Transformation Archives - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

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

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… […]

Do you find it hard to be who you are…?

Posted on April 13, 2026By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Courage / Fear / Happiness / Inspiration / Integrity / Leadership / Life / Perspective / Purpose / Story Matters / Thriving / TransformationLeave a comment

“It is easier to try to be better than you are, than to be who you are.” – This quote by Marian Woodman struck me. So often we treat ourselves like self-improvement projects, thinking that if we could only be better than we are, then everything would be the way we want it to be. If we could achieve that elusive level of perfection, then we would finally be happy, and have all the love, joy, and abundance we are craving…

At least, I know this was true for me. I started working with my coach, with the hope that it would help me figure out what was wrong with me, and that I could then fix myself. My coach was unwilling to participate in that experiment, and she kept treating me as if there was nothing wrong with me. I was baffled.

And now, seven years later, I get it. None of us are broken. We are simply disconnected from our true nature. We have allowed for so much conditioning to settle into our minds, hearts, and even bodies, that we have completely forgotten who we are… […]

What’s the relationships you have with your body?

Posted on March 21, 2026By ChantalPosted in Compassion / Courage / Gratitude / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Love / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Rejection / Self-care / Thinking / Thriving / Transformation1 Comment

This past weekend I spent time in a workshop with Michael Neill. It was a conversation about health, and it got me thinking about the relationship we have with our bodies. And so today, I want to invite you to consider: what is your current relationship with your body? […]

Do you feel like you are behind in life?

Posted on March 19, 2026By ChantalPosted in Failure / Fear / Goals / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving / Time management / Transformation

At the start of the new school year in September, my daughter’s music teacher handed her a recorder. One of the skills she is mastering this year in Grade 4, is learning to play the recorder. She loves music and loves learning.

Since September she has practiced every single day. And every time she masters a new song, she receives a new colour belt. The goal, I’m told, is to first get her first black belt, then reach three gold belts, which will unlock the ultimate prize – a rainbow-coloured belt. She is obsessed with rainbows, so of course a rainbow-coloured belt is the ultimate coveted item right now. I’ll be honest, there have been days where I have had to remind myself that the noise is part of the journey, and that she can’t improve her skill without practice.

Then one day it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard her play in a while. A curious question as to why I haven’t heard her play, resulted in tears. “All my friends have moved on to black belts, and I’m still stuck at purple. I’m so far behind…”

And there it was. The cry I’ve heard so many times from friends, loved ones, and especially from clients – they fear that they are behind in some way. This is not a new phenomenon, and my daughter certainly isn’t the only one experiencing the feeling of being behind in life. In fact, it saddens me that she is already feeling behind at such a young age… […]

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 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… […]

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… […]

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… […]