A first-person reflection on a visit to the School of Happiness in San Jose with Phil, where a conversation with the owner reframed gratitude as an energetic activation rather than just a checklist. The speaker describes how being open and present allowed both of them to deepen their experience of gratitude, encourages listeners to re-experience familiar practices from an energetic (not purely intellectual) level, and invites trying a gratitude list with fresh attention to feeling appreciation for life.
Chapters
Hello. I want to share with you a beautiful thing that happened to me yesterday. Me and Phil, we went to this place called the School of Happiness here in San Jose and we had a nice lunch and we were talking with the owner and he was just sharing like all the path to happiness. Like he says, we don't teach people happiness, we help people to activate because happiness is something that is within. And one of the main topics of our conversation was about gratitude. And he was going on and on about how it is important to have your gratitude list and start your day with the things that you're grateful for. And then at the end of your day, and we know all that and we all know 100% here, you listening to me? I know that the beautiful thing about it was. And I'm gonna talk for me and Phil, because I felt it was an experience for both of us. We were so open and so present to that experience that we both upgraded our understanding or our experience of what being grateful really means. And when we left the house, we had a conversation and we both shared how inspired we felt and why. I'm bringing this here because very often, and I'm saying we, if you are someone that study a lot, that dedicates a lot of time to self development and like to understand how this universe works, we often get to a place where you're like, you hear other people talking about the things that you know and then you shut yourself down the minute you say that. Oh, I know that you shut yourself down. And it doesn't mean that you need to learn something new for your mind. But if you're just present to receive, and you're gonna receive a beautiful energy that is different from any other energy that you experienced before, especially if you're talking with someone for the first time. So it's just an invitation for you to not take for granted that, oh, I know that. And that's it. Because I don't think there's a plateau for anything. I believe that we can always be like happier, we can be wiser, we could experience more joy and more love. And so if someone is telling you to do a list of the things that you're grateful for, try to feel the energy that is present and that guy energy, like they happen to be like so pure, so beautiful. I can feel it in my heart, like I can't find the words to describe it. And maybe as I'm talking to you, you can also feel it. So it's just an experiment. Just look for old things with like fresh eyes as if you're listening to that for the first time and be very attentive or careful with how you feel and allow yourself to receive this message from an energetic level instead of from your mind. It was just like such an amazing experience and I hope I could just transmit that to you and maybe elevate how you experience gratitude and maybe encourage you. If you're not doing it, maybe you are to do your gratitude list. One thing that he was mentioning and you could like sense in his voice was like you can be grateful for from here but the feeling of appreciation for life. This is why he changes everything. And when he was describing his appreciation for life, that's when I felt almost like as if I could feel his appreciation for his life and then I appreciated my life even more. So it's a simple message but it's really powerful. It was an experience that for sure my body will remember forever and I hope I can just share a little bit of this energy with you here today.
