life Archives - Page 7 of 8 - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

Live as if you are on the verge of death

I’ve spent the last few weeks contemplating death. Now I know this might sound like quite a somber activity to be engaged in, and yet, it is not. You see, I’m not contemplating death in a suicidal way. I’m honouring death as a masterful teacher. It is as Michael Singer says in his book, The Untethered Soul, “It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life, turns out to be death.”

And of course, living through a global pandemic means that all of us have been confronted with death in one form or another over the last two years. Yet, no person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. […]

Living one day at a time

Posted on September 29, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Slow down

If you had to know how your entire life would unfold in advance, it would simply take the joy out of living. It would turn you into a passenger in your own life story, since you would simply be waiting for the events you know will happen, to unfold as predetermined.

So, the fact that the years of your life don’t all arrive at once, but greets you day by day, is such a gift. It provides the opportunity for agency and mystery. With the descent of each setting sun, we can rest our heads and let the world take care of itself for a while. We go to sleep at night, knowing, or perhaps hoping (because who really knows if we will get to greet another day) that the dawn will bring with it a chance to meet our lives anew. […]

Embracing the change in seasons

Posted on September 13, 2021By ChantalPosted in Emotional Agility / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Story Matters / Thinking

Just as seasons change, our moods and emotions fluctuate. A state of perfect happiness is not sustainable or realistic. Life ebbs and flows, and I want to be open to all my emotions. You see, emotions are merely data points. They tell us what is going on. So, even when we find ourselves in a state of sadness or melancholy, that is not bad. It simply is. The invitation is to lean into whatever you’re feeling and ask yourself what’s going on that is causing that emotion?

Given everything that is going on in the world – especially of late – it is fairly easy to become negative, despondent, sad, even angry. And yet, when we treat our feelings as facts, we allow outside factors to dictate how we feel on the inside.

The real challenge is to remain in a state of equilibrium regardless of what is happening in the outside world; to choose our response to life, even though there might be reasons to feel unhappy, frustrated, angry, and so on. […]

Become a Cycle Breaker

Posted on August 30, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Decision-Making / Emotional Agility / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Passion / Perspective / Purpose / Resilience / Self-care / Story Matters / Transformation / Values

One of the most important lessons I’ve learnt in my time working with my coach, is to appreciate that things in my life happen FOR me, not TO me. Everything in your life can be used for your growth and learning. EVERYTHING. Even the things that seem insignificant. And most especially the things that cause you the most frustration and heartache.

I feel compelled to share something vulnerable with you here. Healing from abuse, neglect, trauma, and violence is never easy. Sometimes it requires heroic effort to not fall into self-destructive patterns. It requires self-awareness, a deep inner knowing that things can and will be better, and that you are capable of change. It requires committed effort to learning, growing, healing, forgiving, and to never stop trying. […]

The Hero’s Journey

Posted on August 10, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Failure / Grit / In the muck / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Passion / Perspective / Purpose / Story Matters / Transformation

Did you know that you are a hero? You might be thinking that a hero is someone who rushes into a dangerous situation to save others. And you might be thinking to yourself that I’ve lost the plot – unless of course, you have rushed into a dangerous situation and saved others.

Hero’s come in all shapes and sizes. And we all get to be the hero of our own story. Your life is your blank canvas. You get to paint any story you want. We all have spiritual curriculum to complete here on earth. We are all here to learn something; to grow something in ourselves. When you heed the call, you become the hero of your own story. When you don’t heed the call, you avoid the journey that would make you the hero of your own story.

My encouragement is that your life is an open invitation to embark on your own hero’s journey. Let’s look at the twelve stages of the hero’s journey and I’ll explain… […]

Fierce loving and Emotional agility

Posted on July 26, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Emotional Agility / Failure / Life / Meaning / Resilience / Self-care / Values

Traditionally, emotions were viewed as either good or bad. People actively work to avoid feeling any of the so-called “bad” emotions. And in some cultures, even the active expression of what could be considered “good” emotions is discouraged. In some cultures, if someone is overly enthusiastic or exuberant, they are told to quiet down or to stop over-reacting, or to behave.

Susan David, author of the ground-breaking book, Emotional Agility, believes that this traditional, black-and-white approach to emotions is too rigid. In her view a too rigid view of emotions limits our potential, gets us stuck, and could potentially be truly toxic; especially given the complexity of life we face every day. For this reason, she advocates for emotional agility if we are to truly thrive and remain resilient. […]

Let’s talk about purpose…

Posted on July 6, 2021By ChantalPosted in Courage / Decision-Making / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Passion / Perspective / Purpose / Thinking

“…we, and I mean humans, are meaning makers. We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them. We make meanings because meaninglessness terrifies us above all things. More than snakes, even. More than falling, or the dark. We trick ourselves into seeing meanings in things, when in fact all we are doing is grafting our meanings onto the universe to comfort ourselves. We gild the chaos of the universe with our symbols. To admit that something is meaningless is just like falling backward into darkness.” ― Benjamin Hale

I love this quote by Benjamin Hale, because it beautifully summarises our biggest fear in life – i.e., what if this is all meaningless? What if none of this means anything? Do you think other animals ever contemplate the meaning of their existence or the meaning of specific events? So far, we don’t have any evidence that they do. It seems that questioning the meaning of things is a uniquely human characteristic. And as Benjamin Hale describes here, we graft our own meanings to the universe to comfort ourselves; to soothe the underlying unease we feel when we consider the possibility that it might all be meaningless.

So, why does meaninglessness terrify us? Why do we question the meaning of things? Victor Frankl went as far as postulating that the most fundamental human need is the need to find meaning. It’s what remains after we’ve been stripped of all our other needs, wants, and desires. In extreme circumstances, the meaning we attribute to something can determine whether we give up or keep pushing forward; it could literally mean the difference between staying alive and surrendering to death. […]

Life Lessons from Running

Posted on June 13, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Resilience / Self-care / Transformation

I didn’t become a runner until much later in my life. At school I never considered myself an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I was active, but not competitive – not in sports any way. Athleticism was simply not incorporated into my self-image at the time. I was highly academic and pursued many cultural activities too, but sports were always this thing I sort of dabbled in, for the sake of team spirit, but never really because I thought I could be any good at it.

I took up running after burning out in my academic job and realising that I needed to find more balance in my life. I was over-worked, underpaid, and very unfit. I was not enjoying my life, and I was looking for a way to increase my level of activity and handle my stress better.

I wanted to share my running story here, because running has taught me so much about life. There are some incredible life lessons to take away from running and I would like to share them with you here. […]

Listening to the quiet whisper of your Inner Wisdom: It doesn’t always have to be a “Hell Yes!”

Posted on March 29, 2021By ChantalPosted in Coaching / Courage / Decision-Making / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Story Matters / Thinking / Transformation

Recently I read a blog post by Carolyn Freyer-Jones where she was questioning whether an average or sometimes even hesitant yes could be enough to get started on a big transformation or transition. There’s a lot of talk in the coaching profession that reasons that, “If it’s not a HELL YES, it’s a no.”

So, when deciding whether to change jobs, start a business, leave a dysfunctional or unhappy relationship, get married, have a child, or not have a child, start working with a coach, go to therapy, or anything else that might fundamentally change your life, the reasoning is that unless it’s a big and resounding yes – a HUGE, LOUD and INTENSE yes, it’s not really yes. It’s no. […]

Contemplating Death

Posted on July 14, 2020By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Perspective / Thinking

I recently read The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer, and in the penultimate chapter he encourages the reader to contemplate death. I found this suggested practice aligned with the Stoic practice of negative visualisation which involves imagining what life would be like without the people or things you love in an attempt to help you appreciate what you have more. We tend to take the people closest to us for granted, and we tend to ignore the simple yet profound things in our life that actually make our lives worth living. […]