Hi, I’m Donal
My name is Donal Crotty. I am an older, wiser, vulnerable, insecure, crazy and loving human being whose goal is to make a meaningful and positive difference in people’s lives. What makes me who I am, and worthy of your time and interest, is my life experience and learning, my outlook on life and my love for people and their possibilities.
My life has been a mixture of what is amazing and what is unremarkable, what is success and what is failure, what is fear and what is courage, what is dynamic and what is procrastination, what is joy and what is sadness, what is love and what is disdain. My greatest challenge in life has been dealing with depression since my teenage years, learning to understand depression as an illness which can be managed and in that regard getting to understand and accept myself for who I am, warts and all, wonders and all. My greatest learning is that whatever happens in my life is down to me. The context of my self-awareness, the decisions I can make and the changes I can affect in my behaviours based on that awareness of myself, my thoughts and my feelings in every given moment.
That is what I would like to share and by doing so to enable people move beyond their fears and insecurities, to release their egos, to be present in all that life offers to them, to make reasoned and positive choices in every day.
In a professional context, my life has been an interesting and eclectic journey of 50 years. From my first job as a 10 year old working in our family bakery to 45 years later leading a global team in supporting cyber security services. My primary roles over the past 30 years have been as an executive leader and an International Services Consultant. I have had the good fortune to live in 10 different countries, while leading teams across 28 countries globally. What has been my driver is a passion for people, a desire to improve their situations, whether as customers or as employees and in whatever their cultural, geographic, race or gender backgrounds. That passion has meant spending more and more of my time in a mentoring and coaching role and thus my focus now in what is “JustDonal”.
I have and will continue to make mistakes in ever day of my life and yet I can be happy in that. Happy that I recognise my behaviours for what they are, to have integrity in my dealings with people as effected, in saying sorry and in learning from each experience. It is said we are none perfect and yet all perfect or as described in a song by John Legend, “we are perfect in our imperfections”. Life will always challenge us and yet our success and our happiness is not in what happens to us, but in how we deal with ourselves and those around us in every given moment. It is our choice; it defines our lives.
As a mentor and coach, I learn in every day. I learn through the theory and science written about our wonderous minds and bodies. I learn through the concepts and ideas offered on how we can change our thinking and the way we live our lives. But most so I learn through the people I engage with and work with in sharing their thoughts, feelings and realities. We are not unique or alone in our challenges and possibilities, however we are in our choices which are only those we can make for our lives.
