"When you start using senses you've neglected, your reward is to see the world with completely fresh eyes"
About this Quote
Self-help optimism rarely lands unless it smuggles a challenge inside the comfort, and Barbara Sher’s line does exactly that. “Neglected senses” is a sly accusation: you’re not stuck because the world is dull; you’re stuck because you’ve been moving through it on autopilot. The sentence flatters you with a payoff (“reward”) while quietly indicting your habits. It reframes change as sensory, not ideological. No grand reinvention, no vision board sermon - just the provocative idea that your stagnation might be a perceptual problem.
Sher’s intent fits her larger project as a career and life coach who treated motivation like a practical skill, not a personality trait. The quote borrows the language of mindfulness and creativity, then translates it into a business-friendly promise: expand your inputs, and your outputs (ideas, options, energy) improve. “Fresh eyes” is also an entrepreneurial metaphor: innovation isn’t a lightning bolt, it’s attention redistributed. Notice what you’ve been filtering out, and you’ve already begun to out-think your old constraints.
The subtext is that modern life trains us to privilege a narrow band of senses and signals - screens, schedules, status metrics - while dulling everything else. Sher hints that reclaiming touch, sound, smell, bodily intuition, even boredom, can destabilize the story you’ve been telling yourself about what’s possible. Calling it a “reward” is savvy persuasion: it makes discipline feel like indulgence. You’re not giving something up; you’re getting a richer reality back.
Sher’s intent fits her larger project as a career and life coach who treated motivation like a practical skill, not a personality trait. The quote borrows the language of mindfulness and creativity, then translates it into a business-friendly promise: expand your inputs, and your outputs (ideas, options, energy) improve. “Fresh eyes” is also an entrepreneurial metaphor: innovation isn’t a lightning bolt, it’s attention redistributed. Notice what you’ve been filtering out, and you’ve already begun to out-think your old constraints.
The subtext is that modern life trains us to privilege a narrow band of senses and signals - screens, schedules, status metrics - while dulling everything else. Sher hints that reclaiming touch, sound, smell, bodily intuition, even boredom, can destabilize the story you’ve been telling yourself about what’s possible. Calling it a “reward” is savvy persuasion: it makes discipline feel like indulgence. You’re not giving something up; you’re getting a richer reality back.
Quote Details
| Topic | Live in the Moment |
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