Gratitude Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

Why it serves you to do a year-end review

Most businesses are familiar with year-end reviews. However, I’m also an advocate for a personal year-end review. I first learned about the idea of a personal year-end review from Sarah Peck. And what I appreciate about her approach is that it is not simply about going through your list of goals to identify which ones you hit and which ones you failed to hit. No, rather a year-end review is a slowed down, deep reflection about your year. It’s an invitation to identify what you celebrate about this year, what you are most proud of, what you’ve learnt, and how you’ve grown over the last year.

Looking back over your year also helps you put into perspective the year ahead and where you want to focus your energy in the year ahead. I will share two methods here with you for doing your personal year-end review. […]

Gratitude can rewire your brain

Posted on November 29, 2021By ChantalPosted in Emotional Agility / Gratitude / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Thinking / Thriving

I’m an advocate for living a life of gratitude. I truly believe gratitude creates the foundation of a joyful life. When we can truly appreciate that which is beautiful and good in our lives, it will multiply. And starting from a place of gratitude offers a strong springboard for creating more of what we want and appreciate in our lives.

No-one can create from a space of negativity, pessimism, or complacency. But a space of gratitude offers deep joy, deep awareness of what’s here, and the inspiration to think creatively about what’s possible. It doesn’t mean we ignore the pain and frustration; it simply helps us to put the pain into perspective.

Recently I read an article by Jessica Stillman, on three unexpected habits of exceptionally grateful people where she shares that there is a difference between merely giving thanks for the obvious things in your life, or occasionally reflecting on what you are grateful for, versus practicing deep gratitude regularly. When you live from a place of deep gratitude, you literally rewire your brain to start thinking in a different way. This can be deeply transformational, because you show up differently in your life as a result of it. […]

Live as if you are on the verge of death

Posted on October 31, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Gratitude / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Perspective / Story Matters / Thinking

I’ve spent the last few weeks contemplating death. Now I know this might sound like quite a somber activity to be engaged in, and yet, it is not. You see, I’m not contemplating death in a suicidal way. I’m honouring death as a masterful teacher. It is as Michael Singer says in his book, The Untethered Soul, “It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life, turns out to be death.”

And of course, living through a global pandemic means that all of us have been confronted with death in one form or another over the last two years. Yet, no person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. […]

Living one day at a time

Posted on September 29, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Slow down

If you had to know how your entire life would unfold in advance, it would simply take the joy out of living. It would turn you into a passenger in your own life story, since you would simply be waiting for the events you know will happen, to unfold as predetermined.

So, the fact that the years of your life don’t all arrive at once, but greets you day by day, is such a gift. It provides the opportunity for agency and mystery. With the descent of each setting sun, we can rest our heads and let the world take care of itself for a while. We go to sleep at night, knowing, or perhaps hoping (because who really knows if we will get to greet another day) that the dawn will bring with it a chance to meet our lives anew. […]

Life Lessons from Running

Posted on June 13, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Resilience / Self-care / Transformation

I didn’t become a runner until much later in my life. At school I never considered myself an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I was active, but not competitive – not in sports any way. Athleticism was simply not incorporated into my self-image at the time. I was highly academic and pursued many cultural activities too, but sports were always this thing I sort of dabbled in, for the sake of team spirit, but never really because I thought I could be any good at it.

I took up running after burning out in my academic job and realising that I needed to find more balance in my life. I was over-worked, underpaid, and very unfit. I was not enjoying my life, and I was looking for a way to increase my level of activity and handle my stress better.

I wanted to share my running story here, because running has taught me so much about life. There are some incredible life lessons to take away from running and I would like to share them with you here. […]

The Magic in Dandelions

Posted on May 17, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Resilience / Slow down / Thinking / Transformation / Uncategorized

About a year ago, I wrote an article about chasing Dandelions after watching a TED Talk by Dewitt Jones. Dewitt is a photographer for the National Geographic and openly declares it to be the greatest job in the world…

I listened to Dewitt’s talk, mesmerised, and inspired. Before hearing his story, I did not take much notice of Dandelions. However, I have since come to appreciate this little flower for a couple of reasons. I will share them here. […]

It starts with gratitude…

Posted on April 26, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Happiness / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Slow down

In December of 2017, my little family and I immigrated from South Africa to Canada. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. To get myself through my first year in a foreign country, I accepted a gratitude challenge from a friend. I reasoned that “forcing” myself to find something I’m grateful for every day for a year would help me focus on what is good in my life, instead of on what is “wrong” with my life. I committed to sharing a daily gratitude post on Facebook. Somehow sharing it publicly made it more real, and I felt accountable to continue the practice every day. There were some hard days where I really felt I wanted to give up the practice. Having made the commitment to share a daily post about what I’m grateful for however, meant I would continue to honour my commitment to myself.

365 days of gratitude turned out to be the most transformational thing I could have done that year. […]

Embracing the Winter of the Mind

Posted on January 31, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Resilience / Slow down / Transformation

All my years living in South Africa, I had complained about cold winters. It wasn’t until I moved to Canada that I realised that your perception of what a cold winter is, depends very much on where you live in the world. Experiencing the winters here in Canada made me realise that it was never really that cold in South Africa. It just felt that way, because what I had been used to was extreme, dry heat in summer. So, consequently the switchover to cooler weather felt dramatic. Compared to the weather in Canada, the average winter’s day in South Africa feels about the same as the average spring day in Canada. In fact, sometimes winter in South Africa is warmer than spring here in Canada.

It also wasn’t until I lived in Canada that I understood how cold and darkness can affect your mood. I had heard about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but I wasn’t always sure if it was real, or whether people were just using the weather as an excuse to be unproductive. I had underestimated what a lack of sunshine can do to your psyche. […]

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. […]

Setting resolutions of a different kind

Posted on January 2, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Decision-Making / Gratitude / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Transformation / Values

The year 2020 was difficult and challenging in many ways. And many people were eager to say goodbye to it and to welcome 2021. I have always found it quite strange how people think that a clock striking midnight could fundamentally change their lives. You are still the same person you were one minute after midnight than one minute before midnight; unless some fundamental life-changing event transpired in the span of two minutes…

Why do we attach so much value to the countdown to a new year? We convince ourselves that we get to leave the past behind and start with a clean slate. We get to start over. Be better. Dream. Set goals. Go for it this time and really make the changes we say we want. In many ways waiting for the new year before setting those goals or making those changes, is just another way of making excuses and procrastinating or stalling on the things you know you need to change in your life. […]