Forging a new life

Lifestyle – Máirtín Óg McDonagh was a successful and well-regarded businessman until the economic crash of 2007 when the machinery company he’d built from scratch went bust due to his move into property development. Personally and professionally, he lost everything. Those were dark days but he survived and grew as a person, as he explains to JUDY MURPHY.

Máirtín Óg McDonagh was down on his hunkers picking up cigarette butts from the pavement outside a popular city pub at 6.45am in July 2011, when a former acquaintance walked by.

In a barb designed to wound, the walker looked down at him and said: Ah Jayzuz, Máirtín Óg, is this what you’re at now? The man who had all the trucks and machinery and look at him now, picking butts off the streets. You’ve come a long way!”

It was a nasty dig. But Máirtín Óg, who was on the early-morning cleaning shift for An Tobar Bar during the Galway Races simply looked up and replied, “I have come a long way”.

His tormentor might not have realised how true those words were, but Máirtín who had been worth millions – on paper at least – during the Celtic Tiger years, had been on a remarkable and difficult journey. At one point, he’d contemplated suicide.

From An Ceathrú Rua and now living in Kinvara, Máirtín has documented his experiences in a new book, Mind Over Mountains: Sometimes The Toughest Climbs Are In Our Minds, which was launched by cyclist Seán Kelly in Galway City last week.

Singer Seán Keane was also at the launch in Galway Crystal and performed one of his most popular songs, The Man from Connemara. Máirtín used lines from the song which was written by Robbie O’Connell to title some of the book’s chapters.

“It’s about my journey, my interests, my adversities, my businesses and my travel,” he says when we meet the day after the launch. He’s relaxed and relieved that it all went well, although, in fairness, launching a book must have been a relatively straightforward event for a man whose life fell apart in 2007, as his marriage ended and his once-successful business went to the wall.

He gradually picked himself up and, having worked at several jobs since, Máirtín now runs a life-coaching businesses, also called Mind Over Mountains. His personal life has changed too – in the book and during our interview, he credits his partner Dolores Sheehy, for her role in helping him emerge from those dark, difficult days.

Life throws challenges at everyone, he says, and he’s no different in that everything isn’t perfect, but thanks to a good life coach, he learned how to manage the difficulties. Máirtín benefited so much that he went on to train as a life coach himself and now works to help other people navigate their lives and careers.

The earliest challenge came when he was aged eight and he recounts it in the book’s powerful, poignant first paragraph.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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