Your Emotional Self-Care

Good morning! Good morning, y'all. How are you? Let me know if you can see me and hear me okay. Good morning, good morning. I'm glad to see y'all. Good morning. Well, I'm glad you like the music, Regina. Good morning, good morning. Got my Instagram people here. Good morning, good morning. Uh-oh, did I hit the button again? Oops, my bad. Sorry. Good morning, good morning. Hey. Okay, good morning. So for those of y'all who are joining, um, this morning maybe for the first time, let's see here. Let me tell you who you're talking to, if I can do it, because y'all know I have issues trying to do all the things. So my name is Chrystal Hurst, and I think most of y'all on here already know who I am. Anointed Vessel on Instagram said, I'm so glad the storm woke me up or else I would have missed this. Oh no, is Priscilla back on here? Lord Jesus. Hi, Priscilla. So, um, good morning, good morning, good morning. Okay, so here's why I'm going live. There are some things that I really wanted to tell you about. And so if you're new here, or if you end up here after we're live, my name is Chrystal Hurst. You can find out more about me at chrystalevanshurst.com. And I was going live um, daily for about 6 weeks, give or take. Um, and then I took a break because all God's children need a break. And, um, I'm still on my break because I've got some things I've got to take care of. I'm working on a book. Um, it looks like I'll be, um, getting into a move soon, which is great. So I want to leave room in my life for those things so that I don't lose my mind like a crazy woman. But that said, that said, I— there was something I really needed to say. Like, it's been kind of bubbling up for a while, and I was like, I'll put it out here right now, and then we will make sure you all are okay. I wanted to check in and say hello. And share a couple of things with you that I think will be helpful for you. So here's the important thing, you guys, or girls. I want you to know that anytime I do anything online, it's always tough for people to know because social media makes it hard for people to see things unless you share it. So obviously you can share it right now. No matter whether you're watching it on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. I don't think I turned on Periscope this morning, but anyway. Or you can watch it all the way through and decide at the end if you think that it's useful. The other thing that I want you to know about is that if you are not on my email list, then anything that I put out apart from the lives, you won't know about. So make sure you're on it. How do you make sure you are? You can go to chrystalhurtz.com and right below my picture, there's a spot for your email. And usually I try to put something there that's useful to you. And right now I think the thing that you get is summer activities for your kids. So if you're like, oh my gosh, it's the summertime. We're still kind of sort of halfway, not halfway in quarantine. And you need something to do with your kids, you need ideas, um, grab that. If you're already on my email list, go check your email, girl, because you already got it. Okay, one easy way to make sure you always get things from me is to make sure that you've added my email to your contact list. Just put me under there like we're friends. Chrystal Hurst. And then you can put the email, which is chrystal@chrystalevanshurst.com, and that will whitelist my email for you, and then you will get all of them. Okay, no, I'm not leaving Dallas, Alexis. Down the street and around the way. I'll tell y'all more about that later. But today I wanted to talk to you about, um, your emotional health and caring for you, um, in some practical ways. Because y'all, I don't know about you, but I've been exhausted. Anybody else? Can anybody else commiserate with that feeling? Just spent. Just done, just over it. And it, I mean, is like 27 categories of things. Does anybody understand what I'm saying to you? Exhausted is the word. Exhausted is the word. Okay, I see y'all. Yes. So Wifey Huntley's Mama wants to know what is whitelisted. That's the word that is used to describe an email that you have said, oh, okay, I know her, you can let her emails through. And I didn't realize until I said it, you know, what the connotation is there with all of the racial sensitivities we have right now. I was like, hmm, anyway, it doesn't matter. Okay, so exhausted is the word. Yes. Yeah, I see your comments. Mm-hmm. You're agreeing with me. You're saying, yes, I'm exhausted. Yeah, I'm with you. So here's the deal. I wanted to speak to this because there is an emotional tug and a pull on all of us for a long list of reasons. Where we are, none of us have ever been before. You know, if somebody was alive today that had lived through the bubonic plague, then we would have somebody to commiserate with, but they're not still alive. So for us going through pandemic and also stacked on that all of the racially charged conversations, environments instances, videos, messaging, what we're seeing on the news, trying to navigate that no matter how you feel about it, whether it is personally grieving to you, whether you are trying to understand it, whether you have like taken off running trying to ex— educate yourself, whether you have been overwhelmed by all of the noise, the the information, the perspectives, then you have tried to enter the conversation only to hear from other people that you're saying the wrong thing or that you don't understand or that you're trying to be sensitive but you're not being sensitive enough. Or, you know, there's just a whole ingestion of toughness right now. You understand what I'm saying to you? There is a there is an inhaling of hardship. And depending on what you're watching and who you're listening to, it could be, um, adding toxicity into your emotional systems. Because you do understand that everything you take in through your senses— your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your nose, your skin, right? There are 5 senses, and of course your taste. It goes in and you cannot separate what you ingest from your chemical, physical, emotional, spiritual self. Do you understand that? Do you understand that everything that goes in affects you? So I was talking to a gentleman who has been super helpful and, um, a gift to our family in the journey that we took with our mother, with our mom. And, um, I sat down with him when we were talking about foods and just the things that would give her life and extend her life. And as he was talking and we were having conversations, you know, he was like, so you know about this stuff? Because he's a little bit of a health nut. And I said, oh yes, honey, don't let my— don't let my dress size fool you. It's like, don't, don't let my dress size fool you. There is a level of knowledge that I have. Now, I may not always operate in that knowledge, you understand what I'm saying? Um, but I know some stuff, and so I've been talking to him recently about what it looks like for me to, to take what I know, to operate in it in a way that I can maintain. Because if y'all have followed me for any length of time, you already know that I know how to— I know how to lose 40 pounds, y'all. I know how to do it. And I also know how to gain it back. Um, and so we were talking about what are, what are the things that preclude me from being there and staying there. So one of the statements that he made was, you know, reminding me about is how everything in your life comes together to impact you spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally, chemically. And so we were talking about foods, processed foods, carbs, right? And this is not a discussion about food. I'm going to make a point here, and then I'm going to jump into something that I want you to understand, okay? But I think oftentimes if you can understand the physical aspects of something, it helps you to understand the other implications of that for your life, okay? Now we know that, you know, when you eat food, it gives you a hit. Do you understand what I'm saying? It gives you a hit. And, and he was explaining to me the difference of being fat burning versus carb burning, you know, and going into ketosis and all these different things. No, I'm not doing a keto diet. Yeah, but he said when you're burning carbs, you get a quick hit. It's a one-step process. And when you're fat burning, it's a two-step hit. In carb burning, not only do you get a hit of glucose, a quick hit, but you also get an immediate release of serotonin. Now, this is why this matters, because I know that based on my emotional makeup, you know, serotonin matters for all of us, but I, I tend to be a glass half full person. I'm a perfectionist by design or nurture or nature, I'm not sure, but perfectionist. And, um, And I'm a really, really hard worker. I tend to burn as an achiever. No, it doesn't matter if this is StrengthFinders or Enneagram. I'm an achiever and I burn the candle at both ends. So right now I'm on 7-ish, right? But I've been up since about 5 and then I was like, something's stirring. So I think I'm gonna get on at 7, but you know, I didn't go to bed last night until 11, 11:30. So it is, you know, I have to decide at night to turn back over and go back to sleep. Because I tend to want to get up and do something or stay up and do something. And so serotonin is important to me because I, I tend to wax dry and I need hits of that. So one of the reasons why, um, when I started running, I was loving running is because you get that hit of serotonin. So something that you engage in physically then involves you chemically. Which affects your mentally and emotional state. If your cells are not healthy, right, your body is a chemical machine. And so when you eat bad food, you know that statement that says you are what you eat, when you eat bad food, that's at the cellular level, that affects how you can function. So everything's connected, and we understand this physically, but I want to just remind you of the fact that when you're not— you are not taking care of your emotional self, it affects everything, okay? It affects everything, okay? So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about— I wanted to give you some physical analogies to caring for your physical self so that you could, you could understand some things that you need to be doing emotionally, so that all of you physically, emotionally, chemically, uh, you know, mentally, spiritually can be cared for. Because you can't separate it. And if you've been on your phone, on social media, right? If you have been— I'm talking to people watching the news. If you've been trying to get educated, reading the books, keeping up with the podcast, watching the movies Okay, it's all good. It's all good, y'all. Keeping up with the COVID infection rates and the spikes and all that, it's all good. You need to know, and knowledge is power. But I just want you to understand that there's an emotional taxing that those things take. And, and this does not matter if you're Black and you're trying to keep up, and if you're grieving because you are identifying with this concern about your children or your brothers or your fathers. Well, or if you're white and you're like, I didn't know, I didn't understand white privilege. I didn't understand these dynamics. And so now I'm trying to read the books and watch the conversations and I'm overwhelmed and I'm trying to figure out where I can get in. It doesn't matter. It don't matter. It doesn't matter if you're American Indian and you like, y'all, y'all do know that we still here, don't you? I mean, it doesn't matter. All of it is taxing. You know, you know what I'm saying? If your kids are still home with you, if you're still working from home and you're alone and you hate it, uh, if you are still in the, in the healthcare battle and you're having to hear all the— it doesn't matter, no matter where you are in this life. Do you understand what I'm saying? There is a taxing that is happening. Okay, hold on, let me take a drink. This is my drink today. I did want to show y'all because y'all always want to know. One of my friends sent me— she said, girl, I'm sure you're out of hibiscus, so I've been trying this. It's good, it's good. So now this, you know, it doesn't matter, y'all. I'm not, I'm not brand loyal. I can move my fingers out of the way, you know, not brand loyal. But this has been tasting pretty good to me. But today, this is it— water, alkaline water. I try to drink that. Okay, so here's what I want to say. So let me, let me get to my notes here so that I don't get too far off track, because y'all know if I get on a pedestal, I will be all off task. So my boys and I have been using the C25K app for running. They've gotten way ahead of me because I started sending them out to run and I told them I'd catch up later. Now they're like 2 weeks ahead of me, but that's okay. We're going to do a 5K. I think I'm going to then train for a 10K, and then I think the boys and I, at least the 2 older ones, are going to do a half marathon. They're miserable about that. I don't care. I'm the mother around here. So One of the things that I've been thinking about are some things that I learned because I had actually joined a running program in 2014 to train for a full marathon. I'd actually been a part of this running program before, and so I learned these different things. And if you Google what I'm talking about, you'll know, okay, Chrystal Hurst is talking truth. But my boys don't know anything about that. And so as they are running and running longer distances and they are saying things, and I'm like, oh, I know I can explain this to you. So one of the things that my middle son said was, I'm itching. So we were going running and the longer we ran, he was like, I'm itching. And he'd want to stop and scratch his leg. And so I talked to him and I said, you know what? I call that the fat itch because anytime I haven't been running for a long period of time, I itch. I said, in my non-medically trained brain, who I've done a little bit of homework, and I think it's because there is increased blood flow to blood vessels that have not been used to transporting that much blood at that speed. Speed, and you're feeling the waking up. It's kind of like if you fall asleep on your arm and then you wake up in the morning, and when the blood comes back, you feel the refilling of the blood into those areas and systems of your body. So when that happens, when you're actively running, I call it the fat itch. And so I actually Googled it. It's true. It's the capillaries being reinvigorating with blood and blood flow that they are not used to experiencing. So this is something new. That he was experiencing because he had not been running. Okay. So here's something else that they are having to learn because this is something new that they have not understood because they had not been running. So every time I start running, it doesn't matter if I have been regularly running or if it's been 6 months since I've stepped foot out the door, or even if I've been training for a marathon and every morning I go out to run, the first mile always feels the same. And I will never forget when I asked a friend of mine who was an on, you know, just a lifelong runner, I asked him, I said, listen, every time I go running during the first mile, I feel like I'm going to die. When am I going to stop feeling like I'm going to die? And he said, never. He said, the first mile is always the hardest, and it doesn't matter if you've been running forever or if you've been running for the first time, it's always the hardest because you have to get your body into a system or a rhythm of running. That involves the breathing that you're doing. And your body has to realize that, oh, you're not going to kill me. Like, she's not going to— she's going to achieve a space of, for lack of a better word, homeostasis, where she will make sure we're getting enough air and we are getting enough air out for us to maintain this increased space and pace. But at first, your body is like, oh my gosh, she's working hard, guys. Come on, let's get it going. And let's panic a little bit to let her know. That she's not supposed to do this because we're going to keep up, we got to keep up. And so there's the initial panic of your bodily systems that you are doing something that you haven't been doing for the last 24 hours of your day or your life, or maybe the last 48 hours if you don't run every day. So it takes a minute for your body to go, oh, okay, she's not going to kill us. You understand what I'm saying? So there's this principle here that in running, when you first feel that, you feel out of breath and you're like, what is this? And then when your body knows that you're going to continue to breathe, then it relaxes. There is actually something called runner's breathing, um, where you teach your mind and your bodily systems that this is a pace that you can maintain. So I did a little homework and, um, I know that there's a pacing. I know when I run, Once I get, you know, I find my body increasing and freaking out, I start being mindful of the fact that I got to get a rhythm to my breathing so my body can go, okay, and it can settle in smoother, settle into my pace and settle into my breathing rhythm. Okay. So my pace is I breathe in 3 times and I breathe out 2, sometimes 3. They say 2 because then you're always breathing and you're shifting your feet, right? So Breathing in 3, breathing out on 2 means that you'll always be shifting your foot. And so you're not putting weight on your diaphragm on one side. It's a whole thing. But for runnersworld.com, this is what it says. Why do I struggle to breathe when running? Simply put, your body is trying hard to meet the increased demands of running. The primary reason this happens is due to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the body. As carbon dioxide levels accumulate in the body from exercise, It triggers us to breathe more rapidly via our respiratory system. Okay. This is what the American Lung Association says. Breathing basics. Before we even talk about running techniques, let's do a quick update on the one thing we take for granted: breathing. At a basic level, we breathe to fuel our bodies with oxygen and get rid of carbon dioxide. When we stress our bodies through running, our bodies struggle to get adequate oxygen in and remove the waste product of carbon dioxide. When we reach these limits, do you hear that word? When we reach our limits, we also see an increase in lactic acid in our muscles. It's a buildup of acid that your body needs to get rid of, and that causes cramps and fatigue. Did you hear that? It causes fatigue. The best answer is to get more oxygen into the body. Somebody see where I'm going? And that is through more efficient breathing, such as belly breathing. Deep breathing is another word for it. Or diaphragmatic breathing. Okay, here's another principle I want you to understand. Now, y'all, I'm not a medical professional. Now, I've had children and health issues in my family, and often when I go to the doctor's office with my children, my husband, whatever, they look at me and they say, what area of the medical field are you in? I'm like, I'm not, I just read. So anyway, target health rate, target heart rate. Here's another thing I want you to understand, okay? The American Heart Association advises that when you are exercising, so when you are in this system where your body is breathing harder, maybe where you have the fat itch, and where you need to understand that there needs to be a rhythm to your breathing. Okay, they say that there's a space that you need to enter where you're actually at your ultimate— your, your ultimate space for health. That is 50 to 80 of your maximum heart rate. Okay, why? Because you want to get your heart rate up. You want your heart as a muscle to work. So there's a space in which that your heart is working hard enough to build itself as a muscle. But there's also a space where if you get past that, okay, past that 50 to 80% range where your heart may be working too hard. So how do you know where you are? You have to watch your indicators. You literally learn how to find your target heart rate by learning where your pulse is and counting that out for 10 seconds, multiplying it by 6. So you know how many times your heart is beating in a 60-second space. You do this if you're in a great aerobics class. We used to do this, or you can do this with now a watch. Okay, why do you need to know where your target heart rate is and know if you're between that 50 to 80, um, rate? Why? Because if you're too low, you're not going to grow, and if you're too high, you may hurt yourself. There is a boundary. Okay, listen, y'all, I'm about to teach you something. Do you understand what I'm saying? You need to understand that there is a boundary to the intensity that you can operate at when you are doing activity, whether you are doing aerobics, walking, or hiking. The intensity that you're operating at correlates with how hard the activity feels to you, okay? And it shows up in your heart rate, or maybe the fact that you're sweating, or maybe the fact that your muscles feel like they're tiring out. And there's a point at which The exercise is good for you, but there's a point at which if you take it too far, you've gone just that— too far. Here, here's what I'm saying. I'm, I'm almost there, y'all. Okay, there are two basic ways to measure your activity. Okay, one is how you feel. Okay, intensity can be subjective. If you start getting lightheaded, that is your body telling you you've gone too far, okay? And the exercise should feel hard, but there's a point where you would know if you exercise normally, this is too far, okay? Your perceived level of exertion, um, may feel different than someone else's, right? Even if you're doing the same exercise, because how you operate at that exercise is different than them, okay? A hard run the way it feels to you may feel different than the way it feels like to somebody else. That's why we can't look at their pace and their race. We got to know what's going on with us, okay? The other way is your heart rate, and I told you you can take it with your finger. You know, this is all stuff you can Google because this is not, believe it or not, a health discussion, a physical health discussion. Or you can have a watch or some kind of monitor, your Fitbit, that tells you your heart rate. Why does all this matter? Here it is, I'm about to land the plane, y'all. You ready? I'm about to hit you where it hurts. Because in order for you to take care of your emotional health, you have to understand that you need to pay attention to the way you breathe. You need to pay attention to your rhythms, and you need to pay attention to your limits. You need to learn how to breathe, you need to know your rhythms, and you need to honor your limits. Okay, y'all, hold on. All right, this is why this matters. Here you go. You are a connected human being. And I need you to understand that if you do not take care of your emotional self, you will have a recipe for disaster because everything's connected. Okay, let me say this another way. If you are not taking care of your spiritual life, you will not be emotionally okay. If you are not taking care of your physical life, you will not mentally be acting at your best. If you are not taking care of your chemical life, then you will not be emotionally stable. All of this stuff works together. It is important that you understand what you're inhaling and exhaling. You, you gotta pay attention to what's going in and what's coming out. You need to understand that if you don't understand your rhythms in life, If you don't have any rhythms in life, you will wear yourself out. And you need to know that everything, even good things, need to have limits. Information needs to have limits. Conversations need to have limits. Education needs to have limits. Everything shouldn't be absorbed in the same season. You will not be emotionally okay if you don't set some limits if you don't know your rhythms and if you are not intentional about inhaling and exhaling, what you're inhaling and exhaling and the way you're doing it. So what do I mean? I'm about to drive through y'all. This is a drive-through. Okay, it's a drive-through. You ready? Okay. Yes. What you're listening to, what you see, what goes in your mouth, what you put your hands to do, What is coming in? Because everything that you are absorbing, everything that you are taking in, is taking a toll. It is affecting you and infecting you. And sometimes the hard things you should absorb— you do need to watch the Dews, you do need to watch some of these movies that talk about historical racial injustices, you do need to have hard conversations, you do need to engage and listen But you need to understand that there has to be a balance with what you're taking in and what you're giving out. You, you need to make sure that there's a certain period where you stop taking it in. You don't need to watch the news all day. You do need to have healthy conversations. You do need to hang out with friends and just have fun and not feel guilty about it. So have I watched my— have I inhaled the news, inhaled social media? Absolutely. Am I trying to keep up with what's going on? 100%. But did I just go to, to Michelle's house the other day, Shelly Shell's house, and did I veg out with my daughter and Michelle for 3 hours, 4 hours on Indian food and Indian movie with subtitles? 100%. Did that have anything to do with me growing as a person? No. Did that have anything to do with me getting things done in my home? 100% not. Did it have everything doing to do with me exhaling and breathing and just releasing 100%. Did I laugh during that Indian movie? I sure did. Did I get up and dance during that Indian movie? 100%. You got that right. Did I cry when the, when the man lost his father in the movie? Yes, I boo-hooed. Did I need all of that exhale? I did. I did. And if you are not making room for the exhale in your life, you are not emotionally okay because it requires both. You need to laugh and cry. You need to understand and just zone out. You need to relax and you need to tighten up. You need to be awake and you need to sleep. You need to inhale and exhale. It requires both. And if you're only exhaling because you don't want to think about it, you don't want to be stressed, you don't want to work hard, You're sick of reading the books. You're tired of having the conversations. Okay, and so you are totally doing nothing. Netflixing 100%, staying in front of social media nonstop, always open, uh, convicting with 60 tabs open on your Google Chrome browser. Okay, that's great. I'm glad you're having fun with your life. Now get serious. Inhale something. Understand what's going on in your life. You need to be balanced. Balanced. Sorry, y'all, I went into my preaching mode. Let me calm down. Okay. And you need to know your rhythms. You need to understand that there, there is a place where the inhaling and the exhaling can balance out. Know your rhythms. So learn to breathe— you gotta do both— and know your rhythms. Ecclesiastes chapter 3 talks about the time. There's a time to give birth, there's a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance, A time to throw stones and a time to gather the stones. A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing. A time to search and a time to give up as lost. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart and a time to sew together. A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. There's a time for everything, and you have to know, y'all, when it's the time to sow and the time to reap. A time to plant and a time to uproot. You need to know when it's time to wake up and it's time to go to sleep. You need to know your rhythms. How do you know your rhythms? Because you're paying attention, checking that heart rate. Are you stressed? Do you feel like there's a stone on your chest? It may be time to slow your breathing or to take a break or to walk for a little bit. How do you know though? If you're taking too long of a break, well, if you're too rested and you're never revved up, well then you might need to rev up every now and then. There is a target space, a time where you're stretched but you're not stretched too far. A hard conversation but not too many hard conversations where you're always exasperated. A time where you're having to work hard to think but not where there's so many things in your, in your brain that you can't hold a thought. Do you understand the difference? And how do you know? Because you grow. You're growing without strain and stress and disconnect and a ridiculous amount of disastrous pain. Growing pains. When my children say, Mom, my knee hurts, and I check the temperature and I make sure everything's moving right and I'm doing all the things that a good mother would do, and then once I've done all the things I said, oh honey, there's nothing wrong with you. It's just growing pains. It's just growing pains. You got to know the difference between something that you need to go to the hospital for and growing pains. How do you know? You have to sometimes have somebody else in your life that can look at you and go, all right, let me take your temperature, let me have a conversation with you, let me hear— oh Girl, that's happened to me. That's just growing pains. That's what happens when you have a Titus 2 women in your life that can look at you stressing out with your young kids or trying to figure out how to balance work and, and, and, and dating, or they're trying— and you're like, oh my gosh, you know, I don't know if he's the right one or if he's not. I don't know if I should date him again. I don't know if I should date online. And is there something wrong with me? And I'm stressed out. And then you have somebody else in your life that says, let me ask you some questions, let me take your temperature, let me do some things. Oh girl, You all right? It's just growing pains. Gotta have a good friend, gotta have a sister circle. That's what happens when you get educated, listen to a podcast, read a book, and you get the perspectives of other wise people. You're in a small group, you're listening to a sermon, you're in your small group. When you're doing these things, it's a checkpoint for you to say, am I okay? Am I in the target heart rate place? Am I still here? You got to have people who can look at you— your husband, even your kids, your adult children, your good friends, just all these people. You got to open yourself up where they can say, girl, wait a minute, uh-uh, that's not normal. You got to know your rhythms. You got to know what time it is. Time to turn off the TV. Time to turn on the TV. Time to catch up, get the headlines. Time to shut that phone off. You need to create some rhythms. Every night, if I can— I'm smelling something, y'all. This candle has been burned down to the, to the nub. Turned on my spa music. I should have turned that on for you all today. That's all right, maybe next time. And it's a signal about my rhythm to my family. Uh-oh, y'all, she's going in, she's shutting down, leave her alone. Know your rhythms. How do you take care of your emotional you? Learn to breathe. Be healthy about what you're taking in and making sure you've got room to exhale it out. Be balanced. Know your rhythms. Know what time it is. Is it time for you to work a little harder, or is it time for you to take some, some weight off? I remember laying in the bed one day a few years ago, and I just felt a stone on my chest. I was like, this stone isn't supposed to be here. What is in my life that I need to offload? Because this stone doesn't belong on my chest. This is not— this is not a part of my target area. This is not a part of my norm. What did I add that is the straw that is breaking the camel's back? Because I am emotionally and physically right now not okay. What conversation do I need to have? Where do I need to exhale so I can get rid of this toxicity in my life? Who is or what is toxic in my life? You got to ask those questions. Then you have to know your limits and boundaries. Psalm 16:9 says, the Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup. Here it is. You support my lot. The lines— do you hear this? The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. I have lines, I have boundaries, and they're pleasant. Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me. The New— uh, that was the New American Standard. The NIV version says, the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Don't you know that boundaries are good? They're good for you, because if you can do everything all over the place all the time, that's chaos. I was on a plane with my dad in high school. He gave me some of the best advice that I've ever received. I did not listen. He had a napkin and he drew a football field and he said, listen, these are the lines for the football game. If there is no line, there is no game. If you want to enjoy the game of life, you have to live within the lines. If there are no lines and you can throw the ball anywhere, that's chaos. You will hurt yourself, you will exacerbate yourself, you will go too far, you will not be in the maximized place for you to live. Here are the rules of life. You've learned them all your life, Chrystal Hurst. You've been sitting around our dinner table hearing the word of God. You know where the lines are. Abide by the rules and you will live. That's why you got to read the word. Everybody wants to go out here and get wisdom. Let me tell you something. The fear of the Lord, the Bible says, is the beginning of wisdom. If you don't even know Jesus, can I just tell you that biblical history, the Bible as a literary book, is a thing? Like in colleges, read the Bible. It'll save you a lot of drama. It'll save you a lot of drama. Read the Bible. You want to learn things the short way or the long way? The easy way or the hard way? You can live it or you can learn it. How do you learn it? You read the Bible. Okay, so in order to know what your limits and boundaries are, you have to know— in order to know when you cross them, you have to know where they are. So emotionally, you have to know when you— you have to know who you can be around and how long. You have to know when your kids need to go to bed. Y'all people who let your kids stay up until 11, 12 o'clock at night, put them jokers to bed so that you can breathe for a hot second. They need to have quiet time. The people that are scheduling things on your schedule, they have to know, I'm not available at this time. You need to have boundaries so that you go to bed, take the melatonin, Drink the milk if you're not lactose intolerant. Okay, have an evening routine and a morning routine. When you wake up at 4 AM— talking to myself— go back to sleep. Break out— break away the time to say, no, I can't do this because this is the time when I run and when I walk. Because in order for me to be healthy, physically healthy, so that I'm emotionally healthy, for me to get that dopamine hit, my serotonin load, I gotta go for my walk. They will live, y'all. The people you work with will live if you say don't schedule anything after 5 PM. Some of the people on my team, y'all, I love y'all, I love y'all, but y'all know I never stop working. It's okay to say I'd like to log off today at 6 PM. I'm a self— I am a workaholic, I tell y'all that I am. And sometimes I look in the eyes of people that I work with and I go, I am exhausted. Testing them. And that's a good thing for you as a boss to keep tabs on the emotional health of your people. But I'm also saying, if you work for somebody, it's okay for you to say, this is— these are the boundaries that really, really work for me. You know, um, you know, if you're contract and you get to set boundaries, or if you're an employee and there are agreed-upon boundaries, to say, I really, really need to— if I can log off at 5. And there are seasons, right, where you work a little harder and you do what has to be done and you exercise exercise that heart muscle and you grow. But then you need to know when you've gone too far. In order for you to be okay all the way through your life, you have to know where your boundaries are. And boundaries are good. Boundaries are good. You have to know when you're dealing with toxic people, okay? There are books about this. There are books about how to set healthy boundaries around people. Listen, ma'am, everything is not your fault. If it's always your fault, then somebody is lying to you. And you have to set boundaries, and you have to know where they are, and you have to be able to say with a smile to the people you love, I'm so sorry, I'm— that's not my fault. To say, I love you and I'm so sorry that this is painful for you, but that, that is something I can't help you with. You need, you need to go, you need to talk to somebody because you are expecting me to be responsible for this emotional, mental situation. And it's okay that you're hurting, but I'm just not the person to help you. You need to say to your children, listen, because I have two teenagers and I have lived through this teenage phase before. I love you, sweetie. But we are not the same. You need to watch who— how you're talking to me. You need to say to them when they walk off and have a little something on the way they walk off. I tell my son the other day, my, my usually my most agreeable son, he had a little teenage moment and he walked off to me like this. And I said, I'm sorry, come on, come back here, turn around, try that again. You need to understand, you need to understand that we are not the same, okay? We are not the same. So I want you to start setting some boundaries. Now that does not mean you're mean and you're nasty. You can do it with a smile because when you're emotionally okay You can set boundaries and it doesn't destroy other people. If you respond to your husband, your children, your co-workers like, I can't talk right now, oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, that's not the way it should be. Okay, if you are indulging in substances, uh, more than you should be, if you're eating too much, come on, drinking too much, okay, if you are watching too much TV because you're trying to numb yourself That means you are compensating for something that is emotionally off balance in your life. If you can't exercise control of yourself because you have been pushed so far to your limit, past your target zone, then you have not been maintaining it. Because involved in maintaining your emotional health, there are boundaries. It's okay, y'all, to love your spouse and to say, baby, I love you, but I just can't keep going to sleep with the TV on every night. Can we talk about maybe another way to do this? You need to go get your husband some headphones so that he can cover it up, turn the brightness down on the TV and say, in order for us, baby, to sleep in the same bed, in order for me to be here in the morning when you want to roll over and get some— can I just talk real for just a second? I need to be able to stay in here overnight. And I love you, okay? I love you, but I cannot get a good night's sleep with the TV on all night. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Do you understand what I'm saying to you? In order for you to operate at your best, you need to be emotionally okay, and it all ties together. You need to understand how to breathe, how to measure what you take in and take out. You need to know your rhythms, when it's time for you to pour in and to receive. Some of y'all are so complimentary to other people, and when people try to give you compliments, you can't receive them. Stop saying— stop rejecting what people say that's good about you. Inhale it, receive it. Don't just exhale. It's not balanced. Okay, when you go to work— I used to have a boss, y'all, that was talking to me crazy. And I— she, she, she was a wonderful boss except when she got stressed, and then she would come in my office and cuss me out. And I was just like, I'm so sorry. I was just like, I'm so sorry, I, I want to serve you well, but it is highly offensive and it is highly distracting to me. To doing my job when you're communicating with me that way. And I want to do a good job and I want to do it well, but I'm unable to do that when I feel destroyed with your words. Is it possible for you to make an attempt to talk to me differently? Now, I probably didn't say it that eloquently because y'all, I was 20, 26, but my point is, um, you know, you can— so you can speak up for yourself. You could— you can speak up for yourself. So here's what I need you to do. Listen, my friend, I need you to take care of yourself. I need you to take care of yourself emotionally. I need you to take care of yourself physically. I need you to take care of yourself mentally. I need you to take care of yourself spiritually. But since today is about emotional, you need to breathe. You don't have to watch the news nonstop. You don't have to be on your phone nonstop watching the news. You don't have to always, always be playing with your kids. They will be fine. Let them be bored. You don't have to be the orchestrator of all the fun. You don't have to do everything at your church, okay? You don't have to be the only person who's the counselor for everybody in your family. You, you know, certain ones of us are wired that way. What I'm telling you is, when you start to live in this emotionally healthy place,. You may feel a little fat itch. It may not feel normal. You may have to learn how to breathe so that you can find your optimal place to live. But you need to understand that when you learn to breathe, it fixes the itch. When you learn your rhythms, it fixes the exhaustion. When you understand your limits and boundaries, it allows you to operate at a pace emotionally that you can maintain. Some of us aren't crazy, y'all. I mean, I believe that every woman has a little cray cray in her, but some of us really aren't crazy. We just are always extended far beyond our limits. Some of it you can't control. I understand that you did not choose to be a single parent. I understand that you did not choose to have the health trouble. I understand that you did choose that man, but you did not know you were choosing his issues. I understand that you did not choose to be on this job right now. You're just trying to choose to make money for your household. I understand all of this. Trust me, I do. I got it. I get it. But in the things you can't choose, there are micro choices that you can make every stinking day. Every stinking day, there are micro choices. There are small things that you can choose so that you in some way introduce health. And I just want you to understand that you are worth your emotional health. And here's the other thing I want you to understand. It's all connected. It's amazing when you start— and people who have lost a bunch of weight, they experience this. They start losing weight and it changes the way they think. It changes their mental capacity, their emotional capacity, because all of a sudden when they started choosing their physical health, they started waking up to the fact that they could choose to be emotionally healthy too. It's amazing. Did you know that when you choose your emotional health, that it will all of a sudden make you go, wait a minute, why am I eating that? Every time I eat that, it makes me feel bad. And when I indulge in all the fatty foods, it makes me want to sleep. And you know, the sugar takes me down, you know. Why am I eating that? It starts making you say, wait a minute, all of these things are connected, and I want this part of my life to reflect this part of my life. And this is not— you know, I was talking to a friend of mine, and you know, she's a healthy girl and she's totally confident, totally fine. But what I'm telling you is you have to know that the level of health that you want to achieve matches all the way around. Okay, and here's the bottom line, here's the rub: you will not operate at your full capacity in life if you are not healthy. And I can promise you, you don't want to die and leave anything on the table. You don't want to have any regrets. You don't want to have any I woulda, coulda, shouldas. Like my friend said, you don't want to shit on yourself. Should, y'all, should. For somebody, email's my daddy, but y'all understand what I'm saying. You don't want that. I know you don't, but you will not succeed at being the full version of you in your life and doing whatever you're supposed to do in this life if you are not healthy. So be healthy, girl. That's what I want to say to you. Be healthy. Okay, uh, quick things I want to announce and then I'm going to jump off. Um, number one, um, I kind of took a break from a lot of things, and I kind of missed a few podcasts in there too, mainly because I was inhaling what's going on. What do I need to say? What do I need to share? How do we need to rearrange these podcasts so this makes sense and so that this is helpful? So if you missed it, I talked to Kia, uh, about Healing Your Father Wounds. And I know yesterday was Father's Day, and the reality is that, you know, a lot of people, a lot of girls, a lot of men have father wounds. And I wanted to, um, talk about that. And that's her thing. That's her thing. She has done the work, she has gotten the healing, and she knows how to help you get yours. So if you missed that, it's Kia Stevens. And if you missed that episode, go listen to it right now. ChrystalHurst.com. /259. 259. Okay, you can find me on iTunes and Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify. It's everywhere. Kia Stevens, Healing Father Wounds. Um, the second thing that I want to encourage you to do is to know that I'm here for it. So if you're like stumbling upon this video for the first time, I'm gonna link— I think I had a couple of other episodes where I kind of talked about this thing about caring for yourself. And I'll have, uh, Marissa— I'm bringing you back out of hiding, intern Marissa— to look through the other YouTube videos that we had that kind of deal with this kind of caring for you, self-care, that were a little less specific than this, and put some other links in the show notes. Give us 24 hours to get that done, y'all. Um, so there's a ton of YouTube stuff on here. Um, some of y'all have emailed me asking about other episodes that you cannot find. Well, y'all, I, I, in my going live every day for 6 weeks, the episodes that were what I call bonus episodes went to the Inner Circle Library. Um, and that's how you can find them. Okay, that allows you through a website called Patreon to support what I do. And I think the entry level is like $5 a month, and all of those things are available there. So get the free stuff, please get the free stuff, exhaust it. All the podcasts are free. There's a ton of YouTube videos here, but if you're like, I want more, that's a way to get more. Okay. And just recently, just this weekend, we, um, uh-oh, all of the— I know that everybody couldn't come to the live event, and I understand that. I understand, you know, money is tight and everybody couldn't swing that. So what we did is we asked permission for all of the people who— all the women, because I think, yeah, we only had women who were a part of the Sister Circle event. Can we share? Can we share your, your teaching? And so if there's a specific area that you're like, I need this area of life. Uh, I need to figure out how to deal with these adult kids. I need to figure out how to study the Bible. I need to figure out how to make it through this season of ministry. I need to know how to get this book proposal to, uh, this publisher. There's over 40 sessions available, okay? There's over 40 sessions available, um, and you can find out about that at chrystalevans.com/ courses. Okay, and I've got my courses there and the sessions there. If you're on my email list, y'all, we gave you a code, so don't, don't go there and buy it outright. Check your email and get the code. Okay, because it's 20% off. I'll put it up on social media too, maybe today or tomorrow. Check your email and get the code. If you're not on my email list, just get on it. Chrystalhurst.com. We'll send it out again because I think until the 28th, everything there is 20% off. If you're in the Inner Circle at the higher levels, check your email because you have a higher code. Okay, so my hope is that this has been helpful to you because I want you to be healthy. And then, y'all, I have stuff because y'all ask me for stuff. There is tons of stuff out there that's free. I bet you after this, if you Google emotional health, I bet you if you Google emotional health, you will find it because a lot of people are talking about it, okay? And I want you to, to be healthy. So I think I just cut off on Instagram. I was trying to I was trying to hurry up and I think I messed up. Oh yeah, I went off. That's okay, I'll upload it for them later. Sorry, y'all. Sorry, Instagram peeps. I'll upload this later. So the point is, um, you can do the work. And, uh, oh, somebody asked me about Priscilla's. Yes, hers will be there. I had to get permission from everybody. I had to talk to— I had to talk to my brother-in-law. So hers should be there later today. Um, for those of you all who have asked, we're going to put subtitles and some bullet points down there so that you know exactly what they're about, because some of them are obvious and some of them aren't. So anyway, um, yay for all of that. But y'all, don't get caught up in all that. I need you to know that you can do the work and do the work for free. Most of the people that I know that present stuff, it's just because they know that even though you can do the work, it can take you this long to do the work because you go and dig it up yourself and figure it out on your own. Or they can say, this is what you need to know, and it takes you less time. And the only thing that you're helping them out when you support their work is for cutting your time and investing. They've said, this person knows what they're talking about, so here you go. So, but everything you need to know, honey, start with the word of God. Number one, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Then YouTube is free. It's free. Google and God, that's what Ali Worthington said. With Googling God, you can learn anything and go anywhere. And I agree. All right, y'all, I'm, I'mma log off right now. I will talk to you later. Enjoy your day and be emotionally okay. Talk to you later. Bye.