Clare van der Spuy

 Thinking Partner | Space to Think Clearly About Work, Life and What Comes Next 

 Think Clearly. Choose Consciously. Participate Well. 

 Coaching for Aspirations ® | Clare Vie ®  

 A space to say what you’re actually thinking.

To explore what you haven’t quite made sense of yet. To question assumptions, notice what you might be missing and hear yourself properly — without someone rushing to give you the answer.

That’s what I offer as a Thinking Partner.

People come to me with all sorts of things.

A decision they can’t quite make. Something at work that keeps going round in their head. A business or career that’s changing. Too much responsibility and not enough space to think. Burnout, or trying to find a more sustainable way of working and living. A transition they didn’t expect. Success that doesn’t feel quite the way they thought it would.

Or simply the sense that something needs to change, without yet knowing what.

Work and life have an inconvenient habit of not staying in separate boxes.

So neither do our conversations.

My role is not to tell you what to do or who to become.

It is to think alongside you — to listen carefully, ask good questions, notice what may be difficult to see when you’re in the middle of something, challenge you when it’s useful, and give you room to discover what you actually think.

 Private, personal and shaped around you. No prescribed paths. No assumption that you need fixing.

Coaching for Aspirations® is the practice I created from a simple belief: that we can participate consciously in the direction our lives take.

Clare Vie® is the philosophy that now sits at the heart of my work.

Its starting point is simple:

How we understand ourselves influences how we think, choose, work, lead, love and live.

Yet so much of what shapes us operates quietly in the background. Old assumptions, familiar patterns, expectations we've absorbed and rules we may never have consciously chosen.

Clare Vie invites us to become curious about these influences. To understand ourselves more fully, recognise where we have choice and participate more consciously in our own lives.

I call this Stay Awake.

Not a state of constant vigilance or another standard to live up to. Simply the practice of noticing what's happening, within us and around us, so we can respond with greater awareness and discernment.

Because living well isn't only about what we achieve. It's also about how we experience and participate in the life we're living.

 Who says getting to know yourself has to be serious business?

We're wonderfully complicated creatures. We overthink, second-guess ourselves, get stuck in familiar habits and occasionally become our own biggest obstacle. Oh, the joys of being human!

You Coach You! is my playful Instagram series exploring life's everyday puzzles, one curious question at a time.

A little humour. A fresh perspective. Something interesting to try.

No lectures. No complicated exercises. Just an invitation to get curious, experiment and discover what might be possible.

Have a go. See what happens. Surprise yourself!

 Sometimes a conversation is all it takes to see something differently. Sometimes the work goes deeper.

You might be facing an important decision, navigating change, feeling stuck or simply wanting more from life without quite knowing what that looks like.

You don't need to arrive with a neatly defined goal. Sometimes discovering what you really want is part of the conversation.

Our work is one-to-one, confidential and guided by what matters to you.

We explore, question, challenge assumptions and notice what might otherwise remain unseen. Insight matters, but so does what happens afterwards — how understanding translates into the choices you make and the way you live.

The aim isn't for me to become another voice telling you what to do.

It's for you to hear your own more clearly.

Fancy a conversation?

I offer a free 30-minute introductory conversation. An opportunity to meet, talk about what's happening and see whether working together might be useful.

No pressure. Just a conversation.

  I've spent more than 30 years working across very different professional worlds, including accountancy, fashion, energy trading, aviation and property.

I'm an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC), with additional training in psychodynamics, health coaching, Physical Intelligence and applied neuroscience. My work is also trauma-informed.

But qualifications and experience are only part of what I bring.

I'm endlessly curious about people, what shapes us, what holds us back and what becomes possible when we begin to understand ourselves more fully.

I take my work seriously. Myself, rather less so!

 Clare van der Spuy
Coaching for Aspirations ® | Clare Vie ®