Word: pollyannaishly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that's exactly the kind of deluded cheerfulness that positive psychologists wouldn't recommend. "Healthy optimism means being in touch with reality," says Tal Ben-Shahar, a Harvard professor who taught the university's most popular course, Positive Psychology, from 2002 to 2008. "It certainly doesn't mean being Pollyannaish and thinking everything is great and wonderful...
...avoid sounding Pollyannaish, he will have to emphasize the huge difficulties of and impediments to achieving this vision, avoid specific timetables and seek some small but early successes (starting with the cease-fire). But I believe Obama has the unique ability to lift the eyes of Arabs and Israelis from the mire of misery in which they seem forever bound to the far horizon of peace, security, normality and a better future for their children. Coming on the eve of Obama's Inauguration, the Gaza crisis has turned that opportunity into a necessity...
...female self-sabotage the reason women hold only 2.6% of FORTUNE 500 CEO positions? You'd think so, to read this sincere but Pollyannaish book. Shambaugh argues that self-defeating behaviors like allowing work to crowd out family and friends and failing to assert oneself are holding women back. "Remember," declares the author, a Washington human-resources consultant, "once women free themselves from the sticky floors, there is no glass ceiling. Instead, the sky is the limit!" If only it were that easy...
...warning by Britain's man in Baghdad that civil war in Iraq is a much more likely prospect right now than democratic stability may be at odds with the Pollyannaish pronouncements from the White House and 10 Downing Street, but it's more like conventional wisdom among those engaged on the ground. In fact, hours after the contents of the valedictory diplomatic cable from outgoing British ambassador William Patey were leaked to the media, the head of U.S. Central Command, General John Abizaid, told the Senate that sectarian violence was at an all-time high, and if not stopped, would...
...months the White House has been trying to find the perfect pitch for Bush's words about the anemic economy: showing he is aware but not alarmed, positive but not Pollyannaish. This kind of delicate hand holding may be as much as any President can do to alter the course of a sprawling national economy. Having already deployed his most powerful weapon, tax cuts, and shackled himself to a promise not to spend Social Security surplus money, he is left to temper the worry during the wait. But the longer it lasts, the more the downturn is foreshortening Bush...