Claire Richmond is a Work-Life, Midlife and Retirement Life Coach who is passionate about empowering people to take the actions that will get them from where they are, to where they want to be.
She works with clients who want to improve their work/life balance, build their confidence or change their habits; clients who want to navigate through their midlife challenges with a clear sense of direction and purpose; clients who have goals they want to achieve but don’t get around to because life, work, fear, self-doubt or other things get in the way; clients who are at a crossroad in their life and need help figuring out which direction to take; clients who feel a bit ‘stuck’ and clients who simply want to feel happier and more fulfilled in their work life, midlife or retirement life.
Claire believes that changing a single thought can change the decisions we make and, consequently, the results we get; that we are never too old to set another goal or dream another dream and that the key to success is action.
Claire’s belief in the value of coaching comes partly from her own experience. The life coaching she received in her 40s changed the direction of her own life and ultimately led her to train as a Life Coach following a 20-year career in television production.
Claire Richmond’s own experience of coaching began in 2004, when she was 40 and working as a television producer. Having lived, studied and worked in Brazil, the USA and France, she was back in London and had built a successful career working with independent production companies, producing and editing programmes for the BBC and helping to launch new cable channels. From the outside, things were going well, but Claire had become increasingly aware that she had lost her work-life balance and wasn’t particularly happy.
She came across a Life Coach almost by chance after spotting a flyer at a gym near London Bridge. One of the first questions she was asked was what her life would look like if she were living it in a way that genuinely felt right for her. It sounded straightforward, but Claire realised that she had never really stopped to think about it. She had spent years thinking about how the television programmes she made looked, how she looked herself, whether she was earning enough to pay the mortgage and all the other practical demands of everyday life. She knew she wanted to be happier, but she didn’t really know what being happy would look like for her.
Through coaching, Claire began to understand more clearly what she wanted from her life and the changes she could make to move towards it. It wasn’t an instant transformation. It took time, effort and commitment, as well as a willingness to step outside her comfort zone and do some things differently.
Over the years, many of the things Claire had first identified through coaching became part of her life. She found a healthier balance between work and her personal life, made more time for family and friends, set up and ran her own television-related business, dated, had fun and eventually married. She also made space for things that were personally important to her, including spending time near water, whether by rivers, canals, lakes or the sea. At 50, she walked the final 100 miles of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage on her own, something she had wanted to challenge herself to do.
Training as a Life Coach was another of the goals Claire had set for herself as she thought about the next stage of her life. Having experienced first-hand how useful coaching could be, she wanted to be able to offer that same kind of space to other people.
Today, Claire works with people who may feel dissatisfied, stuck or simply aware that they would like something in their life to change, even if they are not yet sure exactly what that change should be. Her role is not to tell someone what their life ought to look like, but to help them explore what matters to them, identify their own goals and work out realistic steps towards achieving them.
Claire particularly understands how easy it can be to become so focused on work, responsibilities and what is expected of you that you lose sight of what you actually want for yourself. Her approach to coaching is about creating the time and space to consider those questions, while having someone alongside you to notice your progress, encourage you through the more difficult changes and celebrate what you achieve.
Claire trained at The Coaching Academy and lives locally in Henley.
If you are interested in working with Claire, please complete the form below and she will be in touch.