Beating boom time burn-out

A New Life:Like so many others who 'go with the flow', Peadar Casey spent 16 years in the wrong job. Peadar Casey left a high-powered job and regained his health and happiness by taking a fresh approach to life, writes Michelle McDonagh.

Only six months into his high-powered position with an international food company, Peadar Casey knew he was in the wrong job but, in a story that's all too common, he spent another 15 years of his life in the same job.

"Sometimes, it's easier to go with the flow, so I did. And I was good at my job. In fact, I excelled at it. I moved countries for work and moved house seven times. I lost big deals and won even bigger ones.

"I felt the elation of success and the despair of failure - all the highs and low of big business," he explains.

Casey's position as European project director involved turning around failing companies, selling and acquiring businesses, hiring and firing staff and managing sales teams.

But one day, after 16 years with the same company, Casey's world fell apart. He realised he could not keep going the way he was going. He was totally burnt out.

"In one day, I would travel from Dublin to Belfast by train, fly to Heathrow, rent a car, drive to Oxford, drive back to Heathrow and fly home again. When I burnt out, I was fiercely tempted to go back into something similar but I learnt fairly quickly that my body wouldn't let me," he says.

Casey went to his brother's farm in Mitchelstown, where he had grown up, and spent a few months there trying to get his head together.

He discovered life coaching, which he found empowering and sensible, and it helped him face his burn-out.

"The Celtic Tiger has camouflaged a lot of reality and I camouflaged my own reality for 16 years.

"I had a top-of-the-range BMW, a well paid and exciting job and great holidays, but I now realise that my values did not match what I was doing," he says.

Since Casey gave up the fast paced corporate world in February 2004, he has never worn a tie and he vows never to wear one again. He now owns a dog, has exchanged his BMW for a dusty jeep, bought a house in the country in Killaloe, Co Clare and set up a new business.

It was his own positive experience with life coaching that led him to set up Discovery Life in Business with the aim of helping people to make an income from something they are passionate about and to ensure their work life is not in conflict with their personal lives.

"This is not life coaching, which focuses exclusively on personal considerations assuming that everything else will fall into place. Nor is it business coaching, which often forgets that behind every business are real people. Instead, it's a unique approach that takes a holistic view of people and their business and helps find solutions for both," he says.

It was his own laborious search for a perfect home that gave Casey the incentive to set up the second strand of his business, Discovery Home Finders, which is not an estate agency, but an independent search consultancy which finds dream properties for buyers.

"We help people who want a new beginning or a new adventure, whether they're relocating or returning, upsizing or downsizing. But most importantly, [WE HELP]people who want to make the right choice - and to find a home as individual as they are," he explains.

The majority of Casey's clients are people who want to escape the frantic pace of life in Dublin for a new life in the country, ex-pats who want to return to their roots and people of retirement age who don't want the hassle of trying to find a property, but do want a home they will be happy in for the rest of their lives.

Casey uses acupuncture and the martial arts to keep his body and mind in balance, spends a lot of time walking his dog in the fresh air and goes to African drumming classes once a week, an energising pastime that he highly recommends to stressed-out business people. Since he left the corporate world, Casey has also realised a lifelong dream and driven a rally car for a day.

"I now put value on different things in life; on eating fresh food prepared by myself or my partner, on buying meat from the local butcher that I know he has hand-picked himself, on spending time in nature. I will never go back to a nine to five job again," he states emphatically.

For further information check out www.discovery-homefinders.com.