Values Archives - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

What’s Your Relationship to Failure?

How do you relate to failure? Do you believe failure is an essential part of success? Or do you believe that failure is to be avoided at all costs? How we relate to failure hugely impacts our openness and willingness towards risk taking and trying new things. If we see failure as something that is “bad” and that needs to be avoided at all costs, we will be less open to taking risks or trying things that are new, different, unfamiliar, or out of our comfort zone. However, if we believe that failure is part of the process, and that success without failure isn’t possible, we would be more willing to fail. […]

What’s Your Context to Life?

Posted on March 13, 2024By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Goals / Gratitude / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Thinking / Thriving / Transformation / Values

A question I love to ask my clients, is: What’s your context to life? This question reveals so much about how someone is relating to their experience of life. A context to life, is the story we tell ourselves about life, about ourselves, and about others. It’s the things we believe to be true about Life, about ourselves, and about other people. For example, someone might believe that Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Or they might believe that life is hard, and only the strong survive. Or they might believe that life is the relentless pursuit of more. Or that life is unfair. Or that life is a gift. Or that life is a journey.

What we tell ourselves about life, determines how we might respond to different situations IN our life. […]

What if Perfection is not required this holiday season?

Posted on December 7, 2023By ChantalPosted in Celebrations / Commitment / Compassion / Dreaming / Gratitude / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Perspective / Planning / Self-care / Slow down / Thriving / Values

Last year, at the start of the holiday season, I asked whether you would be inviting the Twin P’s over for dinner this holiday? It seems that many of us – especially women and caregivers – turn in to control freaks during the holiday season. We become frantic and tend to experience a tremendous sense of overwhelm, because we believe it’s our job to create “the perfect holiday celebration” for our family. What that usually looks like, is we want everything to be perfect – whatever that means? – we refuse to ask for or accept help from others, and we become control freaks, so we become impossible to be around. But what if it doesn’t have to be this way? […]

Life lessons I learnt from watching the Barbie movie

Posted on July 25, 2023By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Courage / Failure / Future Self / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Listening / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Thinking / Transformation / Values

This past weekend we went to the cinema and watched the new Barbie movie. I was initially very resistant to watching it. I had my own story about Barbie and that it would be a complete waste of my time to watch the movie. I was not a big fan of Barbie growing up. I had some Barbie dolls at one point. And I loved dressing the dolls. And at the same time, I felt a lot of resentment towards the stereotypes that the doll’s existence perpetuates. Barbie perpetuates an unrealistic and unattainable ideal that is very hard for most women to be confronted with. My husband was very keen though. He thought it would be funny. So, we went to see it. Here is what I learnt about life from watching the Barbie movie… […]

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 does it mean to celebrate?

Posted on December 10, 2022By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Happiness / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perfection Detox / Slow down / Thriving / Values1 Comment

As the holiday season approaches, life has brought me some interesting experiences that has me contemplating the value of celebration. The dictionary defines a celebration as “the action of marking one’s pleasure at an important event or occasion by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity.” And this time of year, tends to open people up to celebration for various reasons. Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, or anything in between, this time of year is mostly an invitation to celebrate.

And that got me thinking about my relationship to celebration… […]

Larger Than Life

Posted on October 11, 2022By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Courage / Happiness / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Perspective / Thinking / Values

One of my favourite TED Talks is a talk by Caroline McHugh on The Art of Being Yourself. I share it with all my clients at some point, because of the power of her message, which is essentially an invitation to take up the space the universe intended for you.

What does it even mean to take up space? Most of us play small. We hold on to limiting beliefs that has us playing out the same patterns over and over, and we allow fear to stop us from stepping out of those patterns. We tell ourselves stories about what we are capable of and what we are not, and we believe our own stories. We let other people tell us what should matter to us, what our priorities should be, and we spend our lives in fear of the question, “What will people think?” And very often that thought stops us from taking action on the things we value. […]

Reflections on love and belonging

Posted on July 24, 2022By ChantalPosted in Compassion / Connection / Happiness / Inspiration / Life / Love / Meaning / Values

During my second year in Canada, just before I decided to become a coach, I had a conversation with a coach about life purpose. In the coaching model she was trained in, they were taught to narrow down your life purpose to ONE word that summarises what you are all about or what you are trying to create in your lifetime. A one-word life purpose sounded absurd to me. Could you really narrow it down to just one word? And of course, I was surprised when she shared what she thought my life purpose was. She observed that it sounded like mine was connection. I’ve discovered two things since then… […]

Redefining Compassion

Posted on July 5, 2022By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Compassion / Courage / Emotional Agility / In the muck / Leadership / Life / Love / Meaning / Mindfulness / Values

During a specific phase of my PhD research, I conducted interviews with participants. One of the questions I would ask interviewees was, “What does compassion mean to you?” I would then follow up that question with a second question, “How do you demonstrate compassion in your own life?”

The aim was to get a sense of what compassion really means to people and how they live compassion in their daily lives. The Oxford Dictionary defines compassion as, “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.”

For me personally, that definition feels too narrow. It invites us to feel pity or concern for someone. It evokes within us this sense of feeling sorry for someone about what they are going through. And yet, pity falls short of what is needed. It simply levels compassion akin to sympathy, when my sense is that what is really needed is far more than just feeling sorry for someone. […]

The world needs you to be a leader

Posted on February 28, 2022By ChantalPosted in Courage / Grit / In the muck / Leadership / Life / Passion / Purpose / Slow down / Values

Over the past few days, I’ve watched with shock and horror the events unfolding in Ukraine. The fact that one person could yield so much power to literally destroy people’s lives, is appalling. And the sense of powerlessness I felt, was causing a knot in my stomach and an intense and deep ache in my heart. Coincidentally, I attended a Co-Active Leadership Experience this past weekend.

The Co-Active leadership model turns traditional assumptions about and definitions of leadership on its head. It postulates that we are all leaders and that different situations call for us to take on different leadership positions. And frankly, it’s profound, because it cultivates a true sense of power. It teaches that in any moment you can take ownership of how you want to show up and as a leader. It’s your responsibility to take ownership of your impact on the world. And we are all having an impact. […]