January 2, 2012
Are You Seeing the Things that Make a Difference to Your Business and Your Life?
ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:18 am
Where Do You Focus Your Vision?

Take a 60-second look at this lights in this photo then try not to look back again as you answer the questions that follow it.
Now look at this while space for a while as you scroll down to a few questions about what you saw.
Where do you focus your vision? What’s important in your business and your life?
Are You Seeing the Things that Make a Difference to Your Business and Your Life?
Everyday we interact with a world of information that has potential for adding something to our our business, our brand, and our life. But the ways our brains work, the way we jealously guard our time time, we as easily overlook what we’re seeing as finding the fuel and the data that might …
- to make our work and our lives easier … It’s not that we’re not thoughtful enough to find easier ways. It’s that we’ve forgotten to take time to reflect and think while we keep up our breakneck pace, racing through time to beat a clock that would work for us if took the time to look.
- make our work and our lives simpler … It’s not that we’re in love with the complicate and difficult. It’s that we’ve come to believe that balance is adding more and more things to juggle without stopping to sort which really deserve our time.
- make our work and our lives more meaningful and inspired … It’s not that we’re without mission or purpose. It’s that we’ve let our heads get disconnected from our hearts, setting that inspiration at a lower priority, not letting our aspirations fuel our businesses and our lives.
And those those thoughts, those beliefs change our world by changing what we see and how we respond it.
So answer me this, when you saw photo above, did you see …
- the three lights up front that look like stars and the fourth that did not?
- the light in the window of the building next door?
- the trees along the harbor?
- the reflections in the water?
- the way the water changes color?
- the yellow in the sky?
- the red light under the clouds on the horizon?
Think for a minute about what you saw and what you missed. Were looking with your heart or with your head? Or did you hardly even look?
I started taking photos of the harbor so that I would remember to look. After months of pictures what I’ve found is that the harbor never looks exactly the same twice. The light and color from the sky add mood and flavor. They communicate about the weather that is and the weather is coming. They communicate about my connection to it. And that communication has unlimited power to open my eyes, open my mind, open my heart to what inspires me to what’s important in my business and my life.
Did you believe that you didn’t have time to really look? It’s not just the beautiful harbor. It’s the clouds and colors in the sky that change one day to the next.
It’s not just the “what” of the bar graph. It’s the people behind it that tell you the “why.”
It’s in the looking that we find the nuance, the detail, and the color that inform a business, a brand, and a life. Understand those and your work and your life will become easier, simpler, and more meaningful.
Are you seeing the things that make a difference to your business and your life?
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
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4 Comments to “Are You Seeing the Things that Make a Difference to Your Business and Your Life?”



Eva said
Great piece! Loving it! Very inspiring indeed. Although I have spent much time on inspiring myself, I have never achieve a solution to my questions, life just move on to the next problem one after the other and not much time to ponder or reflect on the existing problem or the picture as shown in your piece.
Diane Brogan said
Who knew that the same view of the harbor could change so much, not only from day to day, but hour to hour. Thank you for sharing your pictures Liz. Your titles have often pointed out things I didn’t see or helped me see things differently. I now look for more details. I see more in life thanks to sharing your harbor pictures. Keep up the good work. It matters.
Charlie Screendrip said
You’re right. We often look, but we don’t take the time to see.
This was a really refreshing post, thanks Liz.
Michelle Russell said
Nice, Liz! I don’t think we can ever have too many reminders to stop, be present in the moment, and really sense what’s around us.
I think a lot about overwhelm and how to deal with it, and because there’s so much more than we can ever possibly take in (at least consciously), it strikes me there’s a certain inherent faith in practicing present-moment awareness. It’s too easy to worry whether you’re focusing on the “right” things…and often difficult to believe or trust that the things you need will come your way without your frantically having to search for them.