV, and we are together. They are not on their screens. This and every day, I'm gonna look at my family and say, It's family time every day from 5 to 7. What are we doing? If y'all don't like the stuff I'm coming up with, y'all come up with stuff on your own. Make them come up with it, you know? So you still need to block it out, and then you need to have your project time. Now, one of the best things— and I'm going to give this to my son. I have one son, y'all. He took so long to write a research paper. He's a very slow processor. Um, I told him that's a gift because he's a thinker. And he doesn't— he makes decisions very, very well, but he didn't do the research before he did the paper. Now, y'all know from writing a research paper from your kids, if you don't do the research before you do the paper, then you have to write the paper and do the research at the same time. That's murder. And I told him, I said, listen, the whole point of a research paper is that you did the research. A research paper, if you do the research, is one of the easiest papers to write because all you're doing then is taking what everybody already said and summarizing it. You're putting it together. Like, I mean, you didn't have to really think that much. You just had to absorb it and assimilate it and put it together. But if you don't do your research, then you have to research and write at the same time. That's murder. And that's what he was doing. It's like a whole day. He took him 2 pages. It's like, my dude, what are you doing? And he said, I'm writing my research paper. I said, you haven't do your research because it don't take that long to write 2 pages. So what I'm telling you is that if you And a part of it is when you do anything for that long, you start zoning out. Like you literally have an attention maximum. So there is a, there's a principle for this block scheduling thing. And it comes to life in what's called a Pomodoro timer. Now, if you look it up, there are apps for Pomodoro timer. There used to be one called 30/30. It's one of my favorite ones. If you live outside of the US, you might still be able to get it. I have it on an old phone. So when I need to give it to my kids, I pull out that old phone and give them the Pomodoro timer called 30/30. But if you just look up Pomodoro, P-O-M-O-D-O-R-O timer, you're going to find a lot. And really, it doesn't really matter which one you pick. It just aesthetically needs to look like something you want to engage with. And you put it on your phone and basically what it does, you say, this worked really well when I was writing. So I would say I'm going to spend an hour writing. But then I'm gonna need a break. So then I'm gonna spend 15 minutes folding clothes, 15 minutes doing dishes, 15 minutes answering emails. Okay. And then I'm gonna come back to an hour of writing. And there was something about knowing that after an hour I got a break and that those things had timers. Now, some of y'all, that will totally make you crazy and stress you out to have everything on a timer. But for some of us who get easily distracted and just need to know where the finish line is, That is helpful. You don't have to have an app to do it. You could just set a timer on your phone. You could say, for the next 3 hours of my day, I want to write, you know, for 3 45-minute blocks with 15-minute breaks in between. And here's how I'm going to spend the first 15. I'll check my email. The second 15, I'll fold laundry. The third 15, I'll prepare lunch. And then you could just set a timer. But the idea is that it gives your brain something to focus on because who wants to sit ad nauseam at a desk for 4 hours doing anything. Instead of taking the breaks, plan the breaks. That's what I'm trying to say. Instead of take the breaks, plan the breaks. So for those of you who need motivation, or for kids who are ADD, that worked really well for kids who are ADD. Give them something to focus on. Let them know when their change is coming. I mean, think about it. If you knew that right now you are on a job you hate, but in 6 months you are going to have the job that you love, You'd be able to wait. It's coming. It's coming. This job would drive you crazy, but you'd have something to look forward to. And a lot of times getting something done in your life, slaying your day, has to know with— there's a, there's a method to the madness. There's a reason for what I'm doing. And this too shall pass. This will end. And basically structuring your day in bite-sized pieces helps you with that. Uh, it's the same thing for my kids. When I do conference time with my kids, um, and I'm not, you know, as rigid about this, obviously, obviously. But in my head I say, okay, 2:30 is the time for my little guy, 3 o'clock is the time for my middle guy, um, 3:30 is the time for my older guy. And they know they have 30 minutes. I'll tell you why that helps me too. It helps me because then they know this isn't going to last for an hour. And y'all, as a mother, I have to put timestamps on me, on me, because sometimes I'll get to talking and chastising and fixing and grading and coaching, and they're just looking at me like, wah, wah, wah. Some of y'all need to learn to have team meetings this way. Set a timer on it and say, we're going to have an agenda, and each part of this agenda has a time. Conference time with my kids is basically when we go over the work for their day, because I'm not sitting with them all day long. So there are things that they can do independently, things that we need to go over, things that I graded where they— we need to review those things. So some of y'all are having death by meeting. There's actually a principle called death by meeting. It's like death by PowerPoint. If there are a million bullet points on a slide, you zone out. And some of y'all are holding meetings as a leader, as an executive in your company, and nobody's listening to you because they were tired after 15 minutes. But if you can keep the meeting moving, an agenda with timestamps so that people who show up— I mean, and y'all know on Zoom, and you can stop your video too. You'd be like, I don't even need to hear this report. So I need to say block schedule your day, but within the blocks, give yourself— if morning is writing time, give yourself a rhythm and give yourself a time. Run your meetings that way, run your family that way. Dinner time, I mean, we can do whatever we want to do, but my kids know, genuinely speaking, we're going to be at the table for 30 minutes. And then if we finish eating dinner and they're like, oh, we're done, I gotta go. No, we're just gonna sit here, y'all. You know, we need to at least spend 30 minutes of time together. What do y'all want to do with the other 30 minutes? Play a game, whatever. But we've set the time. So when you block schedule, yes, think about work, think about play, think about working out, but think about the things you need to get done and a rhythm that will keep you motivated. You'd be surprised what you can get kids to do when they know that after they work on this for 20 minutes, they get to go outside. And, um, it's a, it's a, if you Google work boxes, work boxes, That's a thing that worked for kids. A lady with a special needs son created it. And I had a son who was definitely special needs in his formative years. It's leveled out a little bit now, but I literally did the same thing. I gave him an order and I said, for 15 minutes, you're going to work in this workbook. Then for 10 minutes, you get to jump on the trampoline. And then for another 15 minutes, you're going to come back and work on math. And then you can take a 10-minute break and get a snack. And he was so excited to move through his day. And so what I'm telling you is moving through your day with, with things planned. Give yourself a carrot at the end of the stick. If a hamster can run on a wheel for something he can't reach, you can run on a wheel for something that you can't. And just decide how long you're going to run and how fast you're going to run and get things done. All right. So determine your routines, prioritize your pit stops, build your blocks into your day. Pomodoro timers. Uh, there's a principle by the FlyLady. She says you can do anything for 15 minutes and it's true. Okay, two more things. Identify your top 3. If you do nothing else today, what are the things that if you can get these 3 things done, you will be a happy woman? Because every day, listen, I can tell you there's one thing you need, and it's some satisfaction. It's satisfaction that you finish something that you started, that you check something off of your list, and that you accomplish something important. So determine with all the things that you could do What are the most important things you will do no matter what? These 3 things you will get done. Yesterday, one of the things that I was like, I have to get done is, um, um, sending money everywhere. So we have money that comes into one account, but then the savings goes here, uh, the general savings goes here, and The house savings, uh, big car savings, big purchases goes here, and then the retirement goes here. And, um, we do that automatic every month, but every now and then there'll be extra income, and then we go in and we divvy it up. I was like, because I don't want it to stay in the main account and get spent. Okay, so, uh, I had to do that. I was like, if I don't do anything else today, that's one of the things I had to do. I had to fill out some paperwork It's really important, time sensitive. If I don't do anything else today, that will, that'll be okay. And plan my meals because I didn't get a chance to do it this weekend. And every day the kids so far were like, what's for dinner? What's for lunch? And I've been crapping out. Monday was pizza, Tuesday was Olive Garden. It was like, okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. So I said, if I don't do anything else, I got to plan my day. Those 3 things got done yesterday. There's a ton of things that got, that didn't get done. But here's the thing, you need to know that you've done yourself a service a great service. If something comes into your head to do, and done for this day doesn't mean it got done. Done for this day means it got written down to think about tonight or tomorrow morning when you will do it. Everything that enters your head, you don't have to do today. You have to relieve yourself. Just because you thought about it doesn't mean you have to do it. So before the day gets started, the night before, the morning of, what are the main thing— what are your top 3? And if I don't do anything else, this is enough. Okay? And then, um, you check those things off. Everything else gets a footnote. Now, of course, emergencies happen. If your son breaks his arm, you're not gonna swing it on the playset outside. You're not gonna say, well, you're not free today. Obviously, you know, things come up. But what I'm telling you is master your day by being mindful about what's most important. Okay? Joy from Jesus, you said, I think my problem is I don't have anything to do. Well, here's the thing. What will make you feel— that's my next point. If you don't have anything to do, then listen to my next point, okay? You have to define what success is. Give yourself permission for good enough. The dishes are not in my top 3, and if I get my top 3 down and I've loved my husband well, love my kids well, if I have done some things today, I make peace peace with the fact that the dishes don't get done tonight because I'm tired. Last night I didn't get home from taping until 9 PM, and I looked at my kids, I said, I love y'all, good night. I made peace with that, and my value as a homemaker doesn't— isn't determined by whether or not I do the dishes. And I try to, and my kids, you know, we're about to create a rule that if, if the dishes aren't done, you're not done. Okay, my last point, because Instagram is gonna cut off. Reflect on how you want to move, improve day by day. Every evening, reflect. Every evening, reflect. In 2005, Steve Jobs revealed the motivational tactic you use to start each day and every day for the past 33 years. He said, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, if today were the last day of my life, what I want to do, what I'm about to do today. And whatever the answer has been For if it was too many days in a row, if the answer was no, he said, I gotta change something. He said, I gotta change something. So every night before you go to bed, I would encourage you to do it at night. Think about your day, look at what you did, think about what you look on your phone, the random pictures you took, and ask yourself, if today were my last day, would I be happy about how I spent my time? And if the answer is no, say, what would I have changed? And then the next day, be mindful about changing that. Okay, I see your questions, but I'm gonna keep going on YouTube and Facebook because Instagram is gonna shut me off in 51 seconds. If you need to know how to find me on YouTube or Facebook, you can do so by going to— what is it— youtube.com/ChrystalHurst and facebook.com/ChrystalHurst. And I just realized looking at the clock that I need to make sure my kids are up. So I'm gonna go on a brief pause. Everybody get up, go make sure they're up. I think they're up, but I want to make sure. And then I will come back