Meaning Archives - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

In Celebration of the Feminine…

Last weekend I attended a two-day Intensive with Steve Chandler in Arizona. For those of you who don’t know, in some coaching circles Steve Chandler is referred to as “The Godfather of Coaching”. He has been a coach for forty years and brings a wealth of experience and wisdom to the work. Given his advanced age – he is 81 – I wanted to utilize the opportunity to be in the room with Steve, knowing that I might never get this opportunity again.

I’ve been coached by Steve before, and even had the opportunity to interview him last October, and yet, this time was different. I was coming to the conversation, not as a wide-eyed beginner coach, excited to meet her hero, but as a professional coach who is also established in her work, and also brings wisdom and experience to the table.

What struck me over the course of the two days was the absence of the feminine voice in the room. And I’m being deliberate and intentional with my choice of words here. What I’m longing to see more of in the coaching industry, is the emergence of the feminine voice… […]

Certainty vs. Clarity

Posted on April 27, 2026By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Commitment / Connection / Courage / Decision-Making / Dreaming / Emotional Agility / Failure / Future Self / Goals / Gratitude / Grief / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Thriving / TransformationLeave a comment

Do you believe you need certainty before you can take action? Today, I want to distinguish between certainty and clarity. The one is impossible to obtain, and the other is essential if you are truly going to thrive and stay committed to your most important goals. […]

You don’t need to deserve to thrive to choose to thrive…

Posted on April 14, 2026By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Courage / Fear / Future Self / Goals / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Story Matters / Thinking / Thriving / Transformation

In a recent article I posed the question: What do you believe you deserve? Today I want to explore this question: What if there is a reason why you don’t question whether other people deserve to thrive?

You see, our innate being is one of wellbeing and of thriving. We are meant to grow, learn, expand, flourish, thrive… It’s built into our DNA. If you consider how much a baby grows and learns in their first year of life, and how much can change in the first five years of life, you have witnessed the wonder of our innate ability to grow and thrive.

What’s even more amazing, is how adaptable we are, and how our nervous systems will adapt to the environment we find ourselves in. We will cultivate behaviours that will help us survive in any environment, and over time, those behaviours become our habits and our patterns.

Anything that is learnt, can be unlearnt… […]

What do you believe you deserve?

Posted on April 6, 2026By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Compassion / Connection / Courage / Dreaming / Goals / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Self-care / Story Matters / Thinking / Thriving1 Comment

In 2024 I led a private coaching group called Living As If You Matter. At the completion of this group, I gave each of the participants a small silver journal. I invited them to treat the journal as a Dreams and Desires Journal and to write down 100 dreams, desires, longings, or wants in it. I also promised each of the participants a complimentary conversation if they wrote down their dreams and desires, and then reached out to me to let me know that they had completed their list.

The other day I invited a client to guess how many women reached out to me after receiving their dreams and desire journals. My client said, “Well I would hope all of them reached out.” I asked her why, and she said that she would have a hard time coming up with a list of 100, and that she hoped someone else had the courage to come up with a list of 100…

My client captured the essence of what I have heard over and over again during the past seven months in conversations with women about thriving. People are struggling to let themselves thrive. Why? It’s very simple really, they don’t believe that they deserve to… […]

What is driving your desire for more?

Posted on March 25, 2026By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Courage / Future Self / Goals / Gratitude / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Passion / Perfection Detox / Purpose / Thinking / Thriving

In my most recent article I talked about the drive to do more, and I questioned the desire for abundance. This may have left the impression with you that I’m saying that wanting more is bad. And that is not what I’m saying at all.

Over the past three years, I have discovered that there are two kinds of desire for more… […]

What is the opposite of scarcity?

Posted on March 25, 2026By ChantalPosted in Courage / Failure / Fear / Gratitude / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Purpose / Resilience / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving

In a conversation with a client who is in the exploration of her own thriving, she mentioned how, in her incessant drive for more, she often mistakes momentum for meaning. And this is a symptom of living in a manic world driven by a scarcity mindset… Robert Holden calls this our destination addiction.

When we believe that there is not enough, that we are not enough, or that we will not have enough, we also inevitably believe that more is better, and we start to think that the whole point of life is to keep chasing more until we arrive at the ever-elusive destination where we finally “have it all”.

Lynne Twist reasons this is how we keep the scarcity mindset alive. We have been conditioned to focus on what we lack, not on what we already have. When we pay attention to what we lack, we inevitably believe that more is always better, and we act as if there is simply no other way to be in the world. This is just how it is. What we don’t see, is how we then trap ourselves on a hamster wheel that we can never escape… […]

Will you leave a legacy of surviving or thriving?

Posted on March 15, 2026By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Compassion / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Gratitude / Grief / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Love / Meaning / Purpose / Story Matters / Thriving / Transformation

When I was completing my master’s degree, our professor would always talk about living your dash – which was perhaps a not so elegant way to talk about how we choose to spend the time between our date of birth and our date of death.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my father’s passing, and it has me thinking about how he lived his dash, and how all of us live our dashes. […]

What does it mean to thrive?

Posted on March 4, 2026By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Bias for action / Commitment / Connection / Courage / Dreaming / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Goals / Gratitude / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Resilience / Story Matters / Thriving / Transformation / Values

Over the last two years I have sat with this question: What does it mean to thrive? I used to believe that if I could achieve enough outside success, then I would thrive.

When I started my coaching business, I read The Prosperous Coach, in the hopes that I could figure out how to prosper – which is another word for thrive. I was longing to find the secret to thriving / prospering / flourishing / expanding. And I will be honest, initially I thought that I would feel like I was thriving if I were making more money and if I was really successful in my business… […]

What is Love?

Posted on February 14, 2026By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Commitment / Compassion / Connection / Life / Love / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Self-care / Thriving

Today large parts of the world are celebrating Valentine’s Day. I find it so strange that we live in a world where we have commercialised everything to the point that even the most important things in our lives can lose their meaning and significance.

I have always found the idea of Valentine’s Day a little absurd since love cannot be bought or sold. Love is not a commodity. And creating a day where we remind people of their own loneliness, disconnection, and insecurities seems like the opposite of loving to me. It seems almost cruel. I’m not saying don’t appreciate your significant other, but I am questioning why you need a reminder to do that, or why they only get to be seen and celebrated on ONE day of the year.

Love isn’t a feeling either. The feeling you feel when you say that you are in love, is infatuation, desire, or lust. Love, real love, is an ACTION. Love is a way of being in the world. It’s the opposite of judgement. […]

What season of Life are you in right now?

Posted on January 14, 2026By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Commitment / Completions / Courage / Decision-Making / Dreaming / Future Self / Goals / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving / Time management / Transformation / Values

The other day at my son’s Hip Hop class some of the other moms were discussing camps they were booking for their children for Summer. Summer?! It’s January. We are still in Winter. I laughed a little at their urgency around needing to get their Summer camps booked now. This event left me with two thoughts… […]