In the muck Archives - Page 6 of 8 - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

You don’t need to burn out to succeed

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. […]

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. […]

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? […]

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. […]

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. […]

You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems…

Posted on January 15, 2021By ChantalPosted in Decision-Making / Failure / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Resilience / Thinking / Transformation

As I mentioned in my blog post about Creating Your Year with Intention and Focus, the start of a new year is usually a time to set goals and to commit anew to the person you want to become. However, so often people don’t follow through on those initial new year’s resolutions. As soon as the novelty of the new year wears off, most of us fall back into our old behaviour patterns and forget how we promised ourselves that this year will be different.

Let’s be clear, we are creatures of habits, and our habits often become so ingrained that we don’t even see our habits as habits. We simply think of them as how we are, or who we are. Some habits have been part of our life for so long that they are part of our identity. It’s how we see ourselves. For example, being a non-smoker, or a smoker, being vegetarian, being a runner, or someone who likes routine, being an anxious person, or someone who questions everything, etc. […]

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. […]

The true meaning of Resilience

Posted on December 9, 2020By ChantalPosted in Courage / Failure / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Resilience / Slow down / Transformation / Values

A few months ago, I wrote about how to cultivate resilience. Although most of what I shared in that article is true, I do feel like I need to expand on the idea of resilience a bit. I recently completed my training as a Certified Resilience Coach through the Leadership Wellness Group in Canada. Most of what I learned in the program, was not new to me. I’ve worked with these concepts and ideas for many years – especially during my time as a university lecturer, specialising in Organisational Behaviour and Organisational Wellness. Now, working as a coach, this knowledge has served me well in supporting my clients in cultivating their own resilience.

I think the main way in which my thinking about resilience has changed, is in how I talk to my clients about it. People often mistakenly think that resilience is a character or personality trait or that overcoming difficult situations or circumstances, makes you resilient. However, I have realised two important things about resilience. Firstly, resilience is not a personality trait that some people possess, and others don’t. Resilience – just like emotional agility or mental agility – can be learned. And secondly, it’s not overcoming difficult situations or circumstances that makes you resilient. In fact, it’s the other way around, it’s if and when you are resilient that you are able to overcome challenges or difficult situations. Let me explain. […]

Our backpack of boulders: The agreements we make with ourselves

Posted on November 11, 2020By ChantalPosted in Decision-Making / Failure / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Thinking / Values

In conversation with my coach the other day, she likened our spiritual journey here on earth to that of hiking with a backpack full of boulders on your back.

Starting in childhood, and continuing through adolescence and adulthood, we accumulate beliefs, assumptions, fears, and anxieties triggered by both positive experiences, and hardships and challenges we face. These beliefs, assumptions, fears, and anxieties – like “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not smart enough”, “Losing wait is hard”, “People who have money are greedy”, “Trust no-one. People will always hurt you”, “Only some people get to be creative”, “I will never be successful”, “I’m attractive. My appearance is the only thing that makes me likeable”, etc. – are like rocks that we pick up and carry around in a backpack, with some rocks being bigger and heavier than others. Each of us has a bag of rocks that we have accumulated over the course of our lives and now carry around on our backs. Some rocks are small and can easily be discarded. Others are much bigger and more difficult to discard. […]