Awareness exercise

I'm fortunate to live in a part of the world people come to for vacation. The California wine country is world-famous for the wines we produce and the grapes we go. People travel here every year to taste wines and tour wineries. They come for the redwoods and for the cost. As someone who lives here it is easy to forget what we have just outside our door, we see the same old streets the place we work the place we have to go. And it is not just places like wine country or New York city or Hawaii that have things the locals don't even look twice at. Every place in the world has something to offer that is overlooked by the residence. As an exercise in awareness take the time to see your home town with the eyes of a tourist this weekend. Visit a tourist trap, take a factory tour or go to a local museum.

Why? Just as the place we live in grow stale and our vision of them becomes calcified and stagnant the same happens with our self-image. We need to learn to look at our self with the eyes of a stranger. We need to see the good qualities that we normally right off and the bad habits we do not even notice. There is value and resources in each one of us that we do not see for ourselves. Realizing that we have these qualities is not only a boost to our own self-worth but also to our confidences. So get out there this weekend and be a tourist in your own home, learn something about what where you live has to offer. Then do the same for yourself learn what you have to offer and what you do offer everyday without realizing it.