The Magic of Surrender With Kute Blackson

 

How does surrendering help in striving for success? Today’s guest has the answer. Kute Blackson is a beloved inspirational speaker and transformational teacher. Steve knows him from the Transformational Leadership Council, a select group of one hundred of the world’s foremost authorities in the personal development industry. In this episode, Kute shares valuable insights from his book, The Magic of Surrender: Finding the Courage to Let Go. He emphasizes that surrendering doesn’t just mean giving up. It means leaning into the path life has already set out for us. There is magic when we allow the possibilities to happen. Don’t miss his golden nuggets of wisdom and find out how this philosophy brought him the status he has today. Plus, look into his early days as he shares personal stories that fueled his growth and transformation.

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The Magic of Surrender With Kute Blackson

My guest is Kute Blackson, who is a friend of mine from the Transformational Leadership Council, which is a collection of people who write books, do seminars, and all that type of thing. He is very well known in the personal development world and the transformational leadership world. He’s an author, speaker, and seminar leader. He’s got an interesting life story. He’s got a book that comes out in Paperback called The Magic of Surrender. We are going to talk about that a little bit, and we are going to see where this conversation takes us. Kute, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate it. It’s great to see you.

I really appreciate you having me and I’m honored.

The honor is mine. I’d like to start with your story. It’s an interesting one. Your story/journey. We don’t have to start from your actual day of birth but give us a little background on Kute.

A general overview I was born in Ghana, West Africa. My father is from Ghana, my mother is Japanese. I grew up in London. I live in the US so I feel like I’m a citizen of the world from everywhere and nowhere. I have always felt that way. As a young boy, I always felt a deep calling to help people in some way.

I was very sensitive. I’d feel people’s pain and feelings empathetically. There was always a part of me that wanted to alleviate suffering. I didn’t know what that would look like. My background was a bit unique. Whilst going through it, I didn’t realize that anything was special, different, or extraordinary. It felt normal to me and I think that was part of the blessing because I grew up without a sense of limitations.

One of my first memories was literally seeing a crippled woman crawling on the floor. She picks up the sand that this man walks on, wipes it on her face, and stands up. Week after week, I grew up seeing blind people see and deaf people hear. Stuff that may not believe. You see it on TV and you wonder, “Is this stuff real?” I grew up seeing it every day.

Many of us, out of fear, hold back who we are, our full self-expression. We don’t share our gifts with the world and we don’t follow our purpose because of that fear of the unknown that will happen. Click To Tweet

What was the context for that? You witnessed what we would generically refer to as healing.

As miracles. The same man who sends you, picked up, looks at a woman in a wheelchair and say, “Why are you in this wheelchair? You are not sick. Stand up.” Put his hands at someone who wasn’t seeing them have a vision, put his hands on their eyes and they would see. This man was my father. He bought 300 churches in Ghana, West Africa at his height. Hundreds of thousands of devotees. He’s considered the miracle man of Africa.

His followers, the president of Ghana, heads of state, the king of Ghana, and a lot of people. At his height in the ‘80s. He had a huge church in South London. 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 people every Sunday. I grew up in this mystical environment. Luckily for me, my father was very spiritual, mystically inclined, metaphysically inclined, and less orthodox religion.

I grew up with a lot of self-help, spiritual-type books on his bookshelf that I would devour and read, like Louise Hay, Deepak Chopra, Jim Rohn, and Marianne Williamson. The Eastern mystics Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This was my passion and obsession. My speaking career began at the age of eight when he threw me in front of the audience one day and said speak. That was the extent of my training. I had no idea what I was saying, but something came through that was a little beyond me. It became a process. At fourteen, I was ordained as a minister and I have given the mantle. I was given the task of taking over my father’s ministry. Him and I had no conversation about this.

He was a very old-school guy. The type of guy that comes from a perspective of, “It’s my way. Please choose.” It was assumed my entire life was planned out for me in a sense. A lot of pressure and expectations. Everyone was excited and he planned my life. I knew at that moment that as much as I wanted to help people, the structure of the church and religion in an organized way wasn’t my path and calling in this lifetime. I knew, as a young boy, that something wasn’t right and wasn’t in my integrity, but I was too afraid honestly to say no. I was too afraid to confront this iconic guy, my father, and say, “I am not taking over.”

My fear was if I speak my truth, if I dare to be who I am and express my real authentic self, I lose the relationship. That I wouldn’t be an outcast, left alone, or abandoned. I think many of us out of fear hold back who we are and our full self-expression. We don’t share our gifts with the world. We don’t follow up on purpose because of that fear of the unknown of what will happen.

At eight years old, you are put up on the stage and told to speak. That’s deep in your DNA. I’m supposed to be in front of an audience or this audience. At what point did you begin to realize that, “I’m supposed to be in front of an audience,” because that is where you end it up but, “I’m not supposed to be in front of my dad’s audience and what he expects from me.” How old were you at that point?

I know it at fourteen when it was announced. I remember going through this ordination ceremony in front of thousands of people. I was praying the night before and something fell off. On a human level, I didn’t have the courage to say no to my father. I remember going through the ceremony thinking something isn’t right.

Everyone is jumping for joy and inside, I felt like I was betraying my soul and myself. It took me four years to wrestle with myself and muster up the courage. Also, what shifted it to things to maybe more specific because they began winning all these self-help books from the personal development icons that Louis Hay and Jack Canfield from my father’s bookshelf ironically.

I began to realize, “They don’t have a church. They are sharing their inspiration. Maybe there’s a different way.” I lived behind my father’s church. I start sneaking into my father’s church in the middle of the night and putting the lights off. Imagine this 12 to a 13-year-old kid, I would give seminars to the empty chairs. Imagining I was speaking, inspiring, and doing it in a different way. There was always this knowing, and something broke around 15 to 16. It still took me two years. You probably know J. Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher.

He was being groomed to be the successor of the Theosophical Society and the World Teacher. When I read his life, I could still relate to his life. When he was 28 or 29, he left everything behind, so I’m having this epiphany and it became so clear like this is what I have to do. When I was eighteen, that’s when I felt the undeniable calling in my soul to come to America and meet many of the folks in TLC. Many of the self-help icons, study with them and learn from some of them.

I had no idea how but the calling was so strong. When I looked into my future, I saw death and I could follow the expected path for my life like so many of us do. I could take the safe path and be successful. If I don’t have myself, my own integrity, honor, and soul, then what success is there? When I projected into that future, I felt such pain like a sense of self-betrayal. I felt the sense of soul suicide and that pain at the young age of 17 or 18 shook me and that’s what propelled me forward. I thought, “If I start lying to myself now, I’m going to be stuck in a trap of lying to myself for the rest of my life.” When you are a kid, the rest of your life seems like a very long time.

If you lie to yourself now, you’re going to be stuck in a trap of lying to yourself for the rest of your life. Click To Tweet

You feel like you are going to live forever at that age. What I’m picturing at that juncture is you are standing at this proverbial crossroads. You are looking into your own future on the path that your dad sets you on, and that felt like death. At the same time, you are envisioning almost a parallel universe or another track where you are doing similar kinds of work, but in more of the audience that you were speaking to in the empty chairs. That felt different when you thought of that.

It was still the unknown because I didn’t have a reference point for this industry, but it felt like it was more like something was pulling me in that direction. I couldn’t explain it. It didn’t make sense to my logic. I had no education for it other than there was this pole. There was this gravitational calling to go in that direction and it felt undeniable. I guess we have free choice or free will. I could have resisted but it felt harder to resist. I surrendered to it.

The reason I’m asking that is I wonder how often we all have that similar opportunity at the important crossroads or junctures in our own lives. When you imagine a certain future for yourself, no matter what age you are, you think about yourself following the path that you are on and imagining the future that you want to create on that path. What does that feel like? If it doesn’t feel good, a lot of times that’s where desperation sets in for people instead of saying, “Let me imagine another path and see how that feels before I even follow that path.” We have a lot of that built-in that we don’t pay attention to, but he was very clear to you at a young age. What was your dad’s response to this?

I was terrified the entire time and walked up the stairs to his room. When I finally looked into his eyes, I felt like I was stabbing a knife into his heart and breaking his heart. It was what I had to do. It broke my heart as much as to break his heart. I will never forget it. I said, “I don’t think I can take over your churches.” He said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes.” We then didn’t speak for two years. It was difficult. I won’t deny the mind. My mind questioned then I wondered if maybe I made the wrong decision and I should go back and reevaluate.

That knowing and feeling that you mentioned never went away. It was always there and that feeling is what I have allowed to guide me. As human beings, we all have that feeling that there was a part of us or that knows. Whether we are in touch with that knowing or not, or we listened to that knowing is different, but there’s a part of us at the deepest level that has a sense and knowing. That knowing arises from a deeper dimension of our being than our mind, logic, fears, and personality.

To deny that knowing is what often ends up creating a lot of suffering and pain in our life that is unnecessary, but it also takes courage to follow that down. There’s a part of us that knows because, at the deepest level, we know everything. We are connected to everything. Part of the journey of life is to trust and follow that knowing, and not need to know where it’s going to lead. Not even need to know, figure it out, or analyze it. Whenever I feel that feeling or nudging to follow, even if I don’t know where I’m going or where it’s going to lead. That knowing has a different texture than my emotions, mind, or analysis.

 

Did you ever reconcile with your dad?

The long story short is yes. When I left, I ended up winning a green card in the lottery. That’s a short version that is interesting and important for people to know. I’m a real believer that when you follow your soul, knowing, and you don’t compromise, it may not happen in the way you expect, but the forces of the universe support you.

I came to America with two suitcases. The one suitcase for the self-help books. I knew no one in the country. The first person I knew in America was the taxi driver that dropped me in Venice Beach after I asked him to take me somewhere safe and cheap, which was years ago. Venice Beach was not a safe place.

I was unconsciously full of resentment towards my father. I didn’t think I was. I was in denial and resentful. I felt unsupported. I fall in love. The moment the reconciliation happened was interesting. I was 21 years old. I went to this men’s retreat. I have never been on anything like this, but my two girlfriends kept saying, “You have some anger towards your father.” The first one, I said, “No. The relationship is over.” That was that. It didn’t go too well. I then met the second beautiful woman who I fell madly in love with. Love brings up your stuff, and she says, “I think you have some anger towards your father,” and because I wanted this one to work, I said, “Let me dig deep.”

I had some therapy. I somehow got into this men’s retreat. I think it was the mankind project or something. I went deep into the wilderness for a weekend. It was in that weekend with a group of authentic men that I got to feel, face, and acknowledge the deep pain, feeling of hurt, and rejection that I felt around my father. For the first time, I release it, feel it, and let it out. I got to a place underneath the anger, the resentment, and the hurt of such a profound acknowledgment of the love I had for him that I’d been suppressing. That love wasn’t based on he was what he was. He wasn’t what he wasn’t. He did the best he could. If I wanted to free myself and be complete, it didn’t have anything to do with him.

When I was able to let him go and forgive him, truly, the craziest thing happened. I would say within a week after two years of not speaking, he calls me up. I was in a free place with him. I didn’t tell him I forgave him, but I forgave him and I felt nothing but love. He calls me up and said, “We need to speak and have a conversation.” That began the reconciliation healing process. It’s been a journey. I would say my relationship with my father healed a lot over the years, and then even in the last few years when we were in a peaceful place.

When you follow your soul and your knowing, you don’t compromise. It may not happen in the way you expect but the forces of the universe support you. Click To Tweet

My mother passed away and I was very close to my mother. I remember asking her from the other side, so to speak. Not to get woo-woo, but I felt this connection. In my internal world, I asked my mother, “Why did you pass away before my father?” She was much younger. At least what I thought I received as a message was, “I passed away to gift you a deeper relationship with your father. Use this time to resolve whatever you need to resolve.”

The last few years, I have been profound because I made a decision to drop whatever I had on any level. For me, the thought was, “Relationship is two ways. He needs to call me too.” I dropped it all. None of that crap mattered. The only thing that mattered was loving. I made a decision that I was going to expect nothing from him. All I was going to do for the rest of my life in honor of my mother, my own soul, and his soul was going to love him every day because I realized I love this man. That’s the bottom line.

If he dies, whether he loves me, he shows it or not, I want to be at peace with the fact that I loved fully so I have no regrets. Every day in my work, yoga, and spiritual practices, I call him every day and I check-in. I love him. It doesn’t matter if he calls or he doesn’t matter. Every day I started that process and I swear, it completely transformed this all-patriarchal old-school guy, and I think he’s never had that. I had no expectation but his heart melted. For the first time, he began calling. For the first time in my life, a guy who’d never even remembered my birthdays started calling me on my birthday. The dude is 86 years old and calls me on my birthdays. It’s been profound to see the healing that’s happened, but it had to happen in myself first.

In the beginning, it sounds like it only happened in yourself. Even to the point, if I was hearing you correctly, when you let go, he reached out to you. You didn’t call him and say, “I let go of all that crap.” It happened as a natural response. It’s a beautiful story. When I think about it, that expression of love, we tend to think about our experience of love as a quid pro quo kind of thing. The powerful version of that is the unconditional piece. If it’s unconditional almost by definition, it means that it’s all internal to me because I’m not expecting anything from you. I’m trying to imagine what if we could do that with everybody.

You did that with your father. You learned it deeply with your father because of that relationship between a father and a son. Most of us have very close, personal relationships like that that get messy and therefore challenging to let go of it. For example, for an ex-spouse. It’s really tough. I’m a business guy. A big part of my life is taking these ideas and helping business people to apply them in their companies. Can you imagine if that was the attitude you had towards the people on your team to see what would happen if you could get to that place? It’s such a powerful story. When all is said and done, you ended up in the US on your own two feet. Coming here, knowing nobody except the people in the books that you were reading, and the taxi driver.

I went and harassed some of them. Jack could be one of them.

 

Jack Canfield was on your target list. I have had Jack on the show before and I love him to death. What was your first experience in reaching out to Jack and other folks?

Here’s what happened. I was an innocent eighteen-year-old kid. All of these motivational inspirational folks like Brian Tracy were like Mike Jordan or Stephen Covey. My Michael Jordan is Pelé. One day, he was in Culver City where Jack’s office was at that time. I called the bus because he never called. I will never forget I showed up and I reminded Jack of this when I was first invited to be a part of TLC, and I saw him for the first time.

I said, “You let me in.” He was like, “What do you mean?” When I’m eighteen, I went on the bus to his office in Culver City. I walked into the office and sat there. I forget who it was. It’s such a long time ago. Maybe anticipating that they would know that I was coming. I said “This is who I am. I’m a young guy. I want to meet Jack Canfield. I have been reading Jack’s books since I was 13 and 14 years old. He’s inspired me. I came to America because I wanted to go into this field.” “Sorry. Jack Canfield is not here.” Something like that. I’m like, “I really want to meet Jack.” Basically, I wouldn’t leave. Eventually, this door opens and Jack walks out like, “What’s going on?” I was like, “Jack.” I give in my spiel before they could get me out of there.

To his credit and maybe people don’t know this about him publicly, but it’s one thing to be it some way when you are on stage. For me, especially being in this field now for a while, the real test of who someone is, is who they are when they are not on the stage and how they live their life. This guy, who didn’t know me from Adam, a busy dude, who already made the bestselling Chicken Soup guy, invites me to sit down in his office.

I forget if he spent maybe an hour with me. It was a good chunk of time with me asking me about my dreams and my intentions. He let me pick his brain about life, and then he came up with a whole bunch of advice that he gave me and he said, “Take the seminar. Go to landmark. Go here, this, and that training. Do these things.” I said, “I’m going to do all those things.” “Read these books. Go meet Dottie Walters the speaking person.” I went and did all those things. I never forgot him when I was invited to my first TLC. I reminded him of that and he’s like, “Yeah.” It was a beautiful experience.

This whole conversation needs to be about our friend Jack Canfield. One of the things that I love about him is he has this very deep curiosity and he’s always learning. That curiosity about other people and the generosity of spirit that comes along with it, that’s what you experienced. Even though he gave you a lot of good advice, I’m going to guess that the greatest gift that he gave you was that example. At some point, you found yourself on a stage speaking to an audience other than the empty chairs in the church back home. When was that for you? What was that experience? There was a time when you got up on stage and now you are doing your thing. You got there.

If you want more magic in your life, you have to surrender and let go. Click To Tweet

If you want the very first time because there was a student other times, they were like many times. The very first time I got enrolled in a multi-level company, it was called TPN. You may know of it. It was the people’s network or satellite-based TV network dedicated to personal growth. Satellite dish, the product was programming. This is pre-internet and all of these people. Jim Rohn is a part of this thing. They were the faculty. Long story short, I signed up for this multi-level. I didn’t have money. The person that invited me loaned me the money, and I was so passionate about personal development. It was what made me come alive.

It was a calling for me. It was an obsession and joy. I went crazy enrolling people. With multi-level, you need to know people. I didn’t know a person. The personal development evangelists and I would ride up and down Worship Boulevard and harass people, trying to sign them up to join this multi-level. Personal growth is going to change your life. I would harass nice people like you in an elevator.

It goes to show that when you believe in something authentically. It’s something that comes from the inside and people feel that and people felt the authenticity of my belief and what I was communicating. I wasn’t trying to sell someone and make some money. I believed in this material. I signed up all of these people in a month, and then the first time I was on stage was so interesting. I’m putting a few things together.

I went to the convention for the multi-level marketing TPN in Dallas Arena. It’s a huge arena, 20,000 people. Jim Rohn is on the front row. Zig Ziglar, Stephen Covey, and Les Brown is there. They are all on the front row. All of my icons. I’m in the back somewhere and Jeff Olson, the president of the company, they are inviting up testimonial stories. I had signed up 100 people with myself in the last month and my downline exploded. I wasn’t making that much money, but it was impressive for a guy off the boat, writing the press, and signing people up. They had said, “Where is that kid from America?” They threw me on stage.

You didn’t know?

I’m in the back, someone taps me and they are like, “Come with us.” I would come down the stadium. It’s exactly what my father did. I used to hate it when he would do it because he would surprise me week after week. You and your team because it was stressful and I would hate it. At that moment, I will never forget the 20,000 people. Jim Rohn, Les Brown, and Stephen Covey, the list goes on, I went on stage and I spoke for maybe 3, 4, or 5 minutes. The entire audience starts crying.

 

Jim Rohn and everyone in standing ovation. Everyone starts screaming. The same thing happened. At that moment, all of my life began to make sense and I realized why certain things happen in our lives. Some things have been orchestrated that end up preparing our soul’s journey. I realized that as much as I had stuffed with my father on some level, there was perfection in who he was and his preparation because now I could jump on any stage and not even think about it. Push come to shove. I was grateful for all of the things I was not grateful for before and saw the perfection of so much of my childhood in such a beautiful way. That was the very first time.

Your father thought he was preparing you for the church, but what he was doing was preparing you for you. At some point, your own body of work developed. Up until this point, it was your mentors and you are learning. At what point did it turn around and you said, “I have something to teach as well.”

You are asking questions I don’t talk about. What happened from there was literally everyone started coming up to me that weekend. I’m in a restaurant and someone says, “Jim Rohn wants to speak to you.” I go to Jim Rohn, I’m like, “You got to understand. I saved up all my money when I was thirteen to get your Jim Rohn audio tapes from the US.” This is Jim Rohn, and I sit down by Jim Rohn and he’s like, “You are amazing.” He gives me all this great stuff.

I’m crying. There were these guys around Jim Rohn and he tells them, “You need to keep your eye on this kid.” These guys come up to me afterwards. They were Jim Rohn’s promoters. They used to be with Tony Robbins. They are like, “I want you to promote seminars.” I went down this path of promoting seminars, speaking 2 to 3 times a day, selling and enrolling for free, signing people up, and making commissions.

Through that, what happened was someone said to me maybe a year into this, “We have seen Les Brown before. We know the deal. We have seen Brian Tracy before. He’s great, but your energy is interesting. Can you do something for our sales team?” I said yes. That began. There were a couple of evolutions. That began the first evolution of my initial motivational inspirational speaking career. That was the first day.

I started doing some of my own seminars, and then I went through a breakdown in a sense. I felt like I had reached the limit of my own ego’s capacity to do my life. The short version is I had the vision to do a talk show. I want it to be the next Oprah and I got attached to manifest to make this show happen. I checked Steven Spielberg  and some producers.

The next level of our life requires the next level of us. The next level of us requires that we let go. Click To Tweet

Long story short, I was offered the show. I turned it down. My soul said no. That intuitive thing again. Whenever I go against that intuition, it doesn’t end up well. I went into depression. When I face rejection, I face hundreds of people rejecting me. I’m getting laughed out of studios and production officers. Finally, I got this, yes, and my soul says no. I’m heartbroken and I’m mad, so I decided I’m going to sell everything. I’m going to leave America for a moment and find myself because something I’m doing is not working. I shaved my head, broke up with my girlfriend, put everything in storage, and said, “I’m not coming back until I find some answers because I can’t do it how I have been doing it.”

I went to walk the Camino in Northern Spain for a month. On that, someone said to go to India, and I ended up in India for three months. It was in India that a lot of things happened that were out there that cracked my ego’s defense mechanism and defense strategies open in such a way. That opened me to a deeper dimension of my soul when I started seeing how my ego was running my life, how it was forcing life, and trying to make things happen that weren’t necessarily aligned. I was forced to deal with the unprocessed pain from my own childhood that was running my life, setting my goals, and motivating me.

Through that, I connect to a deeper part of my choice and my soul, and then I got a vision of I’m here to help people and help people be free. I came back to the US and started working with one person. It was not sexy. One person and that led to another person and the next person. I slowly created my own way of working with people. That became more about I’m conditioning, coaching, and teaching people from the patterns and the layers that we developed from childhood and what have you. Those defense mechanisms.

It became more about that and it was out of the one-on-one work that clients started coming from around the world. The results started to spread and people started finding me, and then it grew to small groups. I started doing the same thing with small groups like deep transformational work on people’s lives. It changed inside out, and then it evolved into smaller groups and larger groups with 500 to 600 people in an event. It was a gradual slow evolution. My purpose and the expression of my work and my philosophy evolved as I evolved and worked with more people.

As we focus on the present day, you’ve got this book with a very compelling title The Magic of Surrender. I make some pretty strong inferences from the title itself. Those are two strong words. Magic and surrender are strong in and of themselves. Tell me, in terms of the high-level principle, that you capture in this book and what you want us to know. How would you describe that for us at the high level and then we’ll drill down a little bit?

In a nutshell, the philosophy is if you want more magic in your life, you have to surrender. Truly letting go leads to more letting go of what doesn’t work, what’s not aligned, the old version of yourself, and what’s no longer a vibrational match. I think in our culture now, there’s such a misconception of the word surrender like we have this idea that surrender is giving up. Surrender is waving the white flag, it’s weak, passive, and means you are going to be taken advantage of.

 

If you surrender you won’t manifest and make things happen, then it means sitting there doing nothing, owning, going to the Himalayas, and I’m saying, “No. What if you surrender and you got more?” In terms of more than you could even imagine with your logic, mind, and your ego’s capacity to manifest and make things happen. What if you got more beyond what you can imagine it?

The magic part is not a woo-woo David Copperfield thing. The magic part is the possibilities beyond what you could imagine with your mind. When I asked people, “Who wants more magic?” Everyone raises their hand, “I want more magic.” “Don’t want to surrender?” “We want more magic. We want to hold on to stuff that doesn’t work. We want our soulmate that we want to hold onto that relationship that doesn’t work.” It doesn’t work that way. For me, the next level of our life requires the next level of us. The next level of us requires that we let go.

There is letting go of the attachment to controlling every little thing. It’s the forcing and manipulation of life to fit into our limited idea of how we think it should be. Surrender is letting go of the limits that we are putting on life without attachment and control. It’s an allowing, receptivity, and willingness to allow life to show, lead, and guide us. It doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means feeling what is most authentic and true. Surrendering to your deepest truth, your most authentic expression, and then aligning your actions, strategy, marketing, and resources with that. It might mean you like Mandala, Gandhi, or Elon Musk. It might mean you work twenty hours a day, but you are surrendering to what’s true and authentic inside.

There are some important distinctions for us to make in this. What you are saying is that we all say we want magic. Everybody raises their hand, but very few of us say, “We want to surrender because we have a negative connotation to what that means because if I surrender, that means I have lost.” What we are saying is I want magic, but I want to control what the magic is, which is not magic.

There’s no surprise in it if I’m trying to control it. The only surprise that I might get is that I’m not going to get it. That’s the magic. What we need to reconcile is what we have been taught. Funnily enough, by a lot of those people that you mentioned earlier, we have been taught by a lot of the personal development gurus through the decades that you have to strive and never give up.

The classic motivational speaker never, ever quit, which is another way of saying surrender is a failure. How can we put it in perspective for somebody who’s in business? They are very goal-oriented and ambitious in the sense of they want to accomplish for themselves as entrepreneurs, for their companies, or teams. How do you reconcile surrender with the desire to strive?

Observe your attachment to the outcome and the result. Click To Tweet

It’s an understanding of what surrender means. I look at Elon Musk and I’m like, “This dude surrenders.” People are, “What the heck? Elon Musk.” Who here would take $200 million of your PayPal money, which has everything, and invest every freaking penny of $200 million into your vision or dream because you feel a calling?

That shows us I wouldn’t. I don’t know about you. We would keep a little stash for ourselves $10,000 or $50,000. This dude said, “I’m going to invest everything.” That is a level of surrender. I want to be clear that surrender is aligning your deepest truth with what’s most true. If what you are doing is most authentic, aligned, and is what’s true, then the surrender is to commit to it fully and give 100% to it fully, but to observe your attachment to the outcome and the result. It’s the attachment to the outcome and result that the business has got to be this way.

It’s got to look and unfold like this. Let’s talk business for a second. You then are not able to pivot. Success is never a straight line, but if you are attached to it and looking at some way, maybe that product that you launched isn’t the product. Look at Twitter. You go on a journey and then you realize, “The failure is giving me feedback,” but if you are not surrendered, you are going to be so attached to your idea and vision of what you think the product shouldn’t be. You are not going to be open and available to pivoting, the universe, life, and reality showing you. Look at Instagram. It started off as a certain different app and turned into something completely different because they were willing to be open.

Surrender is the openness to allow life to show you so you give 100%. You give everything you’ve got. You throw everything. Total commitment, but also openness, availability, and low attachment. To be specific, that is the key. When life gives you different feedback rather than white-knuckling and holding on, then you are able to adjust, readjust, and take the feedback.

On a business or personal level, sometimes the goal is not the goal. We think that the goal is the goal, but sometimes the goal is the necessary journey that as human beings, we need to go on in order to learn the lessons that we need to learn. The process becomes the gift rather than the end goal itself. Surrender is focusing on the process and who we become in the process and the evolutionary learning for our own growth as human beings. I think that’s part of the process of surrender, and then you can allow life to lead you. You are giving everything open, available, curious, watching, and allowing life to show you what’s next.

Most people have had at least some experience of that even unintentionally. What you are doing with your amazing work is at the very least, you are getting us to pay attention to it and notice it more. I had an experience of this very thing. I have had my business for a long time. I have been doing this work for many years and I have had a feeling of striving with my company for a very long time. One day, the feeling of striving like pushing the boulder up the hill evaporated. What it turned into was, I love doing this work. I love to do it with more people, which is otherwise known as business growth. It’s cool. It just went away.

 

I’m not exaggerating. Within two weeks, my business took off and other aspects of my business took off in ways that they had never done before. It was magical. It felt like that because it was business that came to me. Not business that I went out and ran after. It’s been that way ever since and I love what I do even more than I did before. I thought I’d love that as much as I could. My point is that even this discussion and considering the title of your book can lead if people will let themselves just pay attention. A little more, it’ll create some great breakthroughs. I’m imagining what will happen when they dig in.

This was not the book I thought I was going, I intended, and I wanted to write. I had all sorts of ideas for books I thought I should write. Books I thought would be the bestseller, have sexy titles, and I thought my audience wanted, but none of them were aligned. I didn’t feel the authenticity. I realized this is the book that was seeking to be written and it felt different. It’s been a beautiful journey.

Thank you for sharing that whole story with us. I have such a rich picture of the little eight-year-old Kute to where we are now. How else can people reach out to you?

There are a couple of ways. My website KuteBlackson.com. Twice a year, I do an event in Bali for people to go deep and transform, www.BoundlessBlissBali.com. Instagram is @KuteBlackson and Facebook, Kute Blackson.

They can remember the name wherever. They can find you and we’ll make sure they do. Kute, what a great pleasure. You and I have run in the same circles for a long time. Do you know what occurs to me? This is the first time you and I have ever had a conversation. We never had a conversation before.

Let’s have more.

Success is never a straight line. Click To Tweet

We certainly will. Thank you so much for joining us and to all reading, thanks for being here. Until next time. Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do.

 

Important Links

• Transformational Leadership Council
• The Magic of Surrender
• Jack Canfield – Previous Episode
• KuteBlackson.com
• www.BoundlessBlissBali.com
• @KuteBlackson – Instagram
• Kute Blackson – Facebook

 

About Kute Blackson

KUTE BLACKSON is a beloved inspirational speaker and transformational teacher. He speaks at countless events he organizes around the world as well as at outside events including A-Fest, YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization), and EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organization). He is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, a select group of one hundred of the world’s foremost authorities in the personal development industry. Winner of the 2019 Unity New Thought Walden Award, Blackson is widely considered a next generation leader in the field of personal development. His mission is simple: To awaken and inspire people across the planet to access inner freedom, live authentically and fulfill their true life’s purpose

 

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