New Years Resolutions: Hopes, Aspirations, Intentions and Delusions!

Festive excess traditionally induces post hangover guilt and thoughts of new beginnings.

The guilt creeps up slowly. Anticipation of party time frolicking with the requisite alcoholic gay abandon of youth abounds…. alas the capacity of youth to recover over a grease laden fry up of black pudding and anything else in the vicinity within 3 months of the used by date, diminish alarmingly post 30’s!

Hope kicks in first. Hope that the hangover will be gentle. Hope that the scales will somehow deny the visual evidence around the gut. Hope that this year things will be better.

Hope however rarely provides the appetite to actually take action, beyond perhaps the purchase of a Lotto ticket!

Aspiration has a little more depth. It suggests a vague sense of commitment to a cause if perhaps lacking in a plan.

Occasionally the post hangover conviction produces a tsunami of emotional triggers, ranging from disgust at what the mirror reveals, self loathing as the memories of dubious behaviour return or perhaps fear that this is as good as it gets.

Intention is like aspiration on steroids. Remember those handful of times when you reached that tipping point and made decisions that in retrospect were fateful. The get in shape decision that resulted in the completion of a Marathon, Triathlon, or trek through Nepal

That day you internalised the intention to quit smoking without moping around feeling sorry for yourself and acting like a whipped puppy!

Perhaps it was the time you quit your job to follow your passion, or emigrate, propose to your soul mate or perhaps terminate a relationship (presumably NOT the one with the soul mate!)

Intentions are relatively rare but profound in their impact.

Of course the default for most of us is that comfort zone labelled mass delusion! Hope is an innocuous low stress state to inhabit. 


Hopefully it won’t rain, the trains will be on time, the cute secretary notices me, petrol prices drop, and my shares in that obscure technology company jump.

Mass delusion makes the world go around.  Without hope depression rears its hideous head.

So my hopes for you all this year is that your hopes and dreams germinate into real aspirations and intentions, ultimately manifesting into your most outrageously successful year ever!