Our Commitment To You
Many of us are really struggling to cope the with increasing rate of change in our busy lives. Often, there never seems to be enough time to fit everything in. Balancing the demands of work, family and financial commitments and planning for the future often seem like never-ending tasks. There regularly seems to be little time left for ourselves.
Powering Health is dedicated to helping you Restore Balance, Feel better and Perform better in this busy world. This is achieved through Assessing your Current Lifestyle, Listening to, and Understanding your unique life story and life journey to date and using that as the basis for identifying specific and agreed Lifestyle-Change possibilities.
We also deliver group lifestyle awareness seminars and workshops to help drive awareness of the impact of many aspects of modern lifestyle (specifically related to diet choices, exercise habits and impact of a growing variety of life-stressors) on individual and business performance. These sessions are designed to help you and your teams “take stock” and reflect about current lifestyle habits and consider opportunities to make small but important lifestyle tweaks and tunes.
The Powering Health approach is unique in that it applies proven, and widely utilised, continuous improvement methods (Lean Six Sigma) partnered with academically researched and tested human behaviour-change techniques.
In short, our mission is to help people make small changes now that immediately help improve individual (and business) performance while also improving chances for a longer, happier, healthier and fully-fulfilled life.
Your health is your true wealth but there are also significant financial savings (personal, business and our health authority savings) by taking a more proactive and preventative approach to personal health care. Powering Health is here to help you achieve those savings and we are excited to begin our partnership with you.
Our collaborative approach is designed to share ownership for developing your individual (or consolidated team) change plan and for putting you in control for influencing and driving a healthier and better balanced lifestyle based on your specific needs and life priorities.
We look forward to welcoming you to visit one of our upcoming workshops to experience the benefits of working with us.
About Seamus
In many roles today, increasingly flexible work practices enable improved employee choice as to where, when and how work tasks may be completed. However, such flexibility often blurs the lines between work space and personal/family space. Modern “always on” connectivity further exacerbates this problem.
Having held a director role with a large multinational IT services and manufacturing company (top 20 Fortune 500) I have had first-hand experience of the challenge of maintaining a reasonable work-time/personal-time balance. In that role and like roles in many other businesses there were unrelenting business pressures, including the drive to continuously improve product/service delivery performance, drive revenue growth, manage cost of delivery and continuously drive efficiencies. Prior to mainstream internet penetration (late 1990’s/early 2000’s) a reasonably solid demarcation line existed between work-time and non-work-time where business managers and employees, by and large, had set work hours. However, advances in communications technology rapidly, and dramatically, changed where and how many of us work (as well as much of our work becoming more sedentary in nature). Additional technological advances, in the food processing space for example, (ready-made meals and “on the go” food consumption), have contributed, it could be argued, to the creation of a “convenience mentality”. The magnitude and increasing rate of change is resulting in great opportunities but also significant lifestyle, performance (individual and business) and health challenges.
Between 2002 and 2009 I did not have an ideal lifestyle balance. I was office based but regularly completed additional “out of hours” work at home. I wasn’t eating or drinking very well (soft drinks, sugary snacks and “ready to eat” meals). I wasn’t making time to exercise and I began to put on weight. I finally noticed that my clothes were not fitting any more and 36″ waist size trousers were getting too tight (from waist size 32″ being comfortable). I was also beginning to suffer from migraines. I took action and made three important changes in my lifestyle: I eliminated soft drinks and I drastically reduced sugary snacks and “ready to eat” meal consumption. I also increased consumption of home cooked foods (mix of meats, fruit and vegetables). It wasn’t easy at first but I persevered and over four months I lost 8Kgs and I was able to fit into my 32″ waist trousers again. I have never looked back and I have built other lifestyle changes into my life in the subsequent years (more exercise, gym a couple of times a week and continued awareness of food/drink consumption). I am also better able to manage work, personal commitments and make space in my day to disconnect and breathe. I feel better about myself, I have more energy and I feel I have a great balance in my life.
I quickly realised that my own experience was not a unique one. As a result I became interested in helping other people who may have been on a similar journey to mine which resulted in me completing my MSc Health Psychology in 2018. As a certified Green Belt (continuous improvement practitioner) with my employer of the time it became clear that Lean Six Sigma methods could be applied in combination with academically researched and tested behaviour-change theories in helping people take timely action to improve performance and avoid onset of highly preventable lifestyle-related illnesses (including diabetes, stroke, heart disease, COPD, Alzheimer’s and many cancers).
With this knowledge I developed a framework to help people make and sustain specific and bespoke lifestyle-behaviour changes designed to help restore balance, improve performance and live more productive, longer, happier lives. With this mission in mind I founded Powering Health in 2018.
I strive to combine my diverse mix of skills and experience to make for a truly unique, fun and highly effective service. In addition to this I pride himself on my positive engagement style, never-say-die attitude, determination, perseverance and resilience – all key traits in delivering successful change outcomes. Personal touch and face-to-face authentic, good-natured, collaborative engagement are all critical components of the overall Powering Health experience.
Within previous employment, I led Irish business philanthropy/charity activities across multiple sites and was site lead at our Irish HQ for coordination of employee-engagement/wellness activities. In my spare time I have volunteered in Fóroige’s Big Brother Big Sister program (2012-2018) and have coached youth and adult camogie and hurling teams (2006-2013). I enjoy walking and swimming and enjoy most sports (especially hurling).
I hold a Diploma in Electronics from Carlow IT (1983), Higher Diploma in Technology Management from Smurfit Business School, University College Dublin (2002), BA (Hons) Humanities Degree (Psychology, Philosophy and Sociology) from Dublin City University (2016) and MSc Health Psychology from University of Ulster (2018). I completed Advanced Certificate in Management Practice Entrepreneurs Programme (University of Ulster/Irish Times Training) in 2018.
I am a member of the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI) and a member of the Division of Health Psychology within PSI. I also certified as a Hearthmath Coach in 2018 and have integrated elements of the Hearthmath approach in helping people develop improved coping and stress management skills.