Kiaran Finn on Life Matters!

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 o...

Have you ever read a magazine article, blog or even a whole book and had a moment of clarity or insight where you've muttered to yourself ' that makes sense ' or ' isn't that fascinating ?' A broad spectrum of topics covering weight loss, master chef recipes (yes the irony is intentional), stress relief, domestic budgeting, investment planning, dog training, pop psychology or even the latest and greatest tips on parenting may often be found in the weekend newspaper alone! We are bombarded daily with what's referred to as conventional wisdom and yet we continue to live our lives blindly ignoring and disregarding most of it. Sure, it would be cool to learn French, master a piano concerto, cook a meal of mouthwatering brilliance, regain our ideal weight, fund our financial independence by the age of 40, whilst living a life of self confident balance and sanity if only... Unless you have a peculiar learning disability, it's all within the scope o...

This is a  link to a neat post that is guaranteed to inspire -on the topic of setting AND achieving 'unrealistic' goals 48 Unrealistic Accomplishments

We live in a culture that increasingly embraces connectivity. The melding of outward disconnection with a simultaneous 24/7 digital conversation is both ironic and mildly disconcerting to those of us not permanently attached to this digital umbilical chord. Social niceties and courtesies are becoming severely diluted. I recently navigated the labyrinth that is Victoria Station and found myself marveling at the mass commuter hive of activity and yet clinically barren of human interaction. Each earnest participant on this treadmill journey seemed to be lost almost trance-like in some parallel universe, having engaged some sort of automatic homing device to skilfully navigate the human traffic. Ipods at full volume, newspaper in one hand, steaming coffee in the other and midst this madding crowd a complete absence of eye contact.  In this new world it would seem arcane and redundant to distract the herd by smiling, excusing yourself or being so bold as to offer some poor lost ...

  The tone of this post is wry and gently provocative and not a rallying to call to quit your job, divorce, burn your friendships, or change one iota of your current status quo - not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that! “ We are the champions "– so sang Freddie Mercury an eternity ago and the song echoes throughout the great sporting stadiums of the world. It’s rousing and evocative. Evocative of shared triumph – and epitomizing a truly tribal sense of belonging. There’s a primeval urge that is felt by all reasonably socialized individuals to fit. As rebellious youth we are defiant in our rejection of stereotype. It’s all about the individual, and expressing that unique albeit pompous voice that contradicts the old fashioned social mores and yet….. With an uncanny predictability, each generation ever so subtly morphs into a diluted version of their parents. 100 years ago The Who proclaimed, “ I hope I die before I grow old ” and with an irony tha...

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...