Gerry Madigan interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2004

At six o clock every morning, Gerry Madigan goes running in the snow.  He doesn’t mind the cold.
‘Oh no,’ he says.  ‘It’s beautiful.  It’s refreshing.’
At the moment Gerry, who is in his sixties, is training for the twenty six mile Dublin marathon, which is part of the reason why he’s doing the running.  
No ordinary human being wakes up at six o clock every morning and jumps out of bed for a run.  Humans are naturally inclined to laziness.  Especially in the winter months.  But Gerry Madigan is no ordinary human being.  Apart from anything else, he’s a professional management consultant, personal development and personal leadership trainer and an expert in positive living, who travels the world giving seminars to motivate other people to fulfil their potential and realise their goals.  Running the marathon was a goal that he set himself two years ago after being diagnosed with type two diabetes.
‘I said to myself that if I set myself a strict goal like this, it would keep me on track because daily exercise is absolutely crucial to managing diabetes.  It’s worked wonders, in fact I’m writing a book about managing diabetes.’
Being a motivational expert, Gerry is among many.  There has been a proliferation, in the past decade, of professional motivators of all kinds, from the mega-millionaire Tony Robbins to the likes of Tony Quinn. Anyone, it appears, can set themselves up to tell other people how to run their lives, and can charge telephone numbers for doing it.  It would be impossible for an ordinary member of the public to really test the credentials of the so-called gurus, you pay your money and you take your chances.  But Gerry Madigan is different.  His credentials really were put to the test.  And he was proved to be the business.
A Dubliner, who was born and raised in Donnybrook, Gerry  started his career in RTE.  A consummate musician and singer, he formed a show band called the ‘Cotton Mill Boys’, in the late sixties.  And did extremely well, touring the country and recording fifteen albums.  In the seventies, with the advent of disco, bands were losing money and he moved into the area of financial services and taught public speaking.  After giving seminars in leadership, he realised that he had a passion for communication and he set up his own company, Paragon Communications.
‘I was asked by a women’s group to present a programme in personal development,’ he says.  ‘I asked them what they wanted and they said they wanted to raise their self esteem, set goals and actualise their potential.  I thought this is a pretty tall order!  But I mapped out a concept called ‘The Five Plateaus of Progress,’ which I figured would work.’
The programme was a success.  And the feedback was excellent.  But then there came an opportunity to really put the ‘Five Plateaus’ theory to the test in a life or death situation.  Julian, Gerry’s eldest son had been an Olympic standard athlete, in his mid teens, when he suddenly started experimenting with drugs.  Within a short space of time, he had stopped competing, stopped training and was hooked on ecstasy and in debt to dangerous drug dealers.  The crunch came when one of those dealers, who was owed over a thousand pounds threatened to shoot the  boy if he didn’t pay up.  Julian knew the dealer was serious and begged his father to pay the debt.  But Gerry refused.
‘I wouldn’t give money to a dealer on principle,’ he says.
Julian was terrified, but Gerry insisted on calling the dealer himself, and threatening to meet with him.
‘I’m not afraid of people like that,’ he says.  ‘they are cowards and bullies and sure enough, the fellow never returned my calls.’
But getting Julian back on track was the real challenge.
‘I teach personal development, I teach people to get in control of their lives,’ he says.  ‘So I said to myself ‘If I cant apply this to my own son, it’s all empty rhetoric.’  So I applied the principles to Julian.  And it was a nightmare, but it worked.’
After a slow process of getting Julian to face up to what was happening in his life, the principles worked, Julian came off drugs and wrote a book, ‘The Agony of Ecstasy’, with Gerry.  The book became a seminar and within a couple of years, the father and son team had educated over a million young people in the lessons that they had learned.  More than any other testimonials that Gerry had received, this was the proof that the ‘Five Plateaus’ work.
‘Before we can go anywhere, we need to know where we are at, that’s the first thing,’ he says.  ‘And once we have awareness, we can move on to creating a vision, to disciplining ourselves and to implementing change.  And then we move to the fifth plateau, which is the commitment to that change.  I tell people if you do anything for twenty eight days, consecutively, you will start to do it automatically.’  
Life is not a sprint, Gerry says, it’s a marathon.  And the real secret of happiness is not controlling life, it’s being in control of our life.  Having spent the most part of his own life researching the different ways to achieve this, both on a personal level and in a professional capacity, Gerry Madigan is coming to Ireland to give his first seminar in ‘The Five Plateaus of Progress’.  He’s looking forward to it.  And he promises me that if I come along, he will teach me to break through boards with my bare hands, a technique that he learned in Karate.  Symbolising the potential that we all have to break through what might seem to be insurmountable obstacles in our lives.
‘The Five Plateaus of Progress’ is at the Grand Canal Hotel all day Saturday October 30.  Call Peter O Brien or Graham Molloy on 016774229 for bookings.