Kiaran Finn on Life Matters!

This is a confronting and provocative question. It presumes there’s a gap in your life and that you are in some way failing, falling short of your own expectations. If The Law of Attraction does indeed work, how then do we explain how bad things happen to good people? How can we explain how the worst of criminals can win the Lottery? Indeed we can question whether this much-quoted Law is in fact a myth. The point of this article is not to ponder the riddle of this apparent phenomenon or get bogged down in the mire of attempting to define the intangible. Rather I would like to posit the following commentary. Let’s twist the above question. Imagine that despite your initial reaction to the topic, that you are indeed living the dream, but have failed to realize this fact. Perhaps your appreciation lens is clouded.  Perhaps you are with your ideal life partner but are blinded to this fact by virtue of your incessant fantasizing of some parallel universe where ...

This a reworking of an older Post with the slightly torturous title "Doomsayers, Geniuses and the Nonsense of Scarcity Economics" Despite the long winded title, there are a few morsels of insight that encompass the importance of mindset and perspective in determining the direction of our passions. Passion, focus and determination may bring accolades in the short term but they are often in hindsight proven to be utterly wrong! Hope you enjoy' You may never have heard of Paul Ehlrich or Thomas Malthus unless you have an interest in the economic principles of scarcity. That being the case I'm surprised to find you here reading this irreverent scribble!  In fact Malhus died back in 1834. His Principle the Malthusian Catastrophe however lives on.  Mr Ehlrich published a couple of best selling books between 1968 and 1971, including ‘Population Explosion”, ‘Eco-Catastrophe-, (that word again!), and ‘the End of Affluence’. At the time they were the best selling envi...

Not a slogan Nike would advocate! Without some context words such as persistence, patience, endeavor and dedication suggest a noble attitude to life matters. They symbolize ‘the stiff upper lip’ attitude to struggle. "Never ever give up"; to paraphrase Churchill goes to the heart of most self-help and personal development philosophy. The danger of blindly following this type of perseverance without considering its context is that more often than not, triumph does not overcome adversity, at the first attempt. There is a massive industry peddling personal development material. Books, Seminars, Webinars and all manner of strategies that range from useful and inspiring to borderline extortion. Harsh comment? I don’t think so. We live in a society that reveres its celebrities regardless of their substance. The personal development industry has its share of super rich ‘leaders’ who have attained a status within their tribe equivalent to religious pontiffs. Some of thes...

My Blogging serves many purposes including a de-cluttering of the mind to see if the translation of my random streams of subconscious thought have a coherent value, in other words to see what pops out. This blog was originally born out of an intention to tweak some pervasive ‘truths’ and offer an alternate perspective of this transient essence we call life, and was never intended to pontificate as to how anyone else chooses to frame their life. Enough of the verbal gymnastics. I’ve just completed the first draft (who knows, it may be the last!) of my eBook- a collation of scribbles and insights from the archives of this Blog.  For those of my visitors who appreciate the slightly warped tone and content of my ramblings I offer you a complimentary download. It needs some editing and polishing, and maybe something as fancy as an eBook cover but in the meantime my celebrity dog-Zola- who makes a few appearances on my sites, including Youtube will have to suffice as the point o...

"When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all."  — Lewis Carroll -Through The Looking Glass Do you have a favourite word? I quite like the word oxymoron. Maybe it’s a Bart Simpson puerile thing, you know, an adult word that finishes in moron must be laugh worthy. What I like about the oxymoron is how unpretentious a word it actually is. Once the terrain of stand up comedians, the oxymoron seems to have become the default of political obfuscation. Not coincidentally, perhaps my second favourite word. Very good, you picked the irony (hint: second favourite!) As an aside the reason I like the word obfuscation is not because it sounds so pompous, and indeed is most used by pompous types but because it is so apt. The v...

This is a slightly different theme to my usual Blogs and a little less tongue in cheek. One of the most baffling contradictions I see in life is the prevalence of unhappy joyless people surrounded by an environment of milk and honey and more choices to do, have and experience than ever in the history of the world. Are we pre- programmed to be cynical or just blind to the 'miracle' of existence, or is it a mal-adjustment of our perspective lens? You be the judge Excitement, anticipation, aspiration or however you want to label the charge that gets you up in the morning is probably almost completely aligned with you happiness quotient. Some of the most cranky, uninspiring people I’ve ever crossed paths with have invariably shared a couple of personality traits. One is ambivalence, that devil may care attitude, that on the surface presents as cool and unruffled, but upon closer examination manifests its true essence, that of disenchantment. A second trait shared by these joy...

I have way too many Twitter connections. Let’s not delude ourselves that they are Followers-that’s a misnomer if ever there was one. Yep that’s the price you pay for accepting every request. What you say! How can you have too many? Isn’t the goal to have an infinite number of Tweeters in your tribe? Those with the most followers win-surely. Ok perhaps I’m being overly wry. But have you considered the downside to building a large Twitter base? Too many tweets from anonymous twits create a din, not an orchestra.  The tweets that you actually see are completely random and virtually impossible to engage.  Too many ‘followers’ assume that they now have an intimate relationship with you that justifies them sending you automated direct messages-that under any other circumstances would be considered spam. Why bother then? Well of course it’s not ALL bad! A few minutes browsing especially following the retweets (those are usually the interesting ones) can be very illuminating, ...