Author: Chantal Breytenbach

Profile picture of Chantal Breytenbach
Website
https://leapjourney.org
About Chantal Breytenbach
Dr Chantal Breytenbach is co-founder and director at The LEAP Academy for Graduates and Professionals. The LEAP Academy developed a programme called The LEAP Journey™. The LEAP Journey™ offers a new way of thinking about life and career. It is an online platform that provides a framework for finding your inner voice, cultivating the best parts of yourself and taking the leaps in your life and career that will bring you the greatest meaning and fulfillment.

Posts by Chantal Breytenbach

The curse of intelligence: How we limit ourselves by being human knowers instead of human beings

Chantal BreytenbachAuthenticity / Experiential Learning / Future Self / LEAP / LEAP Thinker / Meaning / Purpose / Real Self / Self-Cultivation / Self-Discovery / Self-InnovationLeave a comment

You might think that your life would be easier and infinitely more fulfilling if your IQ were higher. Don’t smarter people have it easier, because they always have the answers? And don’t they get the best career opportunities and make more money than anyone else? In our most recent blog post, Chantal explores some of the downsides of being highly intelligent or a high achiever to illustrate how the LEAP Journey might help those individuals who have become stuck, because they have too many options, or because they are afraid of failing or making a mistake. […]

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Why understanding human nature is important in a coaching /learning relationship

Chantal BreytenbachCoaching / Experiential Learning / LEAP Thinker / Self-CultivationLeave a comment

When you work with people, things can get a bit messy and complicated. People are unpredictable and no one person is exactly like another person. So, when you are designing learning experiences to help individuals grow and reach their most important goals in life, it’s important to be cognisant of the differences between people as well as the traits we all share as human beings – i.e. the things that make us uniquely human.

In this blog post, Chantal describes her experience whilst attending a coaching workshop on building confidence, and the lessons she was reminded of again on how best to facilitate participants’ learning whilst being mindful of differences in personality, culture and even in the way that people interpret and process information. […]

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A fresh perspective on The Authenticity Paradox

Chantal BreytenbachAuthenticity / Future Self / LEAP / Purpose / Real SelfLeave a comment

In a thought-provoking Harvard Business Review article, The Authenticity Paradox, Herminia Ibarra argues that having a too simplistic understanding of what authenticity means, can severely hinder your growth and your ability to make an impact as a leader. Yet, ironically, we believe she steps into the same trap of viewing authenticity too narrowly. In our latest blog post, Chantal explains why we think so, and how we, on The LEAP Journey, view and approach authenticity. […]

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Why it’s sometimes bad advice to be yourself

Chantal BreytenbachAuthenticity / Future Self / LEAP / Real Self / Self-Cultivation / Self-Discovery / Self-InnovationLeave a comment

So, you’re interviewing for a new job. Or you are going on a date with someone for the first time. Naturally, you feel a bit nervous, so you ask your friend for some advice and they dispense that old adage: “You’ll be fine. Just be yourself.” In her TED Talk The Art of Being Yourself, Caroline McHugh contemplates the ridiculousness of this little piece of advice. People will tell you to “just be yourself” as if that is the easiest thing in the world and as if it is a completely novel idea that you haven’t considered. However, as most of us know, if it were simple to “just be ourselves”, most of us would just do it and reap the benefits.

In this blog post, Chantal discusses the situations in which it is bad advice to “just be yourself” and the steps you need to follow to allow your real self” to work for you. […]

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An invitation to all Hummingbirds

Chantal Breytenbach100-Year Life / Future Self / Meaning / Purpose / Real Self / Self-Cultivation / Self-Discovery / Self-InnovationLeave a comment

I recently stumbled on a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert – the author of Eat Pray Love – on a curiosity-driven life. In this talk entitled “The Flight of the Hummingbird: The Curiosity-Driven Life”, Gilbert speaks out against passion. That’s right – it’s not a typo – she was advocating for steering clear of passion. And I got excited, because this incessant search for passion, and the frustration that some of us have with not finding it, is one of the reasons why we created The LEAP Journey… […]

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How immigrating to the other side of the world, helped me realise the power of being present to my reality

Chantal BreytenbachFuture Self / LEAP / Mindset / Real Self / Self-InnovationLeave a comment

LEAP Thinkers know that embarking on a leap requires a lot of planning and preparation. In my case, the end of 2017 involved a major life leap, not just for myself, but for my whole family. My husband and I had decided to immigrate. When you decide to immigrate, you start imagining what your new life is going to be like. You conduct research about your new home and you try to put as much as possible in place. But in all honesty, no amount of preparation or research can prepare you for how your future imagined self will handle a future life in an unknown place. I’ve been in Canada for almost a year now, and I am yet to find some sort of equilibrium. I had big ideas and big dreams, but I can honestly say that I was wholly unprepared for how my life would change due to this transition. […]

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How to turn a limestone quarry into a lush garden

Chantal BreytenbachFuture Self / Mindset / Purpose / Self-CultivationLeave a comment

Earlier this year, I took a trip with my family to Vancouver Island, British Columbia and we paid a visit to The Butchart Gardens. As stated on their website: “The Butchart Gardens is a must-see oasis over 100 years in the making”. And what a privilege it was to take in the beauty of this place that stands as a testament to what is possible when one has a grand vision. The story of The Butchart Gardens has some hidden life lessons for us as we embark on The LEAP Journey and it is also one of the most interesting family business success stories rarely told… […]

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The secret behind greatness

Chantal BreytenbachExperiential Learning / Future Self / Mindset / Purpose / Self-Cultivation / Self-InnovationLeave a comment

Our modern-day society tends to overemphasise talent at the expense of other factors that lead to success and they perpetuate the myth that excellence or greatness is mystical. Consequently, some of us assume that we are not meant for greatness and that we will never excel. Here’s why reaching excellence or greatness is both easier and harder than just having talent. […]

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Why you shouldn’t try to find your passion but rather aim to develop your interests

Chantal BreytenbachFuture Self / LEAP / Meaning / Mindset / Purpose / Self-Cultivation / Self-DiscoveryLeave a comment

When it comes to choosing a career or making a career transition, many career experts and graduation commencement speakers offer the advice that you should “find your passion”. Most people today find themselves stuck in lives and careers not of their own making. Sometimes out of desperation and perhaps also with some hope for something better, they absorb messages proclaimed by books like The 4-Hour Work Week. They believe that if they could only discover their passion and find the right formula for living and working, they could live happy and productive lives, and pursue meaningful jobs that ignite a fire in their bellies. However, once they start down that path, they soon discover that the Utopia that was promised is not within their reach… […]

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Why grit is essential for transforming your life and career and how you can develop it

Chantal BreytenbachFuture Self / LEAP / Mindset / PurposeLeave a comment

The ability to bounce back from adversity (i.e. resilience) and to keep going when things get tough (i.e. perseverance) are two important traits people need to make successful life and career transitions. Your level of resilience, agility and flexibility determines the extent to which you are willing to persevere in building the life you want when you are faced with setbacks. Perseverance, together with passion, constitutes the two key ingredients of a character trait defined by Angela Duckworth as grit. Here is why grit is important and how to develop it. […]

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How to incorporate the three C’s of Resilience into your life

Chantal BreytenbachFuture Self / Mindset / Self-CultivationLeave a comment

Resilience is mental toughness. It is the ability to adapt, recover from, or bounce back from setbacks, failures and disappointments. We have all heard tales of bravery and resilience from people who were able to overcome difficult circumstances or events and turn their lives around for the better. What is their secret? Is it something we can all learn? […]

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Choosing a meaningful life over a happy life

Chantal BreytenbachMeaning / PurposeLeave a comment

Human beings are driven by a fundamental need to find meaning. But does living a meaningful life also mean you have happy life? Not necessarily. What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of meaning. Perhaps happiness remains elusive because it cannot be pursued as a purpose in itself. […]

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Why unleashing your calling is the only way to have meaning in your life and career

Chantal BreytenbachMeaning / PurposeLeave a comment

Why do so many of us experience a feeling of being stuck in life and career? Why do we often feel disappointed and even sad as the end of the year approaches and why are we filled with excitement at the beginning of a new year? Viktor Frankl, psychologist, and Nazi concentration camp survivor, believed this is because the most fundamental human need, is the need to find meaning. Even if our lives look perfect on the outside, but we derive no meaning from the things we keep ourselves busy with, we will experience a feeling of emptiness or “stuckness”. […]

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