Taking Inventory of Your Life

Hi there. My name is Chrystal Evans Hurst. And if you are just discovering me via video or audio, I'm here every week sharing a podcast via audio or video, because I believe truly that I can help. It's my goal to share what I know, to share how I've learned it, how I do it. And every now and then to bring on guests onto my podcast who do the same thing. So, On audio, you can hear me once a week by myself, solo, and on audio another time during the week, you'll hear me with a guest. On video, it's just me, yours truly, but I'm glad you're here. If you stumbled here, don't forget to subscribe on the podcast, to follow me on Facebook, or to subscribe to the YouTube channel so that whenever I put out content, or sometimes y'all, I just flip a switch and go live. You you won't miss it. I also want you to make sure you are subscribed to my email list. You can do that simply by going to chrystallevanshurst.com. The reason is because there are some things I only share there, or I definitely share most things there first. I'm here today because it is really important to me to reiterate a concept that I talked about recently inside of my inner circle. Most times when I go live every Monday inside of the Inner Circle. Um, there's a portion of content that stays with them. Um, we edit it up, clean it up, and give you the beautiful version of Chrystal. Um, but there's a little janky part of Chrystal, uh, and they get to see all of that, all of the background. But every now and again, even in the fun and the foolery, I will drop something that because of their response, the girls that are in that online group, because of their response and reaction to it, I'm like, oh wait, I think that bears repeating. It'll just come to me. I'll just be talking about my life and about things that are happening in my life. And maybe it's because I'm the daughter of a preacher and because he has a knack for taking anything that you could see in life and making it an illustration. Sometimes I'm creating illustrations and I don't even know it. But on this particular day recently inside of the membership, I was just yapping. 'Cause that's what we do, just yapping up. And I ended up dropping something that I think actually you need to hear. So I'm sharing a portion of my inside conversation with you here today. I love doing things. I love doing a lot. I love doing too much. I actually am a fairly high capacity person, but everybody, has a limit. And what I've noticed is that high capacity people often don't know their limit. And when they realize they have a limit, it's because they run smack dab into a wall. And that's usually what happens to me. The reason why I know I run into a wall is because I just stop all activity. I fall off of the planet. People can't find me. I may or may not be answering my texts because I just need a minute to recover from the fall. I've actually done whole podcasts, whole teachings that talk about one significant fall I had biking across the bridge. But you know, I'm going to save that for another day. Just know when you're going down the hill on the other side of San Francisco, on the opposite side of the Golden Gate Bridge, and you're heading down into Sausalito, going downhill on a bicycle, well, You should take your time. I'll leave that there. If I can link to an episode or two where I talked about that, I will, I'll find it and leave it for you in the show notes. But what I want to talk about is building your life. We all want to build our lives. We want to build our life. We want to build our business. We want to build our family. We want to build our career. We want to build our knowledge. We want to build good health. We want to build things in our life. We want to see progress in our life. We want want things to move forward. But there's a part of building your life that we don't really talk about that much, but it is one of the most important things you will ever learn. I am currently learning this, yes, as I seek to build my life and build it well. I'm also learning it as I seek to do a good job building, um, my business. I love Jesus. I love all things faith. I'm very involved with my church. I teach and speak often. Those are Bible studies. Sometimes they're motivational messages. I do a lot of things in a lot of different places. What I do for work, uh, one of my jobs, I probably should say, but my biggest job is what I do in creating content, either under my brand, Chrystal Hurst, Chrystal Evans Hurst, or under the brand of the Sister Circle. Um, the Inner Circle is a subset of women who want more from me, more coaching, more mentoring, and they are willing to join me in other private spaces to do it. But the Sister Circle is me and friends who want to teach you how to live your life well. I'm a big proponent of tell me what to do, but don't just tell me what, show me how. And that is what we do in the Sister Circle. So Chrystal as a person who loves Jesus, who does ministry, who encourages and inspires, and Chrystal as a person who creates a platform for other women to do the same. That's the Sister Circle. So I have this as my work. I consider it to be my life's work to both help people build their lives and to support other people in helping people build their lives. And that building of the business has been a dream, a vision, and also a little bit of a runaway train. I am here on video, not because I ever wanted to be on video, but because in 2020, I wanted to be helpful. So I went online and I started doing daily videos and I accidentally went daily for a week and then 2 weeks and then a month and then 3 months. And then I throttled back to weekly, and then we took the weekly lives and put them inside of the Inner Circle. But that runaway train in 2020 created a YouTube channel that now I feed. It caused crazy growth in a membership that now I manage and steward. It was the building of a business because I was building my life and decided to share it. But the building of a business is a whole nother situation. As you grow, You have to get smarter about what you do and how you do it. You have to identify the value, the vision, the mission statements. You have to identify what your value proposition is and how you take people on a journey, what you offer, what transformation will take place. How do you guide people? Because the more and more I do what I do, I run into people who aren't just tuning in because they happen to know who I am. They are stumbling upon me on a YouTube channel or on an audio podcast or from a blog, or SEO brings them to my website. And they're like, who are you? And what are you about? And me getting clear about that, has been the work of this season. It's required me to get smarter, which has meant I've had to learn, and I'm still learning, how to build a business, how to lead a team, how to help other people grow, how to communicate clearly, how to be organized and have backend and structure that supports growth. And so I'm trying to get smarter about how I even deliver content. And while one week, one, every week I deliver one solo audio and one video podcast, I've been questioning, should I continue to do that? Should I I get smarter about how I do it. Everything's up for grabs because I'm growing and learning. There have been times in building my life and in building my business that I wanna burn it all down. Um, because there will be times when it just seems harder than it should be, or you don't know how to do it, or you've never been here before. But as one wise woman said to me, you could do that. You could, instead of opting to build, you could burn. But if you burn it on down, will you actually be able to to fulfill the calling that God has on your life? Or are you just supposed to pursue and burrow your way through this season of wilderness and learn what you need to learn and grow? It has required me to ask, what should I be doing? What do I need to do? How do I need to learn? How do I need to grow? It has caused me to get ruthlessly honest with myself about what I want and what I'm willing to do to get it or to steward it. One of the things that I have run into in my path, in my journey to growing and learning how to build a business as I build my life, is a book called E-Myth. It's a book written by an author, Michael Gerber, businessman. It's an older book. I ran into it somehow, somewhere, bought it. It was an easy read. And it details the life of a business being the life cycle of a person, that you have an infant stage and then an adolescent stage, and then you have a mature stage. And it details businesses like McDonald's or like Target being mature businesses. And infant businesses are the idea. It is when you just do something in your basement or you just do it on your own with your one laptop. And listen, when I went live in 2020, I did that until my laptop choked. My little 2015 could not keep up. My little 2015 MacBook could not keep up with me streaming every day and it would choke and I would, The thing would shut down and I would come back and everybody was so gracious because we were just making stuff up. And then I was like, you know what? This computer is choking. This computer is also 5 years old. Let me get another streaming computer. I'm using that right now to record this video and audio. In the same way people go through infant, elementary, adolescent, and they move on to maturity, so do businesses. Anything that's gonna grow is gonna move through these cycles, the beginning, the middle, and the end. And the reason why most businesses fail is because they never get beyond the adolescent stage. And his proposition in this book is that you will never get beyond the adolescent stage if you don't look at what mature businesses, mature people, mature leaders have learned to do and do that now. In the adolescent stage, isn't that one of the hardest things that you're trying to look at your teenagers who are 13 or 15 or 17 and and you're trying to get them to adulthood. And so in order to get them there, you start giving them responsibility and they look at you like, I'm not supposed to do that. I'm not grown. I'm not a person that should be actively doing this. That's your job. You are the parent. And you look at your children and you're like, yeah, but one day you will be called upon to do these things too. So start acting like you will be an adult. And we urge them onto maturity. Michael Gerber's point in E-Myth, The E-Myth Revisited is actually the title, is that if you don't start acting like a mature business while you're in the adolescent stage and learning to do what mature businesses do, your business will fail. And so most businesses, small businesses do because they never get past the adolescent stage. What do mature businesses do that adult businesses don't? Well, let me tell you, cuz that's where I am. In an infant business, I do everything myself. In an adolescent business, I'll get some help, but it's still all pretty much rides or dies with me. In a mature business, in a mature organization, in a mature ministry, in a maturing home, I start making sure that I don't have to be here for it to get done. The business should be able to run without me. Eventually, my children should be able to run a home without me. Eventually, a ministry that I steward should be able to run things without me. And am I still here? Sure. Can I still give guidance? Yes, but I don't solve every problem and I don't create every solution. I download, I create manuals and SOPs for my children. I write the list of things on the board. I show them how to do it, and then I disappear and expect them to follow instructions. In a ministry, I disciple, I mentor, and then I let them take it from here. If you want to be an adult in your home, in your ministry, in your business, adolescence, the adolescent stage simply won't do. Building a business is a lot like building your life. And if you don't move on to the next stage, then you'll never actually realize fully what that next stage has to offer you. You gotta be responsible to building a structure that will sustain something that you will not be a part of forever. If your business takes off and you don't have structure, it won't be sustainable. In order for you to develop to maturity in your life, you may— you're gonna need a different structure. Success needs structure. Sustained success needs structure. And as a founder and an owner of a business, it's one of the hardest things I hear I will ever do. Is to take off my founder's hat and to put on the business owner's hat and to say, what is needed for success here? It's one of the best things and the hardest things I will ever do to take off my mother hat, do what I tell you, and put on my coaching hat. You're an adolescent, you're turning into adulthood. Let me help you make the decisions for your life instead of do what I tell you to do. It's one of the hardest things. But it's one of the best things I can do to launch my children into this world. There is a season where it is your job to download roles and responsibilities. And why is that? It's because you need to elevate. It's an— and in order for you to elevate to the next level for you as an owner, a coach, a business owner, a leader, you have to let some of the things at lower levels, not lower in importance, just lower in your season today, You have to learn to let them go. You have to identify the roles and responsibilities that you no longer will hold, because in order for you to elevate, someone else has to elevate too. In order for you to do that, you have to create job descriptions and SOPs. You have to bring clarity to your team. In order for you to do that in your ministry, you have to teach and train and guide. In order for you to do that in your home, you have to communicate your expectations clearly so that other people will know how to do it and what a good job is. But often, y'all, we don't want to let go how we do it. We do want to be the person with the answers. We don't want our kids to leave. We don't want to let the ministry go. And we say we want our business to grow, but do you really? Are you willing to do what it takes for that to happen? It means you have to stop doing things for others. You have to train and document what you do and how you do it. And it means you have to create the space needed for training. It means you have to make room. For a shift. So one of the things that is hardest thing for me to do is to let go and to make room for a shift. Not only because I don't wanna let it go, but because it takes time to train and document and develop. So your life, whether you are a mom, a business owner, a leader in ministry, whether we're talking about your finances or your marriage, whether we're talking about your friendships, How you take care of yourself, how you learn, how you grow your life. If you want to move forward, it will require shifts. And the worst thing in the world is for someone not to recognize the season that they're in and that it's changing. I recently released a video, Knowing Your Season, so I won't get into that here. I talk in that video about what it means to know the difference between when you're striving and you're doing too much and you need to stop, and when the season is about being stretched and strengthened and you just hang in there. I'll put a link to that video in the show notes so that you can watch that if you so choose. But what I want to talk to you today, um, is about knowing when you need to elevate and what that requires and what it costs. Uh, my niece Alina, I love her so much. She has joined my team as a social media assistant. And so while I love social media and I love media and I love creating videos, Um, sometimes I'm doing it, but here recently, a lot of times she is and I'm so delighted because she's good at it. But one of the things that we have been talking about, because she's all of 18 and moving forward in her life, and it's amazing. She talked to me about the beauty of the shimmer, that I can do a lot of things and I may be able to do a lot of things well, Aunt Chrissy,, but I'm noticing to pay special attention to the things that shimmer, because just because I can do it doesn't mean I should. Just because I love it doesn't mean it's the focus of my passion for this season. And what is shimmering? That is a question you need to ask yourself as a leader, as a mom, as a business owner, as an employee. What do I wanna learn? Where do I wanna grow? And in order to do that, more of what's shimmering. You gotta make room, cuz you can't do more of the thing that's getting your attention if your life is full with all the things that got your attention last year or last decade or last season. What's shimmering with your church, with your team, with your business? What sets your soul on fire? And I have to ask myself that same question. I have to ask myself, I know what got me here, But what is shimmering and do I have the bandwidth to go after that new thing? And if I don't, why is that? Is that because all the things that are required from me at work, at home, at church, as much as I love them, are taking the bandwidth I actually need for the new thing? I want you to consider that question. What is shimmering and do you have the bandwidth to make room for that? Because that's where the good stuff lies. But here's the deal. You won't be able to reach for the new thing if your hands are full. Just recently, I noticed some trees hanging in my yard. We are in what I would call my forever home, our dream home. Um, it's an older home and it's required a lot of TLC, but I love where it is and I love how it's structured. I wish we had gotten here sooner. I wish my boys had had a chance to grow up here. We got here right as one was leaving and I have another one about to leave the nest, but there are grandkids and hopefully the kids, all of them will want to come home. And I have plenty of space for them and lots of room for them to run. But as they run around in the backyard, I noticed some trees hanging low. And I thought, I don't want for one of those trees to fall, one of those branches to fall on a kid. We've had enough ice and snow in Texas to know that when the trees and the branches get heavy with ice and snow, they break. And I don't need the weather to determine when the branch falls. So I called a tree trimming service and who knew that tree trimming was so expensive? Good grief, Lord Jesus. I need a second job just to pay to make sure nobody dies back here. But I did call a company and they came and told me about all the branches that I had not even noticed. Were dead. Some of them were hanging low, many of them were not, but with their trained eye, they could look and see, you want to go ahead and trim that one and that one, and that tree is actually dead. So we either need to make it a stump or at least top it off because we have a hammock hanging on one of those dead trees. I said, top that one off because I don't want to move the hammock. But they pointed out all the things that needed to be trimmed. I made clear I love my trees, 'cause this is my forever home and I enjoy the shade. But cut what you have to, but don't cut more than that. I know you have to cut. As they were cutting, and tree trimming is a whole thing, how they climb the trees and sit on the branches and saw off a branch and then swing low on their ropes and, oh my gosh, don't fall in my yard, please. But they're experts at pruning. But I was watching them prune and it seemed to me like they were cutting a little bit too much. So I ran outside and I said, wait, wait, wait, remember, I love my trees. I want kids to be safe. I don't want anybody to die, but don't cut more than you have to. And he said, oh, but don't worry. It looks a little bald right now. I know that it looks like we're cutting too much, but, um, It's necessary. The cutting is necessary. Listen, you can wait for something in your life to fall, to crash, to burn, or you can decide to trim it. And this is the decision we all have to make. We love our trees. We love our business. We love our kids. We love our home. We love our ministry. But at a certain point, some of those branches get too heavy, or some of them are no longer even alive.. And it may take someone else on the outside looking at you, a friend, a ministry person, a coach, a mentor to say, honey, son, girl, you need to cut that thing. It's not alive, or it's just an accident waiting to happen. Let it go. That's what the tree trimming expert told me. He said, but don't worry. Right now the leaves are gone. I know it looks a little bald, but when the leaves come in, What you'll notice is there was a system to this, and this is what I want to land the plane on today. He said, if you look, you'll see we raised the canopy. Right now it feels bald to you. It feels like we're cutting too much. But when you look at the bones of the tree, do you see the structure? When the seasons change and the leaves come in and the branches that are still there bear fruit. You'll still see that there's shade and the tree is still doing its job, but in order for it to do its job well and not to injure you in the process, to still give shade, but give better shade, we have to raise the canopy. Sometimes in your life, in order for you to get to the next level— I have chills up my spine— in order for you to raise the roof, I know you did that then, but it's time for you to do that now. I know you were doing this for your children then, but it's time for you to do this now. I know you were in this job already for 15 years and you You finally got that promotion. Let that job go. It's time for you to raise the canopy and do the new thing. Well, I know that you built this business by sweat and tears in your garage on a borrowed computer, but now we've gotta raise the canopy and you've got to do what it takes to trim the things that aren't working, that aren't needed so that the fruit can come in. And it won't come in if you don't allow yourself to elevate in order for you to have the right situation, you may have to cut some things in your life because where the canopy is lower and beautiful, it may actually be causing a problem. Let me tell you about this problem that I've noticed on my team. Or first in my yard, there's a patch of grass in my yard that I noticed was looking a little different from the other patches of grass. In my yard. Now I realize what the problem was. There had been so much growth in those trees and they were providing so much shade that the sun wasn't getting through. And I didn't notice that until the tree trimmer said, hey, you see that? Now we've raised the canopy. So the sun will get through. And that patch of grass that wasn't green, it'll now get the sun it needs to grow. What if raising the canopy is not just about elevating you, but it's about certain things that need the light to grow, being able to pass through you? In other words, get out the way. Because what if your children aren't growing, if they're not leveling up because you're in the way? What if your ministry isn't growing because you do everything? What if your business isn't going to grow because you have to be in every little meeting or approve every little thing? Don't ask me how I know. No, it's a founder's mentality. I get it. I have it. But if I believe that it's my job to steward my business well, to steward my ministries well, to steward my children well, 'cause I won't always be here. If I want for the Sister Circle to go way beyond me, long after I'm gone, which is the goal that I have, that means I'm going to have to raise the canopy in some places and get out the way. But trimming doesn't feel good. The last time I checked my Bible, it says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, we are be— being transformed and taken from glory to glory. That sounds like elevation to me. That tree trimmer didn't chop randomly. He chopped in sync. And maybe some of the things that feel out of sync in your life would be totally in sync if you looked at them not as problems to manage, but as branches that needed pruning. Maybe the problems are indications that it's not yours anymore or that it's dead. Man, this talk is hurting me to give it to you. Often when God is trying to take us to the next level, he will raise the canopy, but the trimming and the pruning process, the leaves you loved, the shade you used, it will shift. And an expert will see what the canopy should look like and will assign different people in your life to cause friction, to cause you to cut it, or to give you direction to cause you to cut it. You will need different tools to change the level. That means, and this is what I have been learning, that those tools are new to me. It requires a great level of uncomfortability. It's exactly the fact that I need new tools is exactly the indication that I need to know something today I didn't I need to know yesterday, that I need information. And that may come in the form of courses or books or reading or circles of relationship or mentors or coaches. It may require me to invest in me. And let me tell you, I have. And investing in you, just like investing in the trimming of my trees, ain't cheap. It's not. But y'all, we will pay for a purse and invest more in a bag than we will in the blessing we need to move to the next level. Did you see me search for that alliteration? Could you hear it? I'm a preacher's daughter. I can't help it. I always need Bs and Cs and Ts, all the consonants to line up. It is what it is. My tree trimming wasn't cheap. And the trimming I've needed in my life isn't either. I have talked to so many people who are beyond me. How do I lead a team? What is an SOP? Oh my God. What is a KPI? Do I need to go get my MBA? I ain't got time for that. So let me just Google it real quick and talk to people who know. Let me have people sit in on my business and help me develop. Let me have people contract my business who know things I don't know. It has cost me more money. And more time, more pain, and more discomfort. But it is worth it. You wanna know why I know this? Because I see the light shining through and I see some things coming back to life. In my home, I see it. In my ministry, I see it. In my business, I see it. Your grass has been waiting for you to raise the canopy. So look around, look for what's shimmering in your life that you need to pay more attention to. Is it getting enough sun? Look at what's dead in your life. What's not in full color and ask yourself, why is that? Is it because it's not getting the light it needs? And if that's the case, what needs to happen to you in your mind, in your heart, for you to raise the canopy? Maybe you need coaching. You need a book. You need a mentor. Maybe you need new information. Maybe you need to do less. Maybe you need to call in an expert for them to show you where you need to do less. Maybe you need to have a great conversation with girlfriends. Hey, can we have a group meeting on a Saturday morning? Can we start at 5 or 7:00 AM? Can we meet for 6 hours and the 3 of us, each of us gets 2 hours, what's working, what's not, and have people outside of you that are an expert in you, give you their wise counsel. Listen, this can cost a lot of money or it can cost you a lot of time, but what I'm sure about is it will cost you something. You won't get the new canopy unless you trim the branches. What's in your life that's shimmering, but you can't seem to get to it? What's in your life that's dead and you don't know how to fix it, or you haven't fixed it up till now? Do they simply need more sun? Do you need to raise the canopy? Do you need to go to the next level? Do you need to know how to go to the next level, and you need to finally stop buying things you don't need and spending money that is wasted and invest in what you do need, the education, the counsel, the mentoring, because you won't get more sun if you don't raise the canopy. What if the things you want to come to life are waiting on you to make room for the life that wants to come through? But you gotta cut off some dead things first. The last time I checked, John 15 talks about living an abundant life, but the same Jesus who said that also asked his disciples to follow him, to leave things behind so he could help them raise the canopy. You're looking in your life in order to do this for something to release, something to sacrifice, something to cut. That's what you're looking for. It's not cheap. It's not easy, but it is simple. As a mom, you may have to release your visions of a perfectly clean home in order to keep your sanity and spend time with your children. As a mother, you may have to release the dreams of what you thought your kids were going to do so you can back up, raise the canopy, and be a covering for what God is calling them to do. As a person in a role on your job that's either looking for a promotion or you've received the promotion, you're going to have to stop doing the old job so you can do the new job. You're going to have to get the training that you need, ask for the training that you need, go get the meetings that you need. Talk to the person who's been there for 20 years. Can I meet with you every week? I wanna learn more about how to lead, and I see you leading well. And that means you may have to reduce some of the meetings that make you feel good because you keep a pulse on every little thing. In order to level up, you have to release a level. As a leader, you may have to stop being out front or stop doing all the things or stop being the only responsible party so you can empower other people to And will they make mistakes? They will. Will they not get it right? They won't all the time. But if you're a good leader, you'll be there as their coach, their mentor, to help shore up their boundaries. In your finances, I'm gonna have to stop doing my taxes. I don't wanna stop doing my taxes. I hate giving people money to do things I can do myself. But guess what? If I keep doing my taxes, guess what I'm not doing? I'm not creating content for you. And of those two, which one is raising the canopy in my life in this season? Sometimes I'm preaching to myself. So here's my encouragement to you to look for what's shimmering, to look for what's dead, and to ask yourself, where do I need to trim, prune, and raise the canopy? Where is God inviting me to raise the canopy? One of the things that I will be doing, I have been doing and will continue doing, is looking at that same question for me. The reason why I have the Inner Circle is so that I can teach, coach, and mentor. And I love doing that. And at different levels, I do that at different depths, but there's another level for me. I'm looking forward to it. Smaller groups, more intimate settings. So I can go deep and not just cast general vision, but help individuals with their vision. I don't even know what it looks like. I don't even know what it looks like for me. And I don't know exactly what it looks like for me to help other people do it inside of the count— the construct of the Sister Circle. But what I know is I see the tree trimmer coming. And what I believe is that when we let Him raise the canopy in our lives, the sun comes through and more things grow. This message was as much for me as it is for you. And I hope that in your life, in your family, in your ministry, in your business, you see the light and that you're willing to let the Great Pruner do His work. And whatever it costs, that you'll be willing to make the investment. It's been my pleasure sharing with you today, and I hope to see you back here. Now, you hear, don't forget to subscribe, follow, like, all the things. And if you've enjoyed this, share it with a friend, and I'll see you next time. Wow! Wow!