Struggling to Restart? How to Regain Motivation and Get Back on Track After Losing Momentum

Sometimes it's just hard to restart. Sometimes it's just hard to get going again. Sometimes you take a break and the break goes a little longer than what you anticipated. That sounds like me. I was just going to take a short break, a few weeks, maybe a month, but here we are and my break has lasted longer than expected. Not because I've not wanted to start again, but y'all, starting again sometimes is hard. It's hard when you've come to a pause or a halt to get the engines flowing again. I have over 500 podcasts. I've been podcasting audio first, then video for over 10 years. I have a whole content creation system. A video goes out, the podcast show notes get written, the audio gets cut from that, the COVID graphics get made, the B-roll is added, the music on the front. But it seems like y'all to just be able to get that going again, but something about this has felt hard. Maybe you're not creating content, but maybe there's something else for you that has felt hard. Maybe it's exercise, or maybe it's getting your prayer life together. Maybe it's your financial discipline. Maybe it's a writing project. Maybe it's some routine, um, and you press pause. Maybe you took a break. Maybe it was cold outside. Maybe you went on vacation, or you had a project at work. Maybe something shifted in your life and you gave yourself permission to take a break. But getting back to your rhythm, restarting your rhythm has just seemed hard. Something about restarting has just seemed heavy. So here's the good thing. Momentum is a great helper when you're in motion, but creating momentum, sometimes we have to restart our engines in order to do that. And I want to talk about that today. I want to talk about rest and why it's good and restarting and why it's hard and what you can do about that, what you should do to rebuild momentum for your life in a way that lasts. If you're new here, my name is Chrystal Evans Hurst, and normally I've got music playing and I've got a little opener, and normally, um, I would have B-roll and some lower thirds and Yeah, I'm not doing that because sometimes in order to restart, you just have to restart. So this is me restarting because if I don't just restart, my stop may continue, and I've decided it's time for the stop to stop. Let me first of all say, as a person who is a firstborn in every sense of the word—achiever, vision-oriented, go-getter, responsible, high-capacity person. I understand that rest is good. I don't always act like I believe that rest is good. So let me first of all say this: rest is good, and sometimes it's necessary. Stopping can be good. Everything about the way we work in the world says that stopping is good. Winter happens because stopping is good. Things go dormant because stopping is good. We sleep 8 to 10 hours, even if you're going short on sleep. Okay, 6 to 9 hours a night, because stopping completely is good. Everything about the way we're made, the rhythms of the world, all of it says take a break. But here we are in March, the weather's changed, and no matter how you feel about daylight savings time, um, it's here. And the day is a little bit longer because of light. It's the start of spring soon. If you haven't already, you'll see little buds on the trees and things turning green again. And isn't that the picture of what happens in our lives? That there are seasons where things slow down, and then there are seasons where things look dormant, and then there are seasons where things simply come back to life. Rest is good, but at some point rest ends. Even if you learn how to work from a place of rest, which I think is another topic for another day, but it's totally possible to work from a place of rest There are seasons where you just rest. There, there is no work, there is no doing. It's just one great pause. And then seasons change. And for many of us, when the seasons change, getting going again into a rhythm of productivity seems a little challenging. And I want to help you with that today as I help myself by pressing record. Jesus himself in Mark 6:31 told the guys who was following him around, "Come away with me and rest." For me, taking a break wasn't so much about needing rest, it was about recalibrating, just taking a moment, taking some time to think about things differently and to maybe get ahead and maybe make some changes. Sometimes we take breaks not because we feel tired or because we feel exhausted, but because a break is good space. Good space to heal, good space to think, good space to pray, good space to develop creativity, good space to just hear your soul beat, the heartbeat, good space to just live without a little pressure. And that's a good thing. Rest is good. Recalibration is good. Taking time away is good. But when you do that, man, it's like coming back to work on a Monday, or it's like trying to get back into the groove of things after you've taken vacation, or it's like the start of a school year after you've had the summer off, or coming back after a Christmas break or a long weekend of time off because of a holiday. It's like, oh my goodness, am I supposed to actually do something? Think, use my brain. Am I supposed to be creative? Resting sometimes puts us into a place of dormancy. And then when we realize that we are off our game, off our rhythm, and just are lacking the motivation to begin again, we might start looking at rest and say, well, maybe I did that wrong, or maybe I didn't plan that right because it's so hard to get things going again. I don't want you to find— to define rest being bad or good by how easy it is to get Restart it again. Rest is good. Let's establish that first. So why is restarting so hard? Why was me hitting record so hard? Why is me sitting down to do what I've been doing for the last, gosh, 5 years on video, 10 years on audio, so challenging? There's this thing called the law of inertia. Physics tells us that objects that are at rest tend to stay at rest unless they're acted upon by some outside force. Right now, right now, that could be some great B-roll, but I'm going to keep talking. The longer we sit still, the harder it feels to move. That's true about your whole life— your spiritual life, your mental life, your emotional life. When you get still, getting going again, it's just the way things are. The hardest part of any journey is always the first step. The hardest mile when you're running a marathon is always the first mile. The hardest 15 minutes often in your day are the first 15 minutes. The hardest part of writing a book are those first 500 words on a piece of paper. Getting started is always, always more effort than keeping the thing going once you have kept it going. So you are a part today of me restarting. Now, I'm not making any guarantees. I'm not making any guarantees. I almost didn't record this podcast today because I wanted to do some things, y'all. I have been watching YouTube videos on editing because there's some things I want to learn how to do. I have been playing and trying to find different music because I wanted to start with some different music. I have been trying to redo some graphics and frankly, just not getting around to exactly what I want them to be. I have been playing because right now you're looking at look 1, but I mean, hello, look 2, hello, look 3. See that black and white I put on there? I've been playing around, so it's not like I haven't wanted to do things. It's just somehow getting to a point where I felt good about pressing record. Isn't that how it always is? We think about it, we talk about it, we plan for it, we're trying to get ready for it, we're talking about what we're going to do, we're thinking about it, we're, we're planning for it. See, right there, if I was gonna be okay with that, I would have chopped that because I kind of repeated myself, but I'm just gonna keep going. Just record it, Chrystal Hurst. Sometimes we feel guilty because we start telling ourselves things like I should have never stopped in the first place. We start heaping coals of shame, embarrassment, or guilt if we've stopped something and we should have never stopped. We feel guilty if we started losing weight and then we stopped doing what we were doing to lose weight, and so the pounds come back. Or we feel bad because we started going to school but we didn't finish going to school, and so it just feels even bad to talk about it or think about it. We feel bad if we started going to counseling with our spouse and then something happened and it got us off of our rhythm, and so we didn't go back, and we kind of feel bad about it, and bringing it back up just feels like some weird energy. So we don't— guilt can keep you from restarting. Let me tell you something else that can keep you from restarting: perfectionism. Perfectionism can keep you from restarting because you want to do something different, you want to do something right, you want to do something the way you used to do it, and It's not the way we used to do it. Perfectionism says, because I wanna make a change, because I wanna do something different and I haven't figured that out yet, I'm just gonna wait until I can get it right. So here I am, my skin is crawling. There are no lower thirds. There are no fancy, you know, animated things. There is no B-roll. But perfectionism will keep you from moving the needle in your life. You got to release guilt, you got to release perfectionism, and sometimes you just have to get over it. Get over the overwhelm when you find yourself saying, but I don't even know where to begin, I don't even know where to start, it looks like everybody else has information I don't have, and I want to restart but it just feels overwhelming. Sure it does. I know it feels overwhelming. I know it feels overwhelming, but you get rid of that stop despite the overwhelm, because starting is more important. It's overwhelming to do spring cleaning in your house, but when it's springtime, it's time. It's overwhelming to start thinking about the bill for cutting the grass again because the grass is growing, but The grass is gonna grow, it's time, and so you pay the bill. You are overwhelmed maybe at what it takes to shift the heating and cooling system in your house because dang it, you had it set for the wintertime. And by golly, if you live in Texas, you never know what it's supposed to be set at anyway. But now we know it is getting warmer, and so I've gotta change the settings. There's something to do, but overwhelm can't get in the way of you moving forward because The world is moving forward. Time is moving forward. Your life is moving forward. And so you've got to recognize the guilt and move anyway. Recognize the perfection and move anyway. Recognize the overwhelm and move anyway. New things are happening whether you decide to move with them or not. Lamentations 3:3 tells me that every day, the mercies for every day are new. Isaiah 43, the Bible says, behold, I'm doing a new thing. There's new grass outside, there's new flowers coming up, there's new temperatures that I'm really excited about. There's an invitation to restart. That's what's— that's what happens in the spring. So while rest is good, Restarting may be challenging, but when it's time to restart and you feel it in your bones, just go. Like a friend once told me, you know enough to go. So when you go, when you restart, how do you build momentum? Because momentum is what will keep you going when you don't have to spend that restart energy. Like, I've pressed record. My hope is that this builds momentum. I got like lots of stuff I want to show y'all. I done been to New York. I done been to Costa Rica. I got vlogs I want to do. I've been teaching my son video editing. I've got somebody in the office that's trying to help me to get, but I have been feeling guilty about not going and trying to find the perfect time and the perfect new things to add to video and been a little overwhelmed that I haven't been able to give the direction that I wanted to. But if I'm restarting, which I am right now, thank you for being a witness, then my hope and my prayer and my belief is that momentum will follow. So let me give you some things that can help you get going. Whatever you stopped, whatever you need to restart, let me give you some specific things that you can do to get started and some things that if you do them and you continue to do them, momentum will build. Because momentum that keeps you in rhythms, that keeps you in habits, is how the movement through life gets easier. Number 1, start small. That's why I don't have lower thirds, and that's why there's no music, because all of these things are barriers to entry. I don't even know what thumbnail I'm gonna put on this video yet. I just pressed record. I'm gonna make one up. Praise the Lord for Canva. You just gotta start. Start small. Remove the barriers. Don't try to rebuild the whole thing overnight. You don't have to form all the habits today. You just take one small step. So instead of committing to an hour of prayer, pray while you're making your morning coffee for 5 minutes. Instead of trying to do the whole workout routine, just take a 10-minute walk. Start small. Instead of trying to make a super intricate video and take a few weeks to just become a, an amazing video editor in Adobe Premiere or Final Cut, because I pay for Adobe Premiere, but I was thinking about paying for Final Cut. Oh my gosh, somebody tell me, don't pay for Final Cut, Chrystal. Don't pay for Final Cut, Chrystal. Or at least don't pay for Final Cut in a way that makes you not record a video. Just record a video. Create an activation trigger. So when you have a new habit and you start small, you think of something you're going to do and then you attach the thing you're trying to restart to it. So I kind of just mentioned one: pray. You don't have to pray for an hour, pray for 5 minutes. You know you're going to make your coffee, do it then. Okay, you want to journal, you know you're going to brush your teeth. I mean, we, we hope you brush your teeth, but journal after brushing your teeth. You want to exercise, well, you know you're going to talk to your girlfriend on the phone for an hour after you get off of work, so make it easy. Don't even, don't even go home after work, bring your clothes in your car if you are doing that, or lay them out. So if you work from home, after work you get on the phone and you go talk to your girlfriend. Make it easy. Make the thing you want to do connected to something you're already going to do. I already had to sit down in here today because I had to record something for something else. You see the makeup? Enjoy it while it lasts because I can't wait to go and wash it off. Praise the Lord, saints. But when I sat down And I also had bought a little piece of equipment. I bought a new tripod. I wanted to set it up and play with it. So since I was going to do that anyway, Chrystal Hurst, just press record. Restart with something you're already going to do. Okay, start small. Connect to an activation. No perfection. Resist perfection, says the consummate recovery perfectionist, because consistency beats intensity every day. So if you restart and you miss a day, don't quit, just keep going. Just pick up where you left off. Don't create so much space that you're starting over. Accountability and community— you don't have to restart alone. I already want to thank you because you're watching this video, which means that you are here with me on YouTube, or you're listening to this audio, which means you are listening on Apple or Spotify or Pandora or wherever you listen. And I consider you doing this with me. So yes, like, subscribe, give me feedback, give me a review, send me an email, shoot me a DM, let me know that you're with me. Ask a friend to check in on you. Some of y'all have already been doing that. Chrystal Is the podcast coming back? Where have you been? You share your goal with your group. You tell them, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna lose the weight, I'm gonna go on the vacation, I'm gonna, uh, I, I'm going to get my budget together, I'm going to start writing my book, I'm going to— community and accountability, it matters. When you say it out loud and somebody's listening, it matters. And then you trust. You trust that God honors small beginnings. Zechariah 4:10 says, do not despise small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work— here it is— begin. Did you know that God rejoices over your beginning? Beginnings. Not even over your finishing. He does rejoice over your finishing. You can rejoice over your finishing. The finish line is a big deal, but When you think about what you celebrate in other people's life, you celebrate beginnings. Yay, you got married! Yay, this is the start of your 20th or 21st year! Yay, you started a new job! Yay, beginnings, beginnings! We could celebrate endings, but you could celebrate beginnings too. So I'm recording the podcast. I'm starting small. I'm starting easy. I leaned into an existing activation trigger. I'm celebrating progress, not perfection. Cause my skin is crawling because of all the things that I wanted to do before I relaunched. I'm celebrating accountability, accountability. See right there, I'd edit that out. It's killing me. I really want to edit it out. But I'm not. Accountability and community. Small beginnings. Sometimes you just press record. Sometimes you just press go. Sometimes you just say it's time. And I feel like I'm not the only one who's facing the beginning of spring, literally or theoretically, philosophically. Where there has been something that's been dormant in your life. I got a few things that have been dormant in my life that it's time to restart. Some of us have been asleep since 2020. Ouch, that hurt. That hurt me, and I think it might hurt you too. In whatever way, shape, or form you've been asleep, you've been dormant, let this Naked Podcast be a sign to you and to me that rest is good, winter is good, so is spring, and so is renewal. It's time to restart, okay? I know that this is going to hit some of you in a very real way. I know that some of you already know. You're gonna hit me in the comments and you're gonna say, oh my gosh, this is what I needed. So here's my question. What is the one thing you need to restart? Not 5, not a complete overhaul. Just what's the one thing that you can take one step toward so that you can start building momentum? I would love for you to drop it in the comments, send me a DM, put it in email. Y'all know how to find me. Most of you do anyway. I wanna know how we're gonna step into spring and restarting together because forward is forward, no matter how small the step is. And I just wanna give you this encouragement. Your break, whatever rest you took, whatever recalibration you needed, however long you needed to catch your breath, it has not been wasted. Your pause is never pointless. This moment though, this moment right now, this is your invitation to begin again. So are you ready to restart? I am. I'm not making promises. I'm not promising you that there'll be a video or an audio next week, but somehow already, as is often the case, once we restart, something on the inside of us starts up too. It's almost like an engine in a car on a cold day. You need to start it, and it sounds a little wonky when you get it going because it's been idle, and maybe the oil needs to run hot for a second. But if you just start the engine and let it run— how long has this video been running? 23 minutes or so, maybe not even that long. Maybe if you just are willing to start the engine, maybe then, maybe then things will warm up. You never know. So here's to restarting. I'd love for you to tell me what you feel called, motivated, guilted into restarting. What have I encouraged you to do or to do again. Now I'm recording this video. I'm not making edits to it. I literally, I literally am just about to upload it and put it into the world. That's it. That's it. Jesus, help me. Jesus, help me. Oh, there are 3 things that I do want to tell you about. Because if I was being really fancy, I'd put an ad in the podcast, but I'm not. My own ads. Number 1, if you are watching this on YouTube, I want you to like this video, share this video, subscribe to the channel, please. That helps. I appreciate it. If you are listening on the podcast, please Add a review, tell somebody that you enjoyed this episode or the podcast in general. I've been out here, y'all, audioing for over 10 years. Number 2, I have been quiet publicly. I have not been quiet inside of my membership. We've talked about money, we've talked about toxic relationships, we have talked about our spiritual growth, we've talked about a lot of things. Because no matter what, I'm going to show up for the Inner Circle girls. So if you want to make sure that you're hearing from me, whether a public podcast is out or not, check out the Inner Circle. Go to thesistercircle.com/innercircle. Number 3, because see, if I was fancy right now, I'd have lower thirds. I'm not that fancy. Number 3, I'll put it in the notes below this video and in the show notes so you can find it. Number 3, I'd love to see you in person to encourage you, and I'm hosting an event, the Sister Circle Live. It's in October, October 16th and 17th in Dallas, and you can go to thesistercircle.com/live. I hope I just said the right dates. Lord Jesus, this is where I would pause the video. Yeah, I lied, it's the 17th and the 18th. See, See, praise the Lord, saints. Praise the Lord. Thank you for your love and support. Make sure you tell me you enjoyed this video. Check out the Inner Circle because I'd love to see you on the inside for all the things, fun and the foolery. And number 3, I'd love to see you join me in person in Dallas in October 17th and 18th. Okay, okay. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for being patient with me. And thank you for letting me restart. I'll see you next time. Hopefully sooner than later. Eee!