transformation Archives - Chantal Breytenbach Coaching

How and Why We Numb…

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… […]

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. […]

On the other side of fear…

Posted on August 14, 2023By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Commitment / Courage / Decision-Making / Dreaming / Failure / Fear / Future Self / Grit / Happiness / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Resilience / Thinking / Transformation

The other day on my morning walk, I came across three deer. They wanted to get past me to the other side of a set of stairs. Their fear prevented them from doing so. And this got me thinking. Isn’t this just how we are as humans? We reach a fork in the road of life. We are faced with a transition or a challenge in our lives. We tell ourselves we want to change, and yet we stay frozen right there in the middle of the road, too afraid to take the next step. We consider what might be on the other side. We take a few small steps forward; only to take three big steps back again, when things start shifting… […]

What’s your Gremlin?

Posted on July 11, 2023By ChantalPosted in Failure / Future Self / Happiness / In the muck / Leadership / Life / Mindset / Perspective / Thinking / Transformation

We all have Gremlins – also know as Saboteurs or Inner Critics. Our Gremlins are what we consider the worst parts of ourselves – the monsters that come out when we overfeed them. They come out when we feel most insecure, most inadequate, most incompetent, and when we feel most like we lack confidence in ourselves and our abilities. It’s the judgements we have of ourselves. It’s what we most dislike and want to hide about ourselves, because we believe that they get in the way of us showing up fully as our best or highest selves… […]

The Last of the Human Freedoms: The Freedom to Choose

Posted on June 26, 2023By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Courage / Decision-Making / Emotional Agility / In the muck / Leadership / Life / Mindfulness / Mindset / Perspective / Thinking / Transformation

To live a full, rich life, requires taking ownership of our responses and our experiences. It requires that we co-create WITH life, instead of fighting against life. And secondly, it requires that we take full responsibility for our own healing and the integration of our different parts. Life is asking us to choose to be Creators instead of Reactors… […]

Striving, yet not thriving

Posted on May 2, 2023By ChantalPosted in Bias for action / Coaching / Commitment / Failure / Future Self / Goals / Grit / In the muck / Leadership / Life / Mindset / Passion / Perspective / Purpose / Resilience / Self-care / Slow down / Thinking / Thriving

Recently, I posed the question, can you handle the effort shock? And there was quite a reaction to that article. So, today, I want to speak to those of us (myself included) who tend to overdo it and who tend to not know where the line is between effort and burnout. […]

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… […]

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? […]

Dreams are for losers

Posted on June 22, 2022By ChantalPosted in Authenticity / Bias for action / Commitment / Courage / Decision-Making / Goals / In the muck / Inspiration / Leadership / Life / Meaning / Mindset / Perspective / Thriving

I want to speak to you about a commencement speech Shonda Rhimes gave at her alma mater Dartmouth College in 2014, where she said this simple yet striking line: “Dreams are for losers”. Yes, you heard that right, she said dreams are for losers. She goes on to explain why. At almost every commencement speech someone will tell the graduates to go follow their dreams, or to never stop dreaming. And what Shonda says is that isn’t helpful advice. It won’t actually help you succeed, because dreamers aren’t successful… […]