Self-care Archives - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

Guilt is not a feeling

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… […]

Where and how are you adding value without seeing it?

Posted on November 4, 2024By ChantalPosted in Celebrations / Commitment / Courage / Dreaming / Failure / Future Self / Goals / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Love / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Passion / Purpose / Resilience / Self-care / Slow down / Story Matters / Thinking / Thriving / Time management / Transformation / Values

Just before the completion of the Coaching Leadership Mastermind I did with my coach, she invited the group to consider where, in which dimensions of our lives, we added value either to ourselves or to others in the past 24 hours. We worked through The Wheel of Life and considered which dimensions of our lives were enriched in the past 24 hours?

Then my coach invited us to reflect on the past week, and consider where in the past week we add value to either ourselves or others? Lastly, she invited us to review the whole month and consider in a deeper way where did we add value to ourselves or others over the past month? […]

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.”… […]

How and Why We Numb…

Posted on June 25, 2024By ChantalPosted in Compassion / Courage / Emotional Agility / Failure / Fear / Goals / Grit / In the muck / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Rejection / Resilience / Self-care / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving

Recently I shared how shame can get in the way of us living more wholeheartedly. Today I want to talk about numbing. All of us numb from time to time. Some of us numb more than others, and yet all of us numb. What does it mean to numb? Numbing is what we do to avoid feeling uncomfortable feelings. It’s what we do when we are resisting feeling our true feelings about something. And usually, we resist our true feelings about something, because we have convinced ourselves that it would be too painful to feel our feelings, or that we might get overwhelmed by our feelings if we let ourselves feel them… […]

How we overcome shame, is we own our story

Posted on June 3, 2024By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Compassion / Connection / Courage / Fear / Future Self / Gratitude / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Love / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Self-care / Story Matters

In April, I shared with you about the launch of my private six-month coaching group called Living As If You Matter. This group is all about living as if you truly matter, or as Brené Brown would put it, wholehearted living. Today I want to talk about what gets in the way of living more wholeheartedly or living as if you matter, and the antidote to it.

In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown explains that the biggest thing that gets in the way of us living more fully as our true selves, or living as if we really matter, is something that we all experience – shame. Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough. It’s the feeling that makes us want to hide or run away. It’s what sometimes makes us overreact in certain situations. According to Brené Brown, “Shame is basically the fear of being unlovable… Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.” […]

The Gifts of Imperfection

Posted on April 16, 2024By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Commitment / Compassion / Connection / Courage / Dreaming / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Listening / Love / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Purpose / Self-care / Story Matters / Thriving

A while ago I wrote an article about what your perfectionism is really trying to tell you. Perfectionism is a misunderstanding that we need to earn our self-worth or prove that we are enough or worthy. The truth is that you came into this world worthy and then got disconnected from that truth over time. So, embracing your imperfections is a way that you can choose to reclaim your inherent worthiness… […]

What Your Perfectionism is Really Trying to Tell You…

Posted on February 27, 2024By ChantalPosted in Coaching / Commitment / Compassion / Connection / Courage / Emotional Agility / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Love / Meaning / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Purpose / Rejection / Self-care / Thinking / Transformation

I have shared about my experiences with perfectionism before in my writing about a Perfection Detox: Learning to trust yourself and I have shared how I battle with my P Twins – i.e., Perfectionism and Pleasing – whenever I am navigating important situations or events in my life. Perfectionism isn’t just about wanting everything to be clean and neat, or orderly. Perfectionism can take different forms, and often people who are perfectionists, see their perfectionism as a moral compass or guideline to measure their personal “goodness” as a person. In other words, somewhere they internalised the message that they are only a good person, or lovable when they are perfect. This of course sets you up for a lifetime of struggle, frustration, and failure, because there is no such thing as the perfect person who always does everything right. So, you end up living in constant fear that someone will discover that you are not perfect, and that you will be ostracised from the very groups of people you are trying to belong with. […]

Take this with you into the last days of 2023

Posted on December 22, 2023By ChantalPosted in Celebrations / Compassion / Completions / Connection / Gratitude / Happiness / Inspiration / Life / Listening / Love / Meaning / Mindfulness / Perspective / Self-care / Slow down

Earlier this week, I sent out what I thought would be my last newsletter for this year, and then two things happened yesterday that had me feel compelled to write to you all… First, I had a conversation with a client yesterday where she shared with me the awakening and transformation she had experienced over the past two years. The second thing that happened yesterday, is that I attended a Quarrtsiluni session with a colleague who was generous enough to invite me to his event. […]

Rest is part of the work. It’s not the reward for hard work.

Posted on December 17, 2023By ChantalPosted in Happiness / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Purpose / Self-care / Slow down / Thriving

There are two times of year that I find quite intriguing. The one is just before the Summer holidays and the other is just before the Winter break for Xmas and New Year’s. People tend to get into a frenzy to “wrap everything up” or “get everything done” before they “take a break”. And some people treat their “break” as a “to do” item on their to-do list. My sense is that this is a symptom of the society we live in – a world that is always on and always on the go. I firmly believe that we are not built for speed. Human beings are not meant to be moving at the pace that we are moving in this world right now. Here is why… […]