Courage Archives - Page 5 of 6 - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

The Hero’s Journey

Did you know that you are a hero? You might be thinking that a hero is someone who rushes into a dangerous situation to save others. And you might be thinking to yourself that I’ve lost the plot – unless of course, you have rushed into a dangerous situation and saved others.

Hero’s come in all shapes and sizes. And we all get to be the hero of our own story. Your life is your blank canvas. You get to paint any story you want. We all have spiritual curriculum to complete here on earth. We are all here to learn something; to grow something in ourselves. When you heed the call, you become the hero of your own story. When you don’t heed the call, you avoid the journey that would make you the hero of your own story.

My encouragement is that your life is an open invitation to embark on your own hero’s journey. Let’s look at the twelve stages of the hero’s journey and I’ll explain… […]

Fierce loving and Emotional agility

Posted on July 26, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Emotional Agility / Failure / Life / Meaning / Resilience / Self-care / Values

Traditionally, emotions were viewed as either good or bad. People actively work to avoid feeling any of the so-called “bad” emotions. And in some cultures, even the active expression of what could be considered “good” emotions is discouraged. In some cultures, if someone is overly enthusiastic or exuberant, they are told to quiet down or to stop over-reacting, or to behave.

Susan David, author of the ground-breaking book, Emotional Agility, believes that this traditional, black-and-white approach to emotions is too rigid. In her view a too rigid view of emotions limits our potential, gets us stuck, and could potentially be truly toxic; especially given the complexity of life we face every day. For this reason, she advocates for emotional agility if we are to truly thrive and remain resilient. […]

Let’s talk about purpose…

Posted on July 6, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Decision-Making / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Passion / Perspective / Purpose / Thinking

“…we, and I mean humans, are meaning makers. We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them. We make meanings because meaninglessness terrifies us above all things. More than snakes, even. More than falling, or the dark. We trick ourselves into seeing meanings in things, when in fact all we are doing is grafting our meanings onto the universe to comfort ourselves. We gild the chaos of the universe with our symbols. To admit that something is meaningless is just like falling backward into darkness.” ― Benjamin Hale

I love this quote by Benjamin Hale, because it beautifully summarises our biggest fear in life – i.e., what if this is all meaningless? What if none of this means anything? Do you think other animals ever contemplate the meaning of their existence or the meaning of specific events? So far, we don’t have any evidence that they do. It seems that questioning the meaning of things is a uniquely human characteristic. And as Benjamin Hale describes here, we graft our own meanings to the universe to comfort ourselves; to soothe the underlying unease we feel when we consider the possibility that it might all be meaningless.

So, why does meaninglessness terrify us? Why do we question the meaning of things? Victor Frankl went as far as postulating that the most fundamental human need is the need to find meaning. It’s what remains after we’ve been stripped of all our other needs, wants, and desires. In extreme circumstances, the meaning we attribute to something can determine whether we give up or keep pushing forward; it could literally mean the difference between staying alive and surrendering to death. […]

You don’t need to burn out to succeed

Posted on May 31, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Failure / Grit / In the muck / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Passion / Perspective / Resilience / Self-care / Slow down / Values

Susan David highlights that success — in life, in work, in creative pursuits — is often synonymous with keeping our noses to the grindstone as we rack up the requisite 10 000 hours of mastery that Malcolm Gladwell popularised.

There are many reasons to celebrate grit. The things we value most in life, like meaningful relationships, and pursuing work that matter to us, or building the requisite skill to thrive in life and work, those things require commitment and persistence to get you through challenging times. Sometimes persisting even when faced with failure and disappointment, delivers incredible results in terms of innovation or personal growth and transformation.

However, despite its many virtues, it is possible to overvalue grittiness. Susan David postulates that the self-awareness to know when to quit is just as important as the discipline to hold on and grit your way through. There are times in your life, when perseverance doesn’t lead to you thriving, but instead to you burning out. Perseverance is a necessary ingredient for human thriving, but we must be thoughtful about what we’re persevering at and why. […]

How to create a good day

Posted on April 8, 2021By ChantalPosted in Coaching / Courage / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Self-care / Slow down / Time management / Transformation / Values

A powerful coaching question I often pose to clients is “What does your ideal day look like?” or “What would constitute a perfect day for you?” This is one way to get someone to think about what they would like their life to look like day by day, or to consciously think about how they would want to create their life one day at a time.

Some clients can immediately describe their perfect day. Some clients don’t actually know what would constitute a perfect day for them; usually because they’ve never been confronted with that question before. It’s so easy to simply live on autopilot, that so many of us do it without even realising. Worse still, is you tell yourself that you can’t take time out from your busy schedules to think about what you actually want.

But think about it, if you don’t know what you want and you don’t actually know whether you are truly happy and fulfilled, where are you going then? What are you chasing? […]

Perfection Detox: Learning to trust yourself

Posted on April 5, 2021By ChantalPosted in Coaching / Courage / Grit / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Resilience / Self-care / Story Matters / Thinking

In 2018 Petra Kolber released her book, The Perfection Detox. I had pre-ordered the book and was very excited to start reading it. By that time in my life, I had come a long way and I had accepted that I was in fact a perfectionist with an insatiable need for perfection and control. So, I was looking forward to embarking on my own perfection detox. I had the book. I thought I was ready, and yet the detox never happened. Why? Well, it’s kind of a long story… […]

Listening to the quiet whisper of your Inner Wisdom: It doesn’t always have to be a “Hell Yes!”

Posted on March 29, 2021By ChantalPosted in Coaching / Courage / Decision-Making / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Story Matters / Thinking / Transformation

Recently I read a blog post by Carolyn Freyer-Jones where she was questioning whether an average or sometimes even hesitant yes could be enough to get started on a big transformation or transition. There’s a lot of talk in the coaching profession that reasons that, “If it’s not a HELL YES, it’s a no.”

So, when deciding whether to change jobs, start a business, leave a dysfunctional or unhappy relationship, get married, have a child, or not have a child, start working with a coach, go to therapy, or anything else that might fundamentally change your life, the reasoning is that unless it’s a big and resounding yes – a HUGE, LOUD and INTENSE yes, it’s not really yes. It’s no. […]

Cultivating an intrinsic sense of happiness and wellbeing

Posted on March 5, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Slow down / Story Matters / Transformation / Uncategorized / Values

Recently, Daniel Goleman shared in his newsletter, his ideas on happiness. He explains that there is a difference between the kind of happiness that depends on what happens to us on any particular day, and a deeper sense of joy or satisfaction that comes from within. The first can easily take a dive whenever there’s adversity. Any negative situation can cause us to fall out of happiness – e.g., a global pandemic and a time of lockdown, economic recession, natural disasters, etc. And let’s face it, bad things happen often, so if our sense of joy and fulfillment depends on factors outside of ourselves, we have basically elected to ride an emotional roller coaster every day.

The second form of happiness offers a sort of inoculation against these ups and downs. Goleman refers to it as being “happy for no reason.” Some would probably equate it to a type of Stoicism where you are unaffected by anything that happens outside of yourself.

I have spent some time thinking about this and even though I agree with Goleman that cultivating an inner state of happiness or wellbeing is preferable, I do want to clarify some misconceptions about what that means or what it should look like. Cultivating inner joy does not mean that you are unaffected by what happens outside of you. It simply means that you have a stable base to return to and that you have accepted certain truths in life and no longer push against those truths. I would like to discuss some of these truths to help you, dear reader, navigate this landscape of cultivating a sense of inner wellbeing. […]

Emotional agility and self-care in times of complexity

Posted on February 25, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Perspective / Resilience / Self-care

Over the last few weeks most of the conversations I’ve been having, have been around feeling more tired than usual – exhausted actually. 2020 took its toll on all of us and it seems that even though we are making slow progress, the end is not in sight yet. This new now is here to stay for a while longer.

More specifically, I think the level of exhaustion people are experiencing currently ties into the time of year. January is the month of new beginnings and resolutions. We resolve to become better people and do more. We resolve to become fitter, healthier, happier, and more productive. And I think this year, there was the added nuance, of wanting more for ourselves than we felt we allowed ourselves in 2020. It’s like the whole world held its breath for the whole of 2020 and waited to exhale once the countdown into the new year was over.

However, the exhale never came. Instead, we are still holding our breaths, still waiting for the green light for life to get back to “normal”. And this constant state of expectation and hesitation is adding to the level of exhaustion people currently experience.

February is here. The novelty of the new year has worn off. Now we are simply in another year, going around the sun one more time, and now the reality of it all has hit us. We are still in the middle of a global pandemic, still trying to make sense of the loss, trauma, and grief we experienced in 2020. We are still trying to find a new rhythm to the chaos that is our lives. And there seems to be no rest in sight, no communal sigh of relief that we’ve finally reached the end of this, and we can now just get on with it. […]

What’s in a story?

Posted on January 29, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Failure / Gratitude / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Story Matters / Transformation

About two years ago I read the book Become a Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley and a line in the book has stuck with me ever since: “You are already standing on a mountain of value. Your story is valuable. Your experience is unique. You are highly valuable as you are.”

I consider myself a go-getter. I’m decisive and I take action. I’ve always believed that I get to create my life and that where I started did not define me. I don’t think I ever slowed down to consider how my experiences – i.e., my story – had shaped the person I am today. I think I had an intellectual understanding of that, but I wouldn’t really say that I could access that knowing on a deep intuitive level. […]