Positive self empowerment

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Henry David Thoreau, US Transcendentalist author (1817 - 1862) 
I spoke on Friday 11.11.11 to the Life and Business Coaching Association of Ireland, http://www.lbcai.ie/ at their “POSITIVITY IN COACHING” Coaching Conference in Dublin.
My theme was on

Of course I combined public speaking with engaged learning eager as I am to let people experience what I am talking about, triggering the collective intelligence in the room and making different space within their conference to do things rather then just hear about things. I got delegates to pair up and explore the physical impact of positive and negative thoughts. A powerful demonstration that we are all susceptible to on going shaping of our psyche.
The experiential training engaged conference delegates and embodied the topic into experiential learning and some practical skills. Another of my passions is to impart skills when ever I talk or work with groups.
One of my slides looked at blind optimism within the Pollyanna story and the fact that eventually it crashes... Pollyanna loses all hope when she gets run over by a car and looses the use of her legs.
I believe in the power of positive thinking but also in power of strategic planing and putting structures in place to ensure we achieve the best possible outcomes for our businesses, ourselves and our communities.

When I showed this graph on Friday I spoke about how the realism of life tackles blind optimism and crashes it to the bottom of the graph. Feelings of guilt, failure, depression, fear and being unable to grapple positiveness dis-empower self esteem. Some people never recover or get out of the trough. A mindset at the peak of 'Pollyanna'  is wonderful but the handing over your mental health to blind optimism or belief systems should carry a large mental heal warning.
Take charge. Give yourself the best opportunity to thrive. 

One of the reasons I left promptly after my session was I wanted to get back to Gorey to pick up my children from school. It was my eldests birthday. 

not the actual cloud we saw but still silver lining
Roisin Markham 2011

On the way home we saw some amazing clouds one had a silver lining...  I explained to my three sons what a 'cloud with a silver lining' meant. 

A very apt way to end the day.

What's your experience with blind optimism?
Do you have a success story around positive self empowerment?