Perspective Archives - Page 2 of 10 - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

Are you judging how you are showing up?

During the Summer I took a trip to Whistler with my family. Whistler is a town north of Vancouver, British Columbia, that’s home to Whistler Blackcomb, one of the largest ski resorts in North America. People go there to ski in the Winter, and they go there for adventure biking in the Summer. There is a cable-car (gondola) that takes you up Whistler Mountain. Additionally, there is another gondola that takes you between the two peaks of Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain. This is called the Peak-to-Peak gondola and is an epic ride up the mountain.

Once you are half-way up Whistler Mountain, there is an option to take an open chairlift to the peak of Whistler Mountain. The Peak Express chairlift is your access to the Top of the World Summit, Cloudraker Skybridge and Raven’s Eye Lookout. This chairlift ride is an exhilarating experience that takes you over top of an ancient glacier while cresting over a 100-foot vertical cliff at the top.

I have a morbid fear of falling – not heights, I’m pretty ok with being high up. I’m terrified of falling though, so I don’t like feeling like I might fall. So, going up the mountain in an open chairlift was not an option I was even considering. It was clear in my mind that that was something I could not do… […]

The Truth about Perfectionism

Posted on August 6, 2025By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Celebrations / Commitment / Compassion / Courage / Emotional Agility / Failure / Fear / Goals / Gratitude / Grief / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Love / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Passion / Perspective / Purpose / Resilience / Slow down / Story Matters / Thriving

In April of this year, I did a thing. With the gentle nudging of my coach, I participated in a professional rebranding photo shoot. The photo shoot took place in the midst of tremendous grief and sorrow. I was still reeling from the shock of my father’s passing. If I’m being honest, I’m still reeling from it now. There are days where the grief of it is so intense that my heart physically aches, and the tears have a valve of their own that cannot be turned off…

And yet, the photos are more real, more authentic, more true than any photos I have ever taken. They reflect someone who is more grounded, more present, more connected to herself, Life, and others. They reflect who I am without any filters or pretense. They are raw and real. They are vulnerable. They are beautiful.

This photo shoot in April was not some spur of the moment, spontaneous event. It was part of a much larger agreement with my coach to start to see myself more clearly, to claim the value of the work that I do, and to realign my brand to clearly reflect that. It was part of a project called “Seeing Myself”.

Why am I sharing this with you, and what does seeing myself have to do with the title of this article? Everything really. When we slow it down… […]

What do you believe to be true about you?

Posted on June 15, 2025By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Commitment / Compassion / Courage / Failure / Fear / Gratitude / Grief / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Love / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Purpose / Resilience / Story Matters / Thinking / Thriving / Transformation

My father died believing he was a failure. From his perspective, he had failed, because he had been unable to secure full-time employment after losing his job during the pandemic. He lost his house and had almost no money when he died. He based a lot of his self worth on external measures of success, and he believed that he did not measure up. However, that’s now what I saw or believed… […]

Who do you become when faced with what matters most to you?

Posted on May 28, 2025By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Commitment / Connection / Courage / Failure / Fear / Grief / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Listening / Love / Meaning / Perspective / Purpose / Self-care / Slow down / Story Matters / Values

A few weeks ago, in conversation with a client, she asked a powerful question: How do I know what my truth is? The answer to that question is multi-layered. Here’s why… […]

Little earthquakes: How grief and trauma shapes us

Posted on May 8, 2025By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Compassion / Connection / Courage / Emotional Agility / Fear / Gratitude / Grief / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Love / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Slow down / Story Matters / Transformation

I recently finished reading, Little Earthquakes: A memoir by Sarah Mandel where she recounts the heartbreaking story of her six year long battle with stage four metastatic breast cancer and the ensuing trauma that unfolded from that. Mandel was a therapist who used narrative therapy to help her clients work through their trauma, and then chose to apply her own therapy methods in the writing of her memoir. It was a way for her to make sense of the trauma she had walked through… […]

What’s the difference between self-improvement and self-growth?

Posted on January 21, 2025By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Bias for action / Commitment / Completions / Courage / Dreaming / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Goals / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Self-care / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving / Transformation

Usually in January we hear a lot of talk about goals, dreams, aspirations, ways that we are going to be better and do better. This time of year tends to be a time when there is a heavy focus on self-improvement. Although, I will say that this year, I feel like the energy is different. I don’t know if it’s only on my side of the world, or whether you have experienced something similar? And I’m attributing it to all that is occurring in the world at the moment – wars, elections, wildfires. One colleague said what I was thinking. He said, “It feels like it’s the pandemic all over again…”

I will share that that is certainly where my fear-based mind went immediately, because I remember that there were these out-of-control wildfires in Australia at the beginning of 2020 just before the pandemic really hit. And if you are feeling less inspired and excited this January, I want to invite you to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. My sense is that in many ways, we are still recovering from the trauma of the pandemic, and that our nervous systems are constantly bombarded with more things to process. And it’s a lot. It really is.

And this is why I want to discuss the difference between self-improvement and self-growth… […]

Guilt is not a feeling

Posted on December 17, 2024By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Commitment / Compassion / Connection / Courage / Decision-Making / Emotional Agility / Failure / Fear / Happiness / In the muck / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Listening / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Self-care / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving / Values

These past few weeks I’ve been riddled with guilt, so much so that my guilt would wake me up in the middle of the night, and I would feel my heart beating in my chest, and my mind racing with worry. So often, my clients share how they carry their own guilt for choices they’ve made, especially when others do not approve of those choices.

Recently, I had a deep conversation with my coach about guilt, and I had a profound insight that has changed the way I see my guilt. And I want to share with you here what I’ve learnt about guilt… […]

The Things We Avoid…

Posted on November 18, 2024By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Commitment / Completions / Decision-Making / Failure / Fear / Goals / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Thinking / Thriving / Time management

My coach recently gifted me a book by Michael Neill called Things I’m Avoiding Doing: A four-week program to overcome procrastination and get shit done. The title of the book is misleading, because it makes it sounds like the focus of the book is to learn how to get over procrastination and get more done. In a world, where we are already overloaded with too much to do, it’s probably not surprising that we are not getting everything done. And yet, when you read the book, you’ll discover that it’s not really about getting more shit done, and that Michael Neill doesn’t believe that procrastination is actually real… […]

The Paradox of Self-Improvement

Posted on October 16, 2024By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Connection / Courage / Future Self / Goals / Gratitude / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Resilience / Self-care / Thinking / Thriving / Transformation

Something that we all share as human beings, is the desire for learning and growth. It’s built into our DNA to want to learn and grow. If you don’t believe me, simply spend some time with babies and you will see it. We learn more in the first year of life than in any other time in our lives. We are simply geared towards learning, because learning things helps us survive, and even once we have figured out how to survive, learning helps us go from merely surviving to thriving. If you consider the technological advancement of humanity, it becomes quite evident that we want to grow, learn, and expand. We almost can’t help ourselves.

What I’m most baffled by though is how our natural instinct for learning and growth then starts morphing into a need for self-improvement and/or self-betterment, and then sometimes even morphing into an obsession with perfectionism. The idea of self-improvement has been with us for centuries. Even the great philosophers advocated for continuous self-improvement. And yet, I feel like there is a tipping point where self-improvement becomes toxic… […]

Self-care in times of chaos

Posted on September 17, 2024By ChantalPosted in Celebrations / Commitment / Compassion / Courage / Decision-Making / Emotional Agility / Future Self / Goals / Gratitude / Grit / In the muck / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Resilience / Self-care / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving / Time management

The energy in September tends to be similar to that of the start of the year. Once back from Summer break, people now need to recommit to work, and schedules, and often with the start of the new school year, and after having a break, we vow that we will start doing things differently…It’s interesting how I found myself in the first week of September, already wondering how I will get through the rest of September… Perhaps this feels familiar to you too? And yet, often, even when I feel less resourced, I find myself still pushing through. One of the stories running in the background was, “You can’t be tired now. You just came back from a vacation.”… […]