Caroline Casey: Looking Past Limits

Caroline Casey is legally blind.  She was diagnosed with ocular albinism as a child, but her parents didn't tell her until she was seventeen and the eye doctor broke the news to her.  She never went to a special school, or took any special classes, or was ever treated differently because her vision wasn't all there. Casey grew up wanting to drive motorcars and believed she could... Even after she was told the news she still kept her dream of wanting to learn how to drive on her seventeenth birthday.  After she learned of her disability, Casey went onto college and got a couple degrees, then became a global management consultant at a pretty large company.  One day, her eyes just gave out. She was forced to ask for help from others, saying she just couldn't see.  The people sent her to an eye doctor, who was actually more of a therapist.  "What do you want to be?" Casey didn't exactly know when she was asked... She went home and went for a run on her regular route, but ran into a rock that she had never hit before. She cried and cried until she ran back home, sat down with her favorite book, and decided she would be an elephant handler.  She didn't know how she would, but she was going to handle elephants in India, and she did, raising enough money for many, many eye surgeries for others.  Casey came back and became an activist for the disabled and has achieved so much just because she believed.  The way Caroline Casey persevered despite her disability proves that if you just believe in yourself, and you are being the real you, you can pretty much achieve anything, despite the roadblocks which might pop up. This philosophy of just being you, and back could improve the lives of many. Like laughter clubs, just accepting yourself and looking at yourself positively could help bring people into their own and reach the levels of high touch and high concept that Dan Pink talks about throughout his A Whole New Mind.  Casey's belief that because she knew she could do something, then she would succeed.  So, that brings me to the question, is success all in the mind? According to Casey, you only need to be yourself, and believe that you can do something to do it... Looking at many cases, I think Casey is pretty much correct, it all goes back to perspective on how one handles a situation.  Casey engaged the audience by speaking in different tones of voice when needed and she used hand gestures well to get her point across. Although she couldn't see the audience, she complimented them, calling the men "George Clooneys" and the women beautiful.  She used a story, which was the majority of the talk.   Her story was primarily positive and inspiring from the beginning, which I think, helped the audience stay engaged a bit.  Caroline Casey gave an interesting and engaging TED Talk despite the hardships she had to overcome to do so.