Chrystal Evans Hurst argues that micro-breaks like naps and weekends aren't enough when life's pressure builds. She outlines strategies for emotional, mental, and physical rest: therapy and journaling, brain dumps and reading, sleep and movement. Bill Gates takes "think weeks" and you need breaks too, guilt-free and scheduled.
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Hey there, y'all. Before I get into what we need to talk about today, I wanted you to know that the Inner Circle, the doors are opening April 1st. What is the Inner Circle, you might ask? It's where people who want more community, more accountability, and more from Chrystal Hurst and friends, where you come to be encouraged, inspired, taught, mentored, uh, and to experience real community and real connection. It's really great what we have going on in the Inner Circle. The thing is, the doors only open a few times a year. So if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, if you really want to live your life well and just need some assistance to doing that, need some support and encouragement, well, the Inner Circle would probably be great for you. Check it out. ChrystalEvansHurst.com/InnerCircle. The doors open April 1st, they close on the 4th, and they'll be closed for a while to come. I'd love for you to check it out and I'd love to see you there. Right now, let's get into what I want to talk about today. Do you ever feel like you just need to take a break from your life? I totally get that. Let's talk about it today. Hi, my name is Chrystal Evans Hurst, and I'm here every week sharing content that I hope encourages you to live your life well. Today I want to talk about taking a break. And if you are not subscribed to my YouTube channel or following me on Facebook, do that right now. So that way, whenever I put a video up or whenever I share content that you can use, you will find out and be notified. Listen, I don't know about you, but I, Um, sometimes just need more than a nap. I need more than a Saturday morning, and I need more than an afternoon at a coffee shop. I need a hardcore, straight up, get away from everything break. Obviously I'm taking one, and because it is so blessing me, I wanted to make sure that I shared with you what I've been thinking about and what I'm learning as it relates to taking hard hardline breaks in your life. Yes, your emotions need rest. Yes, your mind needs a break. Yes, your body needs to sit still. And yes, your soul needs room to run free. And while Sabbath days or weekends or a nap here and there, or sitting in the car by yourself when your kids are in the house, if you know, you know, while all of these things can be helpful, elongated, often irregular, often not frequent breaks, but elongated so that you have actual time to get out of your environment and get into a different mindset, a different soul space, a different heart space that changes things in a way for you that little bitty breaks cannot. I also want to just say before I jump into this that I realize we're all in different seasons of life. And honestly, my breaks when my children were small looked like me locking myself in the bathroom. Whenever I just knew I needed a little bit more than 30 minutes while they watch Barney. 'Cause you are special, special. Oh, special. I was so sick of Barney. Can I just say that out loud? Listen, when I needed more than what my normal everyday would give me, I needed a break. So when I give you these principles and when I talk to you about this today, I want you to know that I expect you to look at your life where you are and make it work. You may not be able to get away to a hotel room. That's fine. Maybe it looks like you saying to a single girlfriend, hey, you know that second bedroom that you have for guests? Well, uh, I'm— I need to come over there. I just need to be in a different environment. I need to get out of this house. I need to get away from whatever, my mother, my husband, whatever. I just need a break. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to spend a boatload of money. It could mean a lot of different things. Get creative, but make room in your life to take breaks outside of your normal routine. Because your mind, your body, your soul, your spirit, it will thank you. Many of us don't have the practice of taking breaks until our mind or our body or our soul actually forces us to. It's like a teapot, right? The water in a teapot, when you turn it on, it gets hot, it boils, and the steam that comes from the boiling hot tea, it actually gets, uh, puts so much pressure in the teapot that when the steam leaves the teapot, it makes a noise. And for many of us, That's when we take a break, when something is making noise, when something is getting our attention and refuses to let us shake it. That may look like you can't think, your mind is cloudy, you can't make decisions, you're overwhelmed. Uh, maybe it physically manifests like a headache because you literally are physically overwhelmed. Sometimes it looks like your emotions pop off because you are barking at somebody or you cry and you don't know why. It could look like literally getting louder, like someone in your house is getting on your last nerve. Someone on your job is about to make you blow. And what you say out of your mouth reveals that something on the inside is just too full. It's just too much. The stress on your emotions or that wreak havoc on your body, that is your body, your mind, your soul telling you, girl, there's too much going on and you need a break. And the normal everyday breaks aren't cutting it. I wanna tell you that taking a break, elongated irregular departures from your everyday is one of the ways that you refuse It's one of the ways that you stay healthy. It's one of the ways that you stay fresh and that you stay sharp. And so don't feel the need to apologize when you know that steam is building up and you need to take the teapot off the stove. Now I know nowadays I even have one of those that the teapot actually sits on a separate burner and it automatically flips off when the, when the tea starts to whistle. Um, that's what happens in your life. Sometimes when the steam builds up and things start exploding, You just flip off, you just shut down, you just stop pouring yourself into your work, you stop going the extra mile in relationships because you've just had enough. Well, the goal is to think about teapots the way some of them still are and the way most of them used to be. It's that when it starts whistling, when the steam of your life, the pressure is building and you know that it's coming, you literally take it off the stove. You don't wait until it shuts off. You decide it's hot enough and I'm going to move it. So what in your life, what area of your life do you feel like you've just had enough? You just can't take any more. And before you, uh, pop off at somebody, before you are overflooded with tears or stress, before your body is quitting on you because it can't take anymore, before you just can't think, you can't solve the problem, you can't keep up with the things in your life— before you get to that point, what can you do to take a break? What can you do to take the pot off the stove so you're not overflowing where the steam has built up and it's just too loud? What does that look like? Well, let's talk first of all about your emotional health. Letting out steam in your life, taking a break to let out emotional, um, steam, to let out emotional pressure in your life, taking a break to do that is healthy. Now this can look like your regular visit to your therapist. This can look like Plan time with friends just to talk about what's been going on in your life, to be honest, vulnerable, authentic, full of integrity, to say, this is how I actually feel. This can look like writing in your journal. This can look like reading books that help you to identify the emotions that you're feeling when you really don't know. This can look like you just know you need a good cry and you prime the pump. You turn on the music at home, the one that puts you in that certain mood. You watch a movie that makes you laugh or makes you cry. You actually intentionally schedule time for emotionally releasing the steam. Taking a break allows you to do that. Now, that can look like, uh, sometimes on my calendar I will look at an empty weekend and then say Chrystal's weekend because I don't want to plan anything else on that weekend because I need the space to just have a little extra space for emotional release. For emotional release, the shower is a great place for a lot of things. One of the things that a shower is good for our tears. Listen, the water's already running. Why not let it come on? Sometimes I literally, because I just know, I can feel it, I can feel it bottled up. I literally will think about something that makes me sad so I can release, so I can release, so I can get these things off of my chest. Often the emotions that we have, and I always believe that emotions should guide you, but they shouldn't govern you. The emotions that we have, I realize that you may not even be able to identify what the emotion is. Creating the space where you can take a break to think about your emotions is healthy. And by giving yourself the space, you also give yourself the opportunity to say, "What is going on with me?" If you don't know what's going on with you, there's nothing wrong with that. But give yourself the space to figure it out, to investigate, to treat your soul, the emotional part of you, your heart, as if it's worth caring for, because it is. Create the space to regularly exhale to regularly press pause. Your body, your brain, and your heart will thank you. And if you have to schedule it, scheduling time to cry or laugh, scheduling time with your therapist, scheduling time with your friends so that you can actually be the authentic you and emotionally full self, then that's okay. Your mind is another thing that you need to make space to take a break for. Listen, I cannot tell you how many times I have just thought, what is going on with my mind? I can't think of the word. I can't solve the problem. I can't seem to figure this out. I know this can't be that hard. And I'll say things like, my mind is congested. My mind is cloudy. I just can't think. Oh my goodness, what is happening to my brain? I must be having pregnancy brain, or I must be getting old, or maybe it's COVID brain. And we think about all these things that we say about how our mental health, our mind status is operating. Sometimes your mind just needs a break. Think about all the work your mind does. Think about all of the things that your brain keeps going every day. If you run your car every day, you know that every 3 months or so, maybe it's different for your car, you've got to take it in though every now and then and get the oil changed. Why? Because just by the virtue of your car running, just by running, taking you to work, going to the grocery store, running your kids around, going to church, taking little short road trips, just basic running, the oil in the car gets dirty and it has to be changed. If you keep running that car on dirty oil, guess what it's going to do? It's going to mess up your engine. That dirty oil is going to clog up your engine. It's not designed to run forever. You have to take a break, pause, take your car in and let old oil out and put new oil in. What does that look like with your mind? It looks like mind dumps, brain dumps, all the things that are on your list to do, getting it out of your head so your brain is not trying to hold on to everything. It looks like new ideas. It looks like reading. It looks like, um, space to just wonder without having to work. It looks like taking a break. Do you see the theme here? Your heart needs a break. Your emotions need a break, and so does your mind. You need to have some time where you are reading for pleasure or you do have mindless activity. Uh, one of the best ways that I like to give my mind a break— we're back to the shower— the shower works wonders for me, y'all. All of a sudden, I can solve all of the world's problems in the shower. I am amazed by how many ideas my brain will come up with or how many solutions my brain will come up with when I give it the space to do Nothing else. So what is taking a break actually look like? Think about it like a long shower. Leadership coach Ellen Faye says, while exercise or stretching or space in your regular everyday life is a great solution to managing your mental health every day, there's nothing like— and this is leadership coach, right? This is not just Chrystal Hurst. This is a documented CNBC interview. She says there's nothing like taking a longer period of time to create space for important decision-making and creative thoughts. She says, I think about it like one long shower, because you know what happens when we have long showers? We have really great thought processes. We have flashes of brilliance. And when you separate from the work of the everyday in your mind, you can figure things out. So Chrystal Hurst is saying, think in the shower. Leadership coaches are saying, think in the shower. Where can you take a long shower? In your life. Now, again, seasons of life will make this different. So maybe instead of taking, uh, planning a week-long vacation or a 2-week-long vacation, maybe it's just a long weekend intentionally where you don't stuff it full of other things. So you can just give your brain a break to inhale. So it's not exhaling all the time, just to ingest something new. This can look like, again, mindless activity, reading a book. It can look like learning. It can look like Exercising your brain, taking up a, a hobby like practicing the piano or learning the guitar where your mind is working, but it is not working on work. It's working on rest and you're giving it a break from the normal activities every day. Think about working out in the gym, right? You know, if you have ever done strength training that you don't want to work the same body parts back to back. If you do strength training on your arms and maybe your back or your shoulders on one day, then on the next day you're going to work your legs and your and your calves, you're going to work your torso. Why? Because when you do the work in one part of your body, the next day, what does it need? It needs a break. So do you see the theme here? I want you to think of what does it look like for me to give my mind a break? Sometimes we go from work where our mind has been doing work to coming home where our mind has to do work. We go from doing the accounting job at work to balancing our budget at home. We go from figuring out how to solve the engineering problems of the world to figuring out how to solve, how to fix things at home. Our minds are always at work. Work is a good thing. However, just like everything else in your life, your mind, your brain needs a break. And inhaling fresh ideas and cleaning things out is a good way to do that. Your brain is capable of so much when you give it a little white space. You can add clarity to the way you think. Your thinking processes can run even more smoothly. And you might be surprised what fresh information, fresh innovation, fresh excitement when you declutter your brain, what your brain will do for you. But take a break, give your brain some space. So we've talked about your emotional rest, we've talked about mind rest. Now let's talk about rest, rest. Okay, your emotional rest, your mind rest, and even physical rest. We know of one way that we can give our body, brains, and heart all of that, a break in that sleep. Right? Um, we know that 7 to 8 hours of sleep typically is what people need. And we know that that allows your brain to get a break. It also allows everything in your body to slow down. Have you ever woken up from a nap and you just feel like, okay, whatever it was that I couldn't do before the nap, I can do that now. Have you ever said, let me sleep on it. And in the morning you had clarity of the decision that you needed to make. Sleep is really important, but I talked to Dr. Sandra Dalton on a past episode of the podcast. Episode 234, where we talked about healing through rest. And she taught me that there are 7 kinds of rest. There is physical rest, mental rest, emotional rest, spiritual rest, social rest, sensory rest, and creative rest. And so yes, you need sleep, but there's all kinds of rest. And the reason why there's all kinds of rest is because you are a multifaceted person. So yes, there's physical rest that we need. But what I want to dive into is because there's so many, what soul rest looks like. Sometimes the only way to fill up your soul is yes, by giving your brain a break. Yes, by dealing with your emotions. Yes, and getting physical rest. But you also have to do things that allow your soul to rest and to get full, to be rejuvenated. And that looks like doing things that you enjoy doing, things that bring you joy, things that bring you excitement. And how do you do that? You take a break because you have to put in your life, uh, the bike ride down to the river. You have to put in your life the walk with your friends. You have to put in your life the visit to the comedy show. You have to put in your life going to a place that has beautiful trees and beautiful weather. You have to put in your life the time to go see your family, and those things do your soul good. Who are you and where are you creating the break in your life to honor the gift of you in this world? Listen, I want you to understand that every time you take a break, every time you decide to honor your emotional wellbeing or your mental wellbeing, your physical wellbeing, or just the soul of you, who are you being in this world? You are honoring your life by taking a break. When I think about women who back in the day, I think about even women who were enslaved, right? Who you hear the stories about how in the middle of the field that she'd be out there, right? Doing her work, doing whatever that was, picking cotton, doing whatever it was, right? She would squat in the middle of the field to give birth. Why? Because you can't keep doing the same thing you've been doing when it's time to birth something. You just can't. And the gift of you in this world means whatever you were doing that feels like rotten cotton picking and you don't want to be doing it, listen, you make the space in the middle of the things that you have to do that you don't want to do, that you have the habit of doing that seem like it's all that you can do, you create the space to take a break. Why? Because there are some things in your life that need to come out of your brain, that need to come out of your heart, that you need to do with your body, that you need to do with your soul. And you can't give birth to those things without stopping. I'm amazed at how hard it is for me to stop. Y'all, I'm an achiever. I love work. I love family. I love being. I love doing. I like checking boxes. It actually is difficult for me to pause. But I am never disappointed when I pause. And that could be an hour in the car at home if that's all I have. That has been a trip to the bathroom. My children were young. That has been leaving my children and not wanting to leave my children when I would go out of town with my husband on a work trip. This time it looks like me being out of town by myself because— and I'm never surprised that would I take a break that something is born out of that. It could be a new idea. It could be a rejuvenated spirit or attitude or excitement to be home with my family, to do the work that God has given me to do, to create something new or to get a new vision for what God is seeing in me for a season of my life. It never ceases to amaze me how the break allows me to clarify my emotions, to help me think clearly, or to just make me feel better every day because I'm not exhausted. But I took an elongated break to do that. I want you to know that it is important for you, yes to Sabbath, yes to have an evening routine, yes to enjoy your weekends, but to take breaks, to enjoy your life, and to let your body, soul, and mind rest. When I talk about rest, I'm talking about making room for activities and anything else in your life that is going to shift things. That is gonna fill you up where you are already feeling drained, that is going to clean you out where things are cloudy, where you are going to be able to look objectively at who you are and what you need to bring in this world when it may not be easy to do that when things are just ongoingly moving forward. You need to leave room for wholeness. That's your emotion. Leave room for inspiration. That's your mental. Leave room for health. That's your body. And leave room for more of you in this world and discovering what that is. That's your soul. I know that you need to birth ingenuity. You need to birth new ideas. You need to birth new energy. You need to birth renewed commitment. You need to birth joy. You need to birth excitement. And some things will only be born, girl, when you take a break from all the things that you feel like you have to or need to do. So plan them. Plan multiple of them throughout the year as you can. Put them on the calendar. Alert your family, friends, or your boss. This is not about a vacation with friends because sometimes, listen, A vacation with friends is work. And if you're convinced that you still can't find an elongated period of time, find the longest period of time that you can and still decide to do it. Decide to take a break for the gift of you in this world. Bill Gates, you know who he is. He's the Microsoft mogul. Did you know that he used to plan multiple times a year to have a think week? Yes, he called it a think week where the purpose of him getting away was to think. He would lock himself in a log cabin in the middle of the Pacific Northwest woods. He would take a million books. He'd spend a lot of time reading, but he spent it in total silence, taking a break from the decision-making of a CEO, taking a break from the management of a company, taking a break from family, from friends, taking a break from obligations. Because in order for me to keep building, to keep creating, to keep having ingenuity, to keep leading, to keep being a good person, I've got to have an opportunity to think. Michael Hyatt, someone that I admire very much, he used to be the CEO of Thomas Nelson, he talked about quarterly reviews of your life. And if you can, to get away for a few hours or for a whole weekend to think about how did I spend my last quarter and how do I want to spend the next quarter. And lest you think this is just for men who Chrystal Hurst happens to follow or be interested in their thinking processes, my grandmother, mother of 8, used to be given a weekend away by my grandfather because she just needed a break. Listen, forget about my grandmother. Let me tell you about my mother. One time on Instagram, I looked up and realized that she put a picture on Instagram that looked like she was laying on a pool chair, a pool lounge chair, and her feet in the background of her feet as she lounged on the chair was the ocean. Because my mother by herself went on a cruise and I called her, which she didn't answer, but I did text her. I was like, Mom, are you on a cruise? Yes. Yes, I am. Why? Because she understood the value of taking a break. Did she take breaks like that when she was in her 20s? No, she couldn't afford it. Did she take breaks like that when she was in her 30s? Not usually because she had small children. But when she had the ability to do that, did she? 100%. And she did it by herself. Do you see the theme where I'm going here? By myself. And also, when she was in those other seasons of life, she figured out how to take different kinds of breaks. But what she did, because she learned it from her mother and I learned it from mine, is that taking a break is a part of staying healthy. Don't feel guilty for doing it. If you are feeling heavy, congested, or mentally feeling full, if the noise is going off in your life, if the teapot is boiling over, take the tea off the eye of the stove and let things cool down. You decide that it's time to separate from the things that are causing the steam and the stress to rise in you. Girl, you are human, and sometimes you just need to take a break. And if you needed anybody to tell you that, well, Here you go. Take a break, sis. Listen, I hope this video has encouraged you to take care of your soul, your mind, your heart, and your body. You are the only one of you in this world that we have, and I need you to take care of you. That said, if this video has been helpful to you, be sure and share it, and then y'all, I'll see you next week.
