Planning Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

What “finishing strong” really means

As I write this, Christmas is exactly 30 days away. And the New Year is 37 days away. Something that tends to be a popular topic of conversation – or perhaps I experience it that way because I’m a coach – is how will you finish the year strong? I’m a big fan of finishing the year strong. I’m not someone who stops before reaching the finish line. And, just like with the concept of Christmas, the concept of “finishing strong” might hold different meanings for different people… […]

Worry is a misuse of the imagination

Posted on October 10, 2023By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Courage / Emotional Agility / Fear / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Resilience / Slow down / Thinking

Recently I asked whether your permacrisis has become a state of being? I received quite the response from this community about that article. And so today, I want to say more about it from a different perspective. I want to talk about worry and anxiety. […]

Your Future Self wants you to love yourself NOW

Posted on March 13, 2023By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Decision-Making / Dreaming / Failure / Future Self / Goals / Inspiration / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Thinking / Thriving / Transformation / Values

We have always lived in a world that is characterised by change and uncertainty. We have never lived in a world that wasn’t changing…

No-one has it all figured out, because what would be the fun in being alive if there is nothing to learn? Until the day you release your last breath, you will continue to evolve. You will continue to change. When we remember our past selves, they seem quite different to who we are now. In some instances, your past self might seem like a completely different person to you, and it may even be hard to relate to who you used to be.

We know how much our personalities and tastes have changed over the years. However, for some reason, when we look ahead to the future, somehow, we expect that we will stay the same as we are NOW. We assume that we will not change as much in the future as we have changed to get to this present moment… […]

What’s your relationship to wanting and dreaming?

Posted on January 30, 2023By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Decision-Making / Dreaming / Goals / Happiness / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Planning / Purpose / Thinking / Thriving

Whenever I’m in conversation with a new person, I invite them to dream. I invite them to consider what they want. For some peole, it’s easy to know what they want. They find it easy to dream. And for others, knowing what they want, knowing the longing of their own heart, feels unreachable or impossible. The experiences of their past are so painful, or they have fallen into pleasing others and morphing themselves into whatever they think others want them to be, so much so, that they lose their sense of who they are and what they want.

I remember a time in my life when I was so busy adapting who I was being to try and be more loveable or acceptable to others, that I had no sense of who I was. During those times, I found it hard to dream. I found it hard to even begin to know what I wanted outside of asking others’ opinions about what they thought I should want.

Recently, my coach Amber Krzys, shared an email with the title What’s your relationship to wanting? And that got me thinking… […]

Heart and Mind Goals

Posted on January 17, 2023By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Commitment / Completions / Goals / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Mindset / Planning / Purpose / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving / Time management

Today, I want to say a little more about setting goals. As I’ve shared before, I’m not a big fan of traditional New Year’s resolutions. I believe that when we are setting goals, these goals should come from our highest most authentic self, our Inner Wisdom or Inner Leader. When our goals come from this place, they are aligned with who we want to be in the world and what we feel called to create and bring into the world. When our goals come from our Ego, or from our sense of how we see ourselves falling short when we compare ourselves with others, then our goals are essentially SHOULDS and not WANTS. […]

Slow down and turn around: Honouring Completions

Posted on December 28, 2022By ChantalPosted in Celebrations / Completions / Decision-Making / Failure / Goals / Life / Meaning / Planning / Purpose / Slow down / Thinking1 Comment

The New Year often evokes within most of us the need to set new year’s resolutions. It’s an invitation to start anew with a clean slate. And it’s been my experience that so often people are so eager to move forward, that they don’t take the time to slow down, turn around, and look back to where they had come from.

At the end of last year, I wrote about the value of celebrations and why I think it’s important to choose to celebrate our successes and milestones. My thoughts here are an extension of the discussion on celebrations because I also believe there is value in truly honouring completions… […]

Will you be inviting the P Twins over for dinner this holiday?

Posted on December 21, 2022By ChantalPosted in Celebrations / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Slow down

Recently a client shared with me how stressful she finds the holidays. I invited her to tell me more and she shared that she tends to go into overdrive during the holidays. She wants everything to be perfect, and that usually means that she refuses to accept any help. She also finds that she turns into a control freak and people tend to avoid being around her when she is preparing for the holidays.

We slowed it down and I asked her what has her feeling so stressed and pushing so hard. She said, “unrealistic expectations of perfection”. I asked her who is placing these expectations upon her. My client is very self-aware, so she immediately recognised that she was placing these expectations on herself. No-one else was asking her to do all the things she commits herself to doing during the holiday season. She was doing this to herself… […]

Morning Routines

Posted on September 6, 2022By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Goals / Happiness / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Self-care / Thriving / Time management

I recently read an interesting article by Sarah K. Peck, a fellow coach and mompreneur, where she questioned the value of morning routines. She highlighted how morning routines have become very popular. These days many famous and successful people attribute their success to a solid morning routine. However, does your morning routine really support you in who you want to become? […]

What if fear is not a bad thing?

Posted on April 18, 2022By ChantalPosted in Courage / Emotional Agility / Goals / In the muck / Leadership / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Resilience / Thinking / Thriving

The other day I was helping a client work through a lot of fear and anxiety she was feeling. The way she was relating to fear was that it was a bad thing and that she shouldn’t feel so scared. And so often we do that, right? We resist the fear, telling ourselves that we shouldn’t be fearful. Yet, what we resist persists. So, the more we try and ignore our fear, the bigger it seems to get. Eventually it’s like this dark looming cloud.

Susan David says, “real courage is not fearlessness, it’s fear walking”. And she has a point. However, have you ever considered WHY you experience fear in the first place? […]

What’s your word or theme for the year?

Posted on January 16, 2022By ChantalPosted in Goals / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Planning / Purpose / Slow down / Transformation / Values

For many, this time of year often feels like an opportunity to reset and to begin again. Whatever you feel disappointed about in your life, you can course correct by setting different intentions for the new year. Many people kick off a new year by setting their New Year’s resolutions. Interestingly, I read the other day that Bill Gates isn’t one of them. Instead, Gates prefers doing a personal year-end review by asking himself a series of questions, and then settles on an intention for the new year. His ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, also doesn’t set resolutions when the new year rolls around. Instead, she selects a single word to set the tone of her year… […]