What If Life Could Give You More?: The Magic of Surrender with Kute Blackson

Christine Li  0:01  
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 90. Are you searching for a way to stop pursuing paths in your life that are not meant for you, and that you are not meant for today's special guest Kute Blackson is a beloved inspirational speaker and transformational teacher. His mission is to awaken and to inspire people across the planet to access inner freedom, live authentically, and fulfill their true life's purpose. coot is widely considered a next generation leader in the field of personal development. And I think after listening to the content in this powerful episode, you're totally going to understand why. Kute speaks at countless events. He organizes around the world as well as at outside events, including A-Fest YPO, which stands for Young Presidents Organization, and EO which stands for Entrepreneurs Organization. He is a member of the transformational leadership council, a select group of 100 of the world's foremost authorities in the personal development industry. And he is the winner of the 2019 Unity New Thought Walden Award. He is a generous teacher of the lessons he's learned about how to get more out of your life in a way that makes sense for your life. Let's go listen to this great episode now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important, and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the make time for success podcast. 

Hello, dear listeners. This is Dr. Christine Li and I am here today with Kute Blackson. And we are just getting to know each other over video here on Zen caster our recording platform. And we are both excited to have coot introduce himself to you and to talk about his new book and to share some value with us. I'm so excited to have you here, Kute. Thank you so much for coming here. 

Kute Blackson  2:40  
Thanks for having me. 

Christine Li  2:42  
So Kute, since we don't know each other well, please give me and the audience a sense of who you are. What's important to you. What I do up.

Kute Blackson  2:53  
Sure what lights me up is inspiring people is helping people what's always lit me up is is seeing people connect to who they are live their purpose in people transform. I was born in Ghana, West Africa. And my father's from Ghana. My mother's Japanese I grew up in London, we had to flee Ghana at the age of when I was three due to a bloody political coup. And so we ended up in London and couldn't go back to Ghana. And so you know, life has a mysterious way of putting you in the right place. And so from h3, h4 h5, I was a very empathetic kid, I felt people's feelings very deeply. There was always a part of me that kind of wanted to alleviate people's suffering and and I didn't know how but that was something that was at the forefront of my awareness that's still with me till today. And so when I was around age six or seven, one of my first memories, I think that really impacted my life. One of my first memories as a young boy was seeing a crippled woman crawling on the floor, she picks up the sand that this man walks on wipes it on her face, it stands up. Now you can call that a miracle. And so week after week, I grew up in this sort of mystical, kind of miraculous environment where I would see blind people see and deaf people here and people stand up out of wheelchairs and the type of stuff you wonder is this real when you watch it on TV, but I grew up seeing it in front of me literally every day. The man who sent you picked up was my father. And my father built 300 churches in Ghana, West Africa. He was considered the miracle man of Africa, a kind of mystic, sort of an enlightened mystics of the spirit, maybe more from the Christian tradition. Both went to churches in Ghana, West Africa, shoes church in London. And so I grew up in this environment. A lot of people said it was unusual, but for me, I didn't feel anything was strange. I didn't feel anything was different. It just felt kind of normal. I didn't know anything different. So I think I was blessed to grow up with a sense of limitless possibilities. There were no limits to what was possible because I grew up seeing some of this stuff that was strange and different and out of the norm, so to speak. And so when I was age a, I was thrown in the audience one day, and I think this is when my speaking career began, I was asked to speak by my father, in front of 5000 people, and just words started coming out of my mouth. And when I was 14, I was ordained as a minister, my father's ministry and my entire life was set out for me, my entire life was carved out all of these expectations from my father, from my family, from my father's congregation, hundreds of 1000s of people. And yet my heart sank. Because I knew that that wasn't my path. I knew that that wasn't my destiny, I knew that that wasn't my truth. And I just didn't have the courage in that moment to speak my truth. I didn't have the courage in that moment to tell my father how I really felt my fear was, if I did to speak my truth, if I did to be myself, if I did to reveal what I really felt, then I would be outcast, and I would be alone, then I would be abandoned, then I lose my father's love. And so for about four to five years, I initially said nothing went along with it. And then at 18, I had some decisions to make, I chose not to go to university. And so I had to figure out what am I going to do with my life and this feeling of well, you can't be truly fulfilled and happy, being someone that you're not, you can't be truly fulfilled and happy living someone else's life, I felt this deep calling in my soul to come to the US to come to America to come from Southern California, specifically to come to Los Angeles. Because this is where a lot of the authors and teachers and self help seminar gurus that I've read about, I started reading self help books when I was, you know, age nine, Eastern, and so they were on my father's bookshelf. So I picked them up and devoured these books, everyone from the eastern mystics to the wind dies, and Louise Hays and Deepak Chopra's of the world and so all of these folks live in Southern California. And so I felt this calling to come to Southern California and meet these people and study with these people and learn from these folks. And the thing is, I think sometimes what your soul guides you to due, won't always make sense to your mind. And it won't always be convenient. But I felt this undeniable calling. And when I looked into my future, I projected age 20 840-858-6870, on and on. And I saw that I could be successful, by society standards, following the expected path, I could be successful and take over my father's organization. But if I didn't have myself, if I didn't have my soul, if I didn't have my integrity, if I didn't have my truth, if I wasn't living my life, my purpose, then what kind of success is that? You know, and so I think our culture is very driven by success on the level of material achievement, and external achievement, but I knew that I could achieve but my internal self would not be fulfilled. And so I felt such a sense of pain and the sense that I would be committing a soul suicide if I went down this path, you know, and that's when I knew what I have to do, which was have the conversation with my father, and four years later, but at the age of 18, finally mustered up the courage to have a conversation with my father and I was terrified. Sometimes people say, Well, you have to be fearless in life. I was full of fear, full of terror, trembling, but I knew I couldn't turn back and I knew I had to reclaim myself and reclaim my life and reclaim my truth and told my father wasn't taking over. We didn't speak for literally two years, which was heartbreaking for me. And kind of long story short, that's what brought me I really believe that when you follow your soul, when you follow your truth, when you don't compromise what's real and what's authentic, and what's true, you will always be guided to the right place. The route that you take may not be the most expected one and so have this conversation with my father. We're not speaking, I ended up winning a green card in the DV one green card lottery that brings me to the US and two suitcases you know, winning the country $800 arrive into Los Angeles and begin following the American Dream following the dream and I felt and and that led me to meet many of the authors and teachers and mentors that I've read about Jack Canfield, Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay, Marianne Williamson, studied with some of them learn from some of them, they became my peers, and then also began traveling the world as a young man in my early 20s. Because I got to the point where I really wanted to know, truth for myself. I wanted to know, like my own purpose, I wanted to know the nature of happiness. I was tired of just reading books and I wanted to know for myself and so I decided I was going to sell everything and travel in search of these answers and I ended up traveling walking the Camino in northern Spain. I ended up going to Thailand study with monks. I ended up going to Israel studying with rabbis ended up in India, which really ended up changing my life in a very deep and profound Wait. And it was really out of that, that I came to came back to the US. And I felt such a sense of freedom inside, I felt such a sense of fulfillment and peace that I wanted. I wanted everyone to feel what I felt. And it was from there that I began working with one client one on one, and then that grew and next client came and the next line came and over the years, it just mushroom to people around the world and small groups and large groups and you know, 567 800 people, and then seminars and books, and now two best selling books. And it's just, it's just evolved. So that's the short version. I could keep going, but I stopped.

Christine Li  10:35  
Okay, well, thank you for telling us the abridged version. When you said long story short, I felt in my heart in some way. Each of our stories is a long story, right? It's like a long, twisty, windy path of decisions and fears, and disappointing people who we care about so deeply, things like that. So thank you for bringing all of these topics into this container here. I have at least a few questions. If you don't mind. They're there. They're not in any particular order. The first phrase that caught my mind was, you knew when you were very young that you wanted to alleviate suffering. I'm wondering how, as a young child, you kind of knew that what was going inside your heart and mind at the time? What kind of suffering were you attuned to?

Kute Blackson  11:28  
Yeah, honestly, it was not a logical thing. It was a feeling because I was very empathetic. So I'd feel people's pain. And growing up in South London, I felt people's pain. Everyone was going to work, everyone was rushing and hustle bustle driving going here, going there. paying them was like living life on the rat race. But I just felt like people weren't happy people weren't fulfilled, and I couldn't explain it. I was too young to talk to people about it. But I felt the pain that they were in, that they will numbing themselves from, because maybe I was, I was a sensitive kid. And so all I felt was the pain. And that pain touched the part of me that really felt them. And so that's all I can say about that. I felt their pain. Like, for instance, in my father's church, there were a lot of folks there that came that weren't that educated, that didn't have very much money, to be honest. But we're really fulfilled and happy and generous, so generous and just full of life, you know, and yet, I got a scholarship to a very prestigious school in South London called the village college. And I went there for a few years, paid nothing, because we didn't come from very much. And I was around a lot of kids whose parents had so much wealth, so much power, so much status, so much money, prime ministers, kids, presidents, kids, politicians, kids, billionaires, kids, and they had every reason to be happy, they had every reason to be happy in life, no reason to not be happy yet, often, when I would go to their homes and hang out with them. The kids were miserable. The parents were were miserable. And so really started to make me think, what is the purpose of life? Is it just to wake up, you know, go to work, make money, go to work, go on vacation, buy a car, buy a house and then die? Like, surely there has to be more to life than this. And so I think at a young age, it began a process of questioning life and questioning this existence that we're living because I would just look and observe people, and I was very observant. And it just felt like we were, I don't see zombies. You know, we were just on this routine and rushing here, especially in London, waking up rushing down to the train station going home, no one seemed fulfilled, no one seemed happy. It just felt like we were in a routine maze matrix just going from one day to the next. And so I think that that feeling of what I felt made me question a lot from a young age. And I didn't know how I wanted to help people, I didn't really have a sense of what that was like, I just felt people very deeply. And that's why when my father announced the 14 and my son's taking over, I knew I wanted to help people. And I just didn't know any other way and so went along with it. But I knew that wasn't right either. And I was just too afraid to speak my truth. And I think one of the things as human beings that stops us from being fulfilled, that stops us from being happy, that stops us from being ourselves, that stops us from breaking through to that next level, is the fact that we are constantly lying to ourselves, you know, the lies, the lies that we tell ourselves, keep us stuck as human beings, we lie to ourselves. The challenge is sometimes we lie to ourselves, and it's so unconscious that we don't even know that we're lying to ourselves. We're just lying to ourselves. We're in denial. We don't even know that we lie because it's what we've been programmed to do from childhood. And so I think if someone is listening to this conversation, and they want to break through if someone is listening to this conversation and they want to shift Like, if someone is listening to this conversation, and they're not truly fulfilled or happy or living their purpose, then I would invite people to ask themselves a few questions. Number one, what lies am I telling myself? Simple, what lies am I telling myself, we'd like to ourselves, we stay in relationships, that we're not truly happy and we lie to ourselves about it. We work jobs, where we, on some level, we're compromising our integrity. And we know that we are and we know that this is not the real purpose for why it was born. And yet we lie to ourselves about it. You know, we stay in and and we keep on and we negotiate. We rationalize, we make excuses and 1020 3040 years passes. And so the question I really want people to ask themselves and have the courage to be authentic and honest and uncompromising about is what lies am I telling myself? What life am I telling myself, and to be really honest about and I believe that there is no transformation without truth? There is no healing without truth, there is no breakthrough. Without truth. There is no fulfillment, happiness without truth, but we're constantly lying to ourselves. And so what lies am I telling myself, it takes courage to be truly honest, I think many of us we're afraid of telling ourselves the truth, because we're afraid of the consequences, we're afraid of what's going to happen. And so one thing I also encourage people is take the pressure off of yourself, of having to take action, take the pressure off of yourself of having to take action, because sometimes that fear or the pressure of having to take action or thinking we need to take action sometimes begins to cloud, our, our judgment, cloud, our clarity, and so we stay stuck in a sort of bubble of confusion. I'm not sure I'm confused. I don't know if this is right. For me, I don't know what what my purpose is, when deep down, we know, we have a sense, I think there's a part of us at the deepest level that knows everything. Because at the deepest level, we're connected to everything. Yet, we play this smokescreen game of I don't know, I'm confused. I don't know what my purpose is, when deep down, we know what my purpose what our purpose is. But if we truly owned our knowing if we truly own the truth, we might actually have to go for it, we might actually have to take the risk. So sometimes easier to stay in a bubble of confusion, and stay in the safe zone so that we can always stay in the security of the future fantasy, the hope of the future fantasy and possibility. Because if I don't know, I don't have to do anything I can have the hope. And so second question I would invite people to sit with is, what am i Pretending to not know, really? What am i Pretending to not know? And just sit with that question. And the first thing I'd kind of invite people to sit with is, what are the lies that I'm telling myself? What is it costing me? What is it costing me, when we lie to ourselves? It's painful. When we lie to ourselves, it's not meant to feel good. It's meant to feel painful. To me, the pain is a gift, the pain is a blessing, the pain is a sign that something is off the pain is simply feedback, it's your friend, it's a gift showing you where you need to pay more attention. So the issue is not the pain. The issue is often we don't acknowledge the pain, we don't face the pain we don't deal with the pain that human beings what we're conditioned to do is avoid the pain is distract from the pain, there's no matter where you drive it away, small cut away, drink it away, you know, social media get away just so that we don't feel the pain, and we ended up numbing it. And we end up perpetuating and living the cycle because we don't deal with the pain. And I think pain is a profound gift if we're willing to pay attention to the message. And so I would invite people to really sit with what are the lies, I'm telling myself, what is it costing me and actually be willing to not run from the pain that you feel, but to actually be with the pain and feel the pain. Because when you feel the pain, it begins a process of marinating it begins a process of burning, it begins a process of stirring things up inside that will begin moving you to take action in a different direction. And so I think transformation starts with telling the truth, we have to want the truth more than we want what we have, we have to want to be free more than we want what we want. And many times we want to be free. We say we want to be free. But we want our comfort more. You know and I always say that freedom real freedom isn't free will freedom actually requires that we let go of what's not aligned with our freedom requires that we let go of old stories, old addictions or delusions, old identities, the old aspects of ourselves, it requires that we let go because the next level of our life, whatever that is, requires the next level of us the next version of us which requires that we let go but as human beings sort of creatures of habit and comfort and familiarity, we tend to hold on to what's not working out of safety and of self preservation, but holding on simply keeps us stuck. And so what was you telling yourself what do you need to let go?

Christine Li  19:53  
Okay, thank you for those powerful questions that I'm sure are going to be helpful to our audience because I I agree with you that we are all navigating through this world, while also fooling ourselves and keeping ourselves safe from different truths that we're not ready to handle yet or seem too daunting for us to face. Aside from the self work that needs to happen, the part of your story that really got to me was about the fact there were 1000s of people waiting for you to do a certain thing, including your father, and that you had to make the decision to basically go against everybody else's reasonable expectations, or somewhat reasonable expectations. And that real fear of being alone. So there's the idea of, oh, I would love to live my purpose and love to live in alignment. But what about that cost of having to feel rejected having to reject the expectations having to run the risk of really being on your own? I guess that's the thought that comes to my mind. How do you get over that fear?

Kute Blackson  21:05  
Yeah, I would say for me, what I did was I allowed myself to feel the pain. I allowed myself to get in touch with the pain. Because when I projected into my future, and I felt what I was going to be living, like I felt that I'm going to live a lie, to get love validation, and approval. And now I'm going to have to live this life for the rest of my life. When I didn't just numb that and rationalize it, because what we do is the mind can rationalize anything to justify its position. Oh, yeah, that seems good. Oh, yeah. And we can just we come up with all these stories as to why it actually makes sense. And then we BS ourselves. And before you know it, 10 years go by. So for me, what I did is as I projected into my future, and I felt the consequence of this lie, and I let myself feel the pain unguarded, just really feel it. It felt so painful inside, that self betrayal felt painful. And I think many times we, we feel that pain, but we numb it, we drink it, we you know, we relationship it away, we travel it the way we shop it away. I just felt it. And being with that pain, without pushing it away without rationalizing it without making excuses without trying to get rid of it without justifying it and just feeling it. Honestly, it just felt really heartbreaking. And it was that pain and feeling that pain that started to motivate the move me to make a different decision to move in a different direction. And that's why thing feeling once feelings This is really profound. And so important that sounds simple, is just not always easy for several reasons which we can get into. But for me was just feeling the pain and the pain became so overwhelming, so real, that I knew, I knew I could not lie to myself and pretend like I was fine going down a path that I wasn't, I couldn't pretend, you know, and many times when we lie to ourselves, maybe we're not conscious that we're lying to ourselves. So what do I do, okay? If you're not aware that you're lying to yourself, or you're not sure that you're lying to yourself, but maybe you are, and maybe you're not even allowing yourself to consciously feel the pain in the way I'm saying, the pain will tend to manifest in different ways, even without your conscious intention. Number one, the pain may manifest as an emotional pain. As in, you start feeling depressed. Not all of a sudden, but depression, the emotional pain, depression can be a sign that there's some truth, some feeling, you're not acknowledging. And you might think, but I'm fine. I'm doing great. I'm not lying to myself. But why do I feel depressed? Or why do I feel this low grade depression? Why do I not feel energized and so that's a sign that you're lying to yourself. Even if you think you're not, you might feel heaviness, emotional depression in some way. A lack of aliveness a lack of joy, that can be a sign, you might feel some sort of like physical ailment, but you might not put two and two together like a backache or shoulder ache, a constant niggling thing in your lower back or in your neck that's just reoccurring, that's temporary, what you're unconsciously denying starts manifesting in your body, because the mind and body is connected. And so that can also be a sign, it might manifest as a sort of ongoing dis ease, because there's a part of your feeling domain that you're not paying attention to that eventually, your body and your mind connected, that this repressed emotion and feeling starts manifesting in your body as an ongoing disease. And so these are a few ways.

Christine Li  24:41  
Okay, that's a fantastic answer. Thank you. And what I pull away from that is that there's a greater cost to betraying yourself, then thinking about the fear of being alone, that that basically the most painful pain is when you're living a life where you aren't not in alignment with your own needs and wishes and vision.

Kute Blackson  25:05  
Yeah, you know you mentioned alone. One thing I just want to piggyback on real quick is when you betray yourself, you in order to get love validation approval from everyone else, but when you betray yourself, that is the moment that you leave yourself alone. That is the moment of real aloneness. And that is the real pain that we feel underneath the pain of being left by another. When we betray our truth, betray our integrity betray our feeling, we don't realize we are leaving ourselves alone. And the pain of VAT is a pain that nothing outside of ourselves can fulfill. And here's the thing when we do that, and we then end up being someone that we think we need to be, you know, acting in a certain way, saying a certain thing, being someone we think we need to be in order to get love validation approval, there will always be a part of us that isn't fulfilled and happy. Even when we get the love validation and approval from other people, there will always be a part of us deep down, that will not be fulfilled and happy and at peace. Because deep down we know, we know that the version of ourselves that other people are loving, is not really us. So there's going to always be a deeper level of pain of knowing that they're not loving us truly for who we are. And that is an even more painful loneliness. And that's why a lot of us we end up feeling depressed when that feeling because we know that who people are loving is not truly us. And there's a deeper fear of if they really knew us, they might not love us, you know, and so even when we get the love, that we're seeking, the love that we're getting isn't fulfilling, because it's not truly directed to who we really are. And so I think the quickest way is to drop the lies, the quickest way is to be truly yourself. And here's what happens when you are authentic, when you really honor yourself, you will lose people, when you are honoring yourself, surely, initially, you will lose people, you will lose all the people that are loving you for who you are pretending to be. And you start acknowledging that the version of you that they were loving wasn't really you anyway. And so there was an initial period of grieving. And it seems as though you're alone, because you will lose a bunch of people. But what you will regain in that process is yourself and a deeper level of peace from being yourself. And it's through that by being yourself and being who you are. And being authentic, that you'll begin to attract people that are loving you for who you are, because you are projecting who you really are. And so there will be a natural releasing. And I think many times we're afraid of that releasing, which is why we hold on. And that keeps us stuck. And so there's there's nothing more painful than the aloneness, that comes from leaving ourselves alone.

Christine Li  27:55  
Beautiful. I loved what you just said, it's very powerful. Thank you for that, that really covered so many things that we're all struggling with. Sometimes on a small level, sometimes it's that pain in the back that we know is not an accident or not out of nowhere. So thank you for tying in how our lives really reflect how we're navigating that relationship with ourselves inside. And we can see symptoms of it all over the place, lack of concentration, feeling lethargic, feeling like you can't connect with people in an honest way. Or they're not connecting with you in an honest way. It's all over the place. So yes, it's really powerful when you can act in alignment with your True needs and wishes. So thank you for being that messenger for us today. Could you tell me and explain to me about your new book surrender? Could you please explain the roots of the book? And also what you mean by surrender?

Kute Blackson  29:00  
So yeah, the roots of the book how the book came about. Honestly, this was not the book that I thought I was going to write. Let me just say that first. I had a grand plan of the book I thought I was going to write in fact, the way I started writing in the first place this time round, was I had an entire whiteboard, literally a wall of different ideas, brilliant ideas that I thought amazing ideas, different topics, different titles, different themes, different concepts, different you know different stories, ideas of that I thought people wanted to hear about publishers would want to buy my clients would want to read things that I thought would be bestsellers. So two things I thought would sell basically. And when I looked at the the entire board, nothing felt right. Nothing felt authentic. Nothing felt like it was in my integrity, you know, and I could make the work and maybe one day I I write books about them. But nothing felt like this is it the only word in the hundreds of words that were on this board that actually felt right was the one word and it said surrender. And I remember seeing that word going. But I don't want to write about surrender. Because you know, people resist that we want away from it. There's so many misconceptions about the word surrender, it's like going to the dentist, you should go, but you don't want to go, we resist going. But we know we should go. And it's good for us. And so I thought, I don't know. And then then I went through a process of questioning and meditation. And I realized this was the book that I was meant to write. This was the book that was seeking to be written, this book had a soul of its own. And I was not the one who was supposed to write it, I was just supposed to make myself available to be a vessel in the vehicle for the book to come through. And then as I started to reflect on my entire life, I started to see all of the interconnections of my life and experiences from childhood, how my parents meant how I was raised my upbringing with my father and my mother, how everything had prepared me to write this book on surrender and be a spokesperson for the new generation, about surrender, because I've really wanted to, shall we say reframe the idea of what surrender is because there's so many misconceptions on surrender, which we'll get into. I also saw that the seeds of the book were planted a few years before in that at the end of 2016, my mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. And it was really challenging because she was the person that I was closest to, she was, like my best friend, so to speak. And she raised me and gave me so much love. And so when this happened, I was devastated. And I started to fly back and forth from Los Angeles to London, literally every month for a week, every month, I'm flying back and forth, to be with her in her chemo sessions to sit with her to be with her to take care of her. And so when the process first began, I had this intention that I was going to get her well, I had this intention, and I was going to heal her with herbs and traditional alternative medicines. And after the first, I would say, the first couple of months, I realized that nothing I do is going to make a difference. Essentially, I had to surrender. And in that surrender, I gave up hope of anything being different. I gave up hope of the future with her, and I just started to become fully present with her. And what started out as the worst year of my life, honestly ended up as the best year of my life, in a way because I've never sat with my mother for eight hours in chemo, or at all since I was a kid I, I just was with my mother, and every moment became so incredibly precious, every moment became so incredibly sacred, every moment became so incredibly special, every moment became like, the last moment and my only regret became like, Why did I wait? till this moment? Why did they wait till she was dying. And so I had all of these revelations, and about six months into the process, she been going through chemo, the doctors finally said to her, and I think this is where the seed of the book was planted. The doctors finally said to her, there's nothing that we can do. So get your affairs in order. And, you know, prepare to die, basically. And it was such an emotional moment. And I was in the parking lot with my mother of the hospital, and I looked my mother in the eyes. And I asked her two questions. The first question I asked her was, Are you afraid? Are you afraid of dying? And my mother looked me in the eyes. And she said, this little Japanese 72 year old woman, and she said, No, I'm not afraid of dying. And I was so shocked because she had such a quiet strength. I'm not afraid of dying, because I know I'm not just this body, that this body will dissolve. But this body is just a temporary vehicle for my soul. And I felt her conviction and her strength that was so inspiring. And then I asked the man, is there anything that I can do for you in your final days to make your life easier? What can I do? I wanted to be a good son, where can I take you? What can I buy you? And she said, something really profound. She said, There's nothing I need, and there's nothing I want. There's nothing I need, and there's nothing I want. I said, Well, what do you need? She said nothing. She said, All I want is what God wants for my life. And I was struck by the way she said it because this entire year, she had a piece this entire year she had a comp this and she never cried. She never felt like a victim. She never got mad. She she was very emotional person, but was so peaceful. And I realized that she wasn't attached to living and she wasn't attached to dying. She was surrendered to life. And that's when I saw as I reflected back looking at the whiteboard and my entire life. That's when I saw the the power of surrender in my mother's life. And then I reflected on the great once Jesus put again, the Bruce Lee Muhammad Ali, Bob Marley, you know, Martin Luther King Mandela, Mother Teresa, all of Elon Musk even love him or hate him. At some point, all of these people They surrendered themselves. One of these people sweated themselves to life they surrendered themselves to their soul, their surrender themselves to a vision bigger than themselves, they surrendered themselves and they let life life kind of move them and use them in a certain sense. And in that surrender, they transcended their own human egos limitations. And I think that's when they tap into another dimension of grace and other dimension of possibility infinite possibilities in life begin to manifest and create through them. So I really believe that surrender is the most powerful thing that we can do. I really believe that surrender is the key, the real key to manifestation, the password to freedom, the key to our next level, but in our culture, we have this idea or shall we say, myth or misconception, that to surrender was weak. That to surrender is passive. That Surrender means given up, it means waving the white flag, it means being a victim being a doormat, if you surrender, you won't manifest your goals, dreams and desires, you're going to be walked on if you surrender, you're going to get less than and what I really want people to get is a whole reframing what surrender is, if you surrender, what if you didn't get less? What if you actually got more like more than you could even conceive and make up in visualize and imagine with your conscious awareness? What if life gave you more than you could imagine, not less, more amazing, more magic, more joy. And that's why the book I wrote is called the magic of surrender. Not magic as in like a David Copperfield, Hocus Pocus, Harry Potter magic, as in magic being that which is beyond your mind's capacity to even imagine, beyond your wildest dreams. And when I ask people who wants magic, everyone says they want magic. But very few of us are willing to surrender, we want magic, we want to surrender, we want magic, we want to hold on to the old, we want to hold on to who we were want to hold on to that old situation doesn't work that way. And so holding on keeps us stuck. And so just to be really clear, Surrender means letting go of control, or I should say, letting go of the illusion of control. I would say in the last two years, perhaps life has shown us we're not as in control as we thought, with the pandemic, and everything has happened. And so sweat is letting go of this illusion of control. Control is a master of addiction. Surrender is when we stop trying to force life to fit into our limited idea of how we think it should be and manipulate life into our small concept of how we think it should be and, and make people what we think they should be surrenders when we give up the idea of who we think we should be how we think life should be, so that we can truly be open and available to the authentic impulse of what life is seeking to express. And I think when we're truly open, we are in surrender, then we can take surrender risk to take the limits off of life. Many times we don't realize when our intentions and our attachment, we're limiting life, and we go to life, asking for peanut and life is seeking to give us a buffet and so so when there is being fully available, fully open to the universe, full availability, that's when I think the magic happens. You know, that's when the beauty happens. So it's an availability, it's an openness, it's a curiosity. It doesn't mean doing nothing, it doesn't mean just being passive as and sitting there. To me, that's just being lazy. So when the means getting in touch with your deepest truth, your most authentic truth, and feeling the deepest impulse of what life is seeking to express to you. And that might mean leaving your job. You know, that might mean ending a relationship, that might mean committing in a relationship, that might mean feeling a message you've been afraid of putting out and taking that risk, that might mean going out and taking a stand and protesting for a cause that you believe in, even though it's risky. And so surrender is following a deep history of the old paradigm, I like to say, is a ego based model for creating the world where we've been conditioned to ask ourselves, what do you want, get clarity on what you want nothing wrong with getting clarity on what you want. But creating life I found from that way often leads to a decent life, a good life, but not necessarily a great life. To me. Mandela lived a great life, a magical life, one that was beyond his human ability to create by himself. And so the old model is asking the question, what do you want? And sometimes we get what we thought we wanted only to realize that what we thought we wanted was not what we really wanted. It was just what we thought we wanted based on who we thought we were. And so in the paradigm of surrender, the question I'm inviting people to ask is slightly different. Now, what do I want? Which is okay, but it's a bigger question is more of an infinite question. The question becomes, what is it that life is seeking to express? What is it that life is seeking to express through The what is the deepest impulse of what life is seeking to manifest and create through me like, for me, it wasn't the magic of surrender book, I had no idea. I thought it was another book. But life had a bigger intention, life had a more infinite intention that I had to expand into. And so I think we get to expand into allowing ourselves to feel and receive the deepest expression of life. And when we do, then we can align our thoughts, our thinking, our strategy, our actions based on what's authentic. And now we're going in the direction of what's authentic, and we can give 100% to that. So surrender is openness.

Christine Li  40:36  
Beautiful, thank you for being such a beautiful speaker, and communicator of these really complicated pieces of relationships that we have with ourself, and, and our potential, I really appreciate the stories, the openness, your directness, your honesty, about all the things you've gone through, including the transformation you had while working with your mother, as she was transforming, too. And I really appreciate your explanation of surrender with a capital S. That really it is, yeah, it is just allowing everything to be in play at every moment, and I think, you know, I brought it down to just the example of when you're setting out to write a book, that how many of us think we're doing something and then it turns into something else, that there are other processes, other than our conscious mind, that are part of the creation. And when we're blocking out all the other pieces, we only get a certain quality of output, it is limiting ourselves when we think oh, it's just my brain is just Monday through Friday, it's whatever format you have, is actually quite limiting. And, and I know from doing a little research about you before we pressed record, that you take people past, really into into other countries, literally, you know, into the parts of themselves that they hadn't yet been ready to see and get familiar with. So very interesting work. Thank you coop for, for coming on and showing us who you are. It's beautiful. So could you let us know how our listeners can connect with the book and connect with you and work with you?

Kute Blackson  42:32  
Sure, yeah, you know, the book is out. The magic of surrender is out on paperback, depending on when people are listening to this, it came out on May the third on paperback, so go to Amazon, get the book, send me a message on Instagram or Facebook, Kute Blackson and let me know you got the book, love to hear from you and how the book is inspiring you and also this interview, my main website kuteblackson.com, and you can find out all of my content there. For those that might be interested in really transforming themselves to a whole nother level. One of the most powerful life changing things I do is a 12 day event in Bali. And I do it twice a year. It's called boundless bliss, Bali. So that's www boundless bliss.com You can find out all the information there.

Christine Li  43:21  
Thank you Kute. It's been such a pleasure meeting you so fascinating to listen to your story and your work. And I just want to mention that you glow across the screen. Your life is coming through. So thank you so much for doing all the hard work and bringing it to us. And my dear listener, it's been another week on the Make Time for Success podcast. I look forward to seeing you next Thursday. Take care. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. We'll talk to you soon!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai