perspective Archives - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

Can a flat tire give you a headache?

I’m currently listening to Life Loves You by Louise Hay and Robert Holden and in Chapter 3 of the book Robert Holden shares about a talk he once attended on the mind where the presenter posed the question: “Can a flat tire really give you a headache?” The reasoning was that you might complain about getting a flat tire, and you might even feel like you have a serious headache after having to deal with replacing a flat tire, but is it really the flat tire that is giving you the headache? The only way the flat tire can be responsible for your headache, is if the tire came off, bounced, ricocheted, and hit you in the head. What is really giving you the headache when you need to replace a flat tire, is your thinking about the flat tire… […]

What’s Your Relationship to Failure?

Posted on March 31, 2024By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Compassion / Courage / Emotional Agility / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Goals / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Rejection / Resilience / Thinking / Transformation / Values

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. […]

Why it serves you to slow down at the Beginning of a New Year

Posted on January 17, 2024By ChantalPosted in Celebrations / Commitment / Completions / Dreaming / Failure / Future Self / Goals / Gratitude / Happiness / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Perspective / Planning / Slow down / Thinking

This past weekend, I led a workshop for 19 people called “Creating 2024 with Intention”. These 19 individuals made the conscious and brave choice to slow down, take stock of what had transpired in their lives in 2023, and really become intentional about who they want to become in 2024 and what experiences they would like to be having this year.

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… […]

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. […]

Is your Permacrisis a state of being?

Posted on September 26, 2023By ChantalPosted in Compassion / Courage / Decision-Making / Fear / Future Self / In the muck / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Purpose / Slow down / Story Matters / Thinking / Transformation

Recently, Carolyn Freyer-Jones wrote about Permacrisis. She explained that Permacrisis “refers to a state of ongoing instability and insecurity, where unexpected challenges seem to arise constantly”.

We all know people who live in a constant state of Permacrisis, regardless of anything happening in the world. Their lens (based on upbringing and other circumstances) is Permacrisis. They look out into the world, and they see Permacrisis everywhere. They find things to worry about and they experience life as one emergency after another. Even when things are going well in their lives, they live in constant anticipation that something will go wrong.

We get to choose who we want to be and how we want to show up in the world. I create my life in every moment by how I show up to each moment… […]

Keep the Change: How to create sustainable transformation in your life

Posted on November 7, 2022By ChantalPosted in Commitment / Courage / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Thriving / Transformation

We live in a world where the word change comes up often. Things are always changing. And it is even said that if you can’t keep up with change, you will become stagnant, irrelevant, redundant. There is so much change that most of us feel like we simply can’t keep up. The pace of change is so staggering that it leaves our heads spinning. And yet, have you ever stopped to consider what the word “change” actually means and how it is not all that helpful to our personal growth and development? […]

Why it serves you to do a year-end review

Posted on December 13, 2021By ChantalPosted in Decision-Making / Failure / Gratitude / Happiness / Life / Meaning / Perspective / Planning / Purpose / Self-care / Slow down / Story Matters / Thinking / Values

Most businesses are familiar with year-end reviews. However, I’m also an advocate for a personal year-end review. I first learned about the idea of a personal year-end review from Sarah Peck. And what I appreciate about her approach is that it is not simply about going through your list of goals to identify which ones you hit and which ones you failed to hit. No, rather a year-end review is a slowed down, deep reflection about your year. It’s an invitation to identify what you celebrate about this year, what you are most proud of, what you’ve learnt, and how you’ve grown over the last year.

Looking back over your year also helps you put into perspective the year ahead and where you want to focus your energy in the year ahead. I will share two methods here with you for doing your personal year-end review. […]

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. […]

The Magic in Dandelions

Posted on May 17, 2021By ChantalPosted in Gratitude / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Resilience / Slow down / Thinking / Transformation / Uncategorized

About a year ago, I wrote an article about chasing Dandelions after watching a TED Talk by Dewitt Jones. Dewitt is a photographer for the National Geographic and openly declares it to be the greatest job in the world…

I listened to Dewitt’s talk, mesmerised, and inspired. Before hearing his story, I did not take much notice of Dandelions. However, I have since come to appreciate this little flower for a couple of reasons. I will share them here. […]