Who is Con Hurley?
In simple terms, I am an Irishman living in comfortable semi-retirement in a beautiful part of the world – West Cork, Ireland - where I live with Eleanor, my wife, two collie dogs, a white cat and a vegetable garden near the friendly fishing village of Union Hall.
At a deeper level I am big into happiness! I am passionately interested in helping my fellow human beings find happiness, meaning and success in their lives. In fact this is now my main purpose in life – to make the world a better place to live in for my fellow human beings and our descendants.
And I need your help. I have some ideas of my own which I will share with you in the hope that together, we can develop our personal dreams and extend those into a combined dream or vision for humanity. From this dream and these ideas, we will develop concrete and practical ways to help individuals and society evolve towards prosperity, happiness, fulfilment and meaning.
Through The Happiness Movement, we can strike the match that lights the flame of positive change for society. We will fan that flame through the website and what you do in your evolution as an individual and in the society you live in. This is all about ‘we’ and ‘us’ as well as ‘I’ and ‘me’.
More about Con Hurley – a brief biography extracted from my book, ‘YES I CAN.’
Before the Second World War my parents left two small, mountain farms inland from Bantry, in West Cork to find work in London. They married in London and returned to Ireland to have their family - I was the first born in 1948 and three more brothers and a sister followed. I lived in four different places in the first six years and then we emigrated as a family to Dagenham, where my father found work, like many Irish, in the massive Henry Ford Plant.
Living in London was a formative experience, and it was only much later in life that I realised what I learnt about myself there. For example, I learnt that I didn’t want to spend my life living in a city. I loved geography at school and countries with wide open spaces greatly appealed to me - the US, Australia and especially Canada. By the time I was 13, I was an expert on Canada and had actually applied for a working visa. The Canadian Government wrote back telling me that I was the youngest application they had ever received and kindly advised me to continue my education and apply again when I was 18. Perhaps this letter influenced my parents, because they made a decision to return to Ireland in 1962.
They farmed for a while and then bought a big pub in Cork City. I was back to the city again and indeed did live there on and off for some 18 years. But there are cities and cities - Cork is a village in comparison to London. I greatly enjoyed school, university and sport in Cork - and I married a Cork girl, Eleanor O’Keeffe. But I still longed for the country. For me rural life represents open spaces, warm friendly people and a sense of community, of belonging - needs that I was unable to satisfy in a city.
My first attempt was to buy a large farm in West Cork. For a variety of reasons that didn’t work and I (we) lost nearly everything in 1983. I was facing bankruptcy and, only for the superb support of Eleanor, I might have taken my own life. She was the one who inspired me to realise what was really important in life - our marriage and our three children. Property and money were insignificant in comparison. This was a major, major learning and it has (mostly) stayed with me ever since.
I say mostly, because I lost focus again a decade later and ended up burning out and being diagnosed with depression in 1996. That traumatic event was a major turning point in my life because, instead of falling apart, I decided to re- evaluate my life and define what personal success meant for me. I defied conventional medical beliefs and practices about burnout and depression and decided to get back behind the wheel of life to ‘find out what makes me tick’. What I have discovered is that:
· Yes I can lead a happy, fulfilling, successful life.
· Yes I can discover what’s important to me.
· Yes I can set and achieve meaningful goals.
During this period of amazing self discovery, I switched career from fulltime agricultural journalism with the Irish Farmers Journal to self-employed life coaching, writing, facilitating courses and major self-education.
The interim result is who I am today and what I want to do with my life through my writings, courses – and this website. I hope you will join me in this wonderful movement to help people and society discover the true meaning of happiness and prosperity in life.
Con Hurley
ARTICLES
An ever expanding archive of articles on Life Planning, Personal Finance and the one-and-only Veggie Patch where you can chill out. Read More....
FREE RESOURCES
Free Resources to help you get on track to making the changes that will make a big difference to your life. Try the Happiness Assessment now which includes valuable follow up material.
YES I CAN
The book behind this web site. Do yourself a favour and get a copy of Yes I Can right now.
