A few months ago I stood at the edge of the Midmar Dam, heart pounding, goggles fogging, questioning my sanity and scanning for emergency exits! I had signed up for the Midmar Mile, a one-mile open water swim. For someone who has always believed she’s not a strong swimmer, no scratch that; a [...]

As I write this I am sitting in my home office. I have my patio doors open and I can hear my kids playing and laughing in the garden (well, mostly laughing) as we sit, along with the rest of South Africa, in Lockdown. It is calm, it is a slower pace, there is lots […]

This morning on my way to work I got beeped at. Repeatedly. There was a long queue of us, waiting to go through the traffic lights (the robot) and the driver behind me clearly didn’t want to wait. So he beeped his horn. And beeped it some more. And gesticulated at me in an angry […]

Life is busy. We know that for a number of reasons, the most obvious one is because it seems to be the most regularly given answer to the question, “How are you?”.  And the problem with living a busy life is that often, without us even realising it, it becomes an unintentional one.  Henry Cloud […]

I am very much a ‘forward-facing’ kind of person. I don’t know whether it is because of my coaching training or my teaching background; both of which focus on setting goals and objectives – productivity must be measured. Or perhaps it is just part of who I am, it’s in my DNA. Wherever it comes [...]

You’ve heard the saying – ‘You Are What You Eat’, right? Well did you know that what you eat can also be what you think? And sometimes what you feel too? Don’t believe me? Well let me try to explain a little, with just a few facts you may not know about the crucial link […]

Conflict. It’s a horrible word isn’t it? It fills us with dread and despair, causes our backs to stiffen, our jaws to clench and our foreheads to start perspiring. The worst thing, well in my opinion anyway, about conflict is the fact that it can often come out of nowhere. You’re having a regular, [...]

Anxiety. Worry. Apprehension. Fretful. Tense. Angst. Trepidation. Nervousness. Disquiet. Fear. Just a few of the synonyms used to explain the feeling of anxiety. None of which, if you ask me and I suspect anybody else who has personally battled with anxiety, really do any justice in describing what [...]

Yesterday morning, my kids ate pizza for breakfast. Yep. It’s out there. Let the judging begin. To be honest though, I’m not sure that there would be anything that you could say to me that I hadn’t thought to myself, and about myself, in that moment when I walked into the kitchen at 6.42am and [...]

Did you know that you are the most powerful person in your world? Yet often, we walk around believing that the things that happen around and to us dictate whether we will be able to have a good day/week/month/life. We can get caught in negative thought patterns and procrastination and when things [...]

It’s that time of year, where everyone is feeling like they are on the ‘home stretch’. The finish line; the holidays, are within our grasp and we just cant wait to get there. And yet, I have lost count of the number of times that I have spoken to people, at the end of the […]

My Nanna (Grandma, Ouma, Yaya, Nonna, Mawmaw – insert name you are most familiar with) was an avid knitter, embroiderer and sewer. And she taught me – with varying degrees of success – to also be able to do those things. They are skills that I still use from time to time and I have [...]

“Every time you say YES to something, you are saying NO to something else.” This is a phrase I find myself saying to clients. Often. And this week, rather frustratingly, I found it came back to bite me. For a while now I have been wanting to get my health and my body strength back […]

I met someone the other day and as we were doing the usual introductory questions and I had said that I was a coach he threw in a curve ball question; “where did you study?”. Now it is not that I thought the question was problematic, quite the opposite, I loved that he had asked […]

I think Zebra’s are breathtakingly beautiful. I love that their stripes look as if they have been painted by hand. And I love that you can line a hundred of them up next to each other and not a single one is identical. I love their uniqueness. I believe that each of us is like […]

My Grandad loved doing jigsaw puzzles, so does my Dad, and so do I. I have clear memories of building puzzles with each of them, each working side by side on our own puzzle when I was smaller and my puzzles were simpler, and then when I was a bit more accomplished, working with them […]

The other day I had a thought-provoking conversation with my son. He had been climbing a particularly high rope ladder, which led into a rope tunnel, which ran over a river. He came dashing back over to me, looking a bit uncertain and worried and relayed to me how scared he had been doing this […]

I was working with a client this morning who has been racing on the Treadmill of Life. He couldn’t understand why, when he has so many fulfilling things in his life, he feels despondent, opeless and unfulfilled.  His situation is not by any means a unique one and I am quite used to sitting opposite [...]

One of the biggest moments of breakthrough in coaching and counselling comes when the person you are working with shares something that they absolutely do not want to share. It is a beautiful and wonderful paradox. You see, often what holds us back is fear. And often that fear is not of something [...]

If you’ve been following my Facebook and Instagram feeds @helenbredenkampcoach, you will have seen a few posts on the topic of ‘You and Your Brain’. These posts were inspired by a workshop I attended called Sensory Barriers to Learning where I felt challenged, inspired and [...]

In the UK we have the most beautiful Autumn season. Our trees that have been full and bright in Summer shed their leaves creating a carpet of gold, amber and auburn blends. I remember walking between classes at school competing with friends to find the leaf that crunched the loudest when you stepped [...]

We’ve just entered 2018 and already I’m feeling a little ‘over it.’ Sounds bad doesn’t it? But can any of you relate? The thing is, I’m not actually fed up with the year itself, I’m actually really excited about getting stuck in to the new year, but I’m a little tired of hearing everywhere I […]

This morning I sat in front of my sewing machine, with my needle and thread box on my lap, and a dismaying pile of school uniform items on the table next to me. And I chided myself for being lazy. For being short sighted. For not listening to my gut. For looking for the shortcut. […]

The simple answer? I’ll use an Elaine Macdonald quote that I like, “A life coach does for the rest of your body, what a personal trainer does for your health and fitness.” And I like that summary, I think it is a pretty good introduction to exploring what a life coach does, but I’m guessing […]

As you may have noticed, my new brand logo, or ‘icon’ as I believe it is called by those in the creative and design know, is a bird. And I am going to pre-empt the onslaught of questioning around the afore-mentioned bird by explaining it a little. The bird in the logo is a Honeyguide. […]

If you know me at all, you’ll know that if you ask me what I do, or what exactly Life Coaching is; I’ll get passionate! You should pull up a chair and grab a coffee! You see, I love what I do. I see it as a great privilege to be invited in to another […]