What The Magic Of Surrender Truly Means With Kute Blackson – Replay

 

People these days are not experiencing the magic of surrender. They are actually afraid to surrender because they think it means living in the Himalayas and giving up everything. That is not true surrender. You won’t feel joy or magic by letting go of everything. True surrender is an inner state of being. It is in your relationship with life. It is the whole-hearted participation in the process of life that is unfolding. Don’t be afraid to follow your life’s purpose. Join Adam Markel as he talks to Transformational Truth Teacher and bestselling author Kute Blackson about his new book, The Magic of Surrender. He is also the winner of the 2019 Unity New Thought Walden Award. He teaches people to live authentically and fulfill their true life’s purpose. Listen in so that you can learn how to truly surrender and be open to life. Discover how you can get unstuck if you feel like refusing to change. Find the magic of surrender today!

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Show Notes:

5:25 – A Passion For Speaking

10:24 – The Magic Of Surrender

20:37 – The Future Is None Of Your Business

32:00 – Getting Unstuck In Life

39:10 – The Meaning Of Resilience

40:47 – Surrendering To Life

48:25 – The Fear Of Surrender

50:55 – Be Like Water

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What The Magic Of Surrender Truly Means With Kute Blackson – Replay

In this episode, we have Kute Blackson, an inspirational speaker and transformational teacher. Kute Blackson offers a fresh, bold look at spiritual awareness for a whole new generation. He was born in Ghana, West Africa. Kute has a multicultural upbringing as a child of a Japanese mother and a Ghanaian father and has spent with four different continents. His unique lineage lays the foundation for his approach to breaking down barriers and unlocking an individual’s true gifts and greatness.

Some of the things that we discussed were his deep calling to serve people at a young age and the importance of living your version of your life and not the version other people want you to have. He experienced traveling to the United States at age nineteen without money and knowing no one. It’s how thinking can get in the way of the flow of the universe and why we need to expand to meet the challenges we face. We also spoke about how to check in with yourself and the questions you have to ask. Enjoy this episode with the one and only Kute Blackson.

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I am feeling blessed for so many reasons. It happens to be Valentine’s Day. I don’t typically say what the date is when you are doing a show. Many of you probably are already. It’s the thing you want to be able to be consumed by folks no matter what time of the year it is. We rarely say the date or lock us into a particular time of the year. For me, it’s a day to remind me of how much I appreciate and be grateful for my wife, Randi, and the other amazing women in my life, like my mother, who’s still alive. I’m so grateful that she’s still around. I’m so grateful to be married to the love of my life for many years and have three daughters who are these beautiful, amazing young women. Our oldest daughter is engaged, which is cool.

It’s an interesting day because it’s all about love. Mostly, this day is associated with intimate love, which is that close connection. It’s also a day where there’s an element of loneliness. There’s an element of being lonely and feeling lonely. I’ll say this because this is coming up for me. Just because you’re in an intimate relationship doesn’t mean you don’t feel lonely. I’ll say vulnerably now. Being in such an incredibly positive relationship for so many years has not necessarily been easy, but it’s worthwhile.

It’s been everything in terms of my own development to have somebody on my team that has supported me, built me up, and loved me so unconditionally for so many years. How profound that has been for my own development. I wish that for all of you. I wish that for myself and our kids, and yet, at the same time, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t felt lonely. I had been curious about that. I’ve explored that. I don’t pretend to have “the answer” to it. What came clear to me some time ago is the relationship that’s celebrated, that we have an opportunity to celebrate not just on Valentine’s Day but every day. It’s the most important relationship, and that’s the relationship with ourselves, to love ourselves first.

I’m wearing one of our new t-shirts. We’ve got some new t-shirts out, the I Love My Life t-shirts. The whole point of that brand or statement is to inform us, me, myself. When I wear this, I am reminding and informing myself about what’s most important, which is that I take care of myself and love myself. I can’t possibly love Randi, kids, or anybody any better than I love myself. That’s the thing that we don’t get taught. I wasn’t taught it. It wasn’t modeled for me growing up by my own parents. It’s not taught in the schools. We could go a whole lifetime.

Plenty of people do not have a sense of that. On this day, whether you’re hooked up, not hooked up, whether you’re feeling good, or whatever about the love that’s in your life, you can focus on this moment on loving yourself. From that space, I get to spend some time with a gentleman that, to me, is a ball of love. He exudes love. He is on such both a verbal and a nonverbal plane, somebody that feels like love and peace to me.

I love being in this gentleman’s presence. His name is Kute Blackson. He is this incredible guy. We’ll explore at a deeper level what this guy is all about, what he’s up to, where his pivots have been, and where he’s serving in the world. Kute Blackson is the author of the national bestselling book, You.Are.The.One, and is widely considered the next generation leader in the field of personal development by everyone ranging from Larry King, my friend, Jack Canfield, Marianne Williamson, and more.

He’s been featured on Larry King Now, Fox, Friends, and Doctor Drew. Kute had spent many years inspiring audiences around the world from the first time he spoke to more than 3,000 people at the age of 8, speaking in over 300 venues by the time he was 18, helping organizations develop authentic leadership and achieve extraordinary performance over the last decade. His mission is simple, “To awaken and inspire people across the world to access inner freedom, live authentically, and fulfill their true life’s purpose.” Welcome to the show, Kute. It’s great to have you. I love holding up your book. It’s a beautiful book. This is a rock-solid piece of writing and a gift to the world. Thanks for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for the beautiful, warm introduction. I feel held in love. It’s great to be here.

Would you share with us, if you could, what’s something that’s not part of that bio that you love for people to know about you?

From a young age, I always felt a deep calling to serve people. I felt a burning desire to impact and touch people from a young age. I remember being 5 or 6 years old, I felt the suffering of humanity and the pain of people. I was so sensitive. I had this burning desire. For me, being in the field of personal development, personal growth, and I’m a bestselling author, one of business speaking, etc., but for me, honestly, it’s a business, but it was never a business. It was always a calling. For me, what I do is love, and serving people is love. It’s the greatest privilege I have. It’s to serve people’s evolution and growth. That’s the first thing I would say. It’s been a remarkable journey from the first moment I started it.

At age eight, I was thrown into my father’s audience. He had about 300 churches in Ghana, West Africa. I used to be the rambunctious kid who would play soccer in the lobby of my father’s church. That didn’t go over too well, being the son of a minister. I was popped in the front row, and one day, my father said, “My son’s going to serve,” then threw me on stage and said, “Speak.” That’s how it started. At fourteen, I was ordained as a minister in my father’s church. My life was pretty much set out for me when my father announced to the congregation, “My son has taken over my whole operation. He is the one.” At that moment, I knew deep down that wasn’t my path, but the truth was I was too afraid to confront my father at fourteen.

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I was too afraid to tell him the truth. I was too afraid to say, “Dad, I’m not taking over,” because I was afraid if I spoke my truth, I was honest, and I told him how I felt, I was afraid that I’d be an outcast, alone, that we won’t have a relationship that loses love, that I’d be abandoned. Talk about being alone. I was afraid I’d be alone. All the hopes of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people in my father’s organization, were on me as his fourteen-year-old kid. I felt tremendous belongingness and pressure. For four years, I said nothing, yet I knew at that moment of betraying my truth was an incredible pain. Whenever we betray our truth, whenever we’re not true to ourselves and our soul, and that knowing that we all have, it’s painful.

It took me four years to muster up the courage to confront my father. When I was eighteen, I had a Iook into my future. I saw the expected path that everyone had. There’s no shortage of people in life that will tell you who you should be, how you should live, and think they know how your life should be. That was my life. I was going down this path and looked into my future. I saw myself at 24, 34, 44, 54, 64, and on and on. I thought, “I could be successful by everyone else’s standards and have a love of my father, but if I don’t have myself, what do I have? I have nothing.” I saw myself at the end of my life living someone else’s version of my life. I realized, “If I lived someone else’s version of my life, I don’t have a life. I’m not alive.”

I made peace with my truth and let go of my relationship with my father, which was incredibly terrifying. Talk about a pivot. It was incredibly terrifying and challenging, but I decided that this was my life. I decided that nothing was worth my life. Finally, I had the conversation when I was eighteen, ready for all the consequences. I spoke to my father and told him I wasn’t taking over his whole organization. He simply looked at me and said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes.” I was trembling and afraid, and he said, “Are you sure?” My entire future flashed in front of me. That was the day I became a man.

That was the day I became a man and grew some cojones who are ready to face the consequences of whatever my actions were. At that moment, come what may. As terrifying as it was, there was a deep peace inside. I said, “I’m not taking over, and I love you.” We didn’t speak for a couple of years. It was terrifyingly alone to feel this calling in my heart and have no one understand and not have my father’s support to fill this burning desire. Long story short, I ended up winning a green card in the lottery. That was living proof for me that whenever you follow your soul, your truth, the deeper truth beyond the logic, beyond the mind, there is an intelligence, life force, God’s consciousness, whatever you want to call it. There is an intelligence always guiding us, and the soul knows.

 

Once I won this green card, that gave me a tremendous amount of strength. I came to the US with two suitcases. I knew no one in the country. I had one suitcase full of clothes, $1,000, and another suitcase full of personal development books. I came and found teachers, many of whom you know, Jack Canfield, and other mentors and teachers. When I found them and studied with them, that began my quest and started me on the path to the US. That was many years ago.

It’s not an easy path. Sometimes people think that when you find your purpose, somehow the angels appear, the violins open, the rainbows, and everything is hunky-dory. Sometimes when you find your purpose, that’s when the challenges and difficulties start. Many people think, “What did I do wrong? It should have been easier.” The reality is I feel that when we are faced with challenges in those moments, especially when we are following our truth and facing difficulties and roadblocks, we are being prepared.

I was going to say we’re being tested, but we are being prepared and groomed. The cosmic chef is cooking and preparing us so that we can develop the mental, emotional, spiritual, and soul muscles. To be able to be the vehicle, the human being, the person, and the vessel to truly be able to embody, fulfill the purpose, and the dream we’ve been given. Sometimes our dreams are evolutionary. We’re given a vision and a purpose.

Just because it doesn’t happen doesn’t mean it’s not meant to happen. It can be timing. Many times, those dreams take us on that journey of having to become. Those first days were incredibly difficult. I landed in the US. I knew no one in the country, a nineteen-year-old kid. I think back, “What the heck was I thinking? I’m an 18 or 19-year-old kid. I knew nothing.” I was so aggrieved. I was flying on the wings of my soul without thinking. That’s an amazing thing. When I think back many times, thinking is what creates suffering. Thinking is what creates resistance. Thinking is what gets in the way of the flow that’s already happening. I wasn’t thinking, so I just showed up.

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I’ve got a tiny apartment that was the size of a toilet. I had no money. I was eating bread every day and dragged a mattress off the street that someone threw out, but I was happy. We will be faced with challenges sometimes. The myth is, “If I follow my path, it’s going to be easy.” That’s like saying, “If I go into the ocean, there’s going to be no waves.” Many times, we pray for the waves to stop, the waves of life, but we should stop praying for the waves to stop and expand our capacity and ability to serve. I was happy, Adam. As challenging as it was and alone, I could look at myself in the mirror and be at peace with who I was being. I could look at myself in the mirror and be at peace with the fact that I was following my truth.

I don’t care what you have. You can’t be truly fulfilled and happy living someone else’s life. As challenging as it was, I knew I was living my life. If I died that day, I was going to live and die based on my own truth, not my father’s or anyone else’s. There was a peace that I was in alignment with my integrity. Even though I didn’t have much money to show for it, I was poor as a mouse. There was a deep fulfillment. There’s a difference between success and fulfillment. Fulfillment came from the fact I was living in alignment with my truth. I was being who I was. I didn’t have a dollar to show for it. That’s a whole another game, but I felt aligned and coherent. I felt in alignment with my soul. That was the joy. I was living the dream.

You were resilient, and you had to be, clearly.

I had to be. For me, it’s not a matter of resources because I didn’t have any. Having no resources made me resourceful. I’m not proud of it. On some days, I have $2 in the bank. Can you imagine having $2 in the bank and wondering, “How am I going to eat?” I couldn’t go back to my father because he was waiting for me to come back at that time. I imagine, at least, that’s what I made up in my mind. I would walk into a Ralphs or a supermarket and pretend I was going to buy some food, put a few things in the shopping cart, snack on some bread, and suddenly change my mind and walk out.

 

That’s how I would survive. This is something a lot of people don’t know, but I got involved with multilevel marketing. It was a satellite-based TV network dedicated to personal growth. Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy were all part of faculties called TPN at that time in the mid to late ‘90s. I signed up for this thing because I was so passionate about personal growth. For me, this was my purpose and passion.

I had to sign up for this thing. I was going to be the biggest distributor in the world and share personal goals with the masses through this multilevel marketing thing. Challenge is I knew no one. Talk about resilience. I would ride up and down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles with the only suit I had and harass nice-looking people like yourself and your wife. I’d ride up and down in the elevator with you every day until you came to my network marketing meeting and signed you up. That’s how I got started, but that opened doors for me. It pushed me outside of my comfort zone. It developed my capacity to speak to people, go beyond myself, and follow my dream.

Also, to not be destroyed by the word no. How many people would create suffering for them to hear that word? They arrange their lives in many ways around not having to hear the word.

The challenge is that many times when people hear the word no, they take it personally. That’s where the pain comes. I had to realize that no isn’t a personal rejection of myself. It’s the state of where someone is at. When I could separate the two, there was a tremendous amount of freedom. Here’s what happened. Here was my rejection training. When I first joined this multilevel marketing company, my upline said, “Kute, I know you don’t know anyone. Here’s a list of people you might call.” He gave me the list of everyone from his past organization.

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They were not happy network marketers. They got burned because they had a whole bunch of products in their garages, and he’s given me that list because he doesn’t want to call them. I am naive. I don’t have any idea. I’m just happy to have a list to call. I started calling 800 people on the phone. I’m calling these people, “My name is Kute Blackson.” It took me a week, two weeks, something like that. I’ve got so many noes. At first, it was painful because you feel like it’s a personal thing, but I had to switch it. Once I realized it wasn’t personal, it freed me up in my relationship with the word no. It changed a lot.

It’s interesting that we struck on this. The universe is always delivering things perfectly that help us at the moment. I’m sure there are people reading this that have an issue with the word no. No means rejection, abandonment, and “I’m not good enough.” There’s all this meaning that no is packed with. It’s always a great idea to ask yourself and even sit quietly in prayer, meditation, or stillness to ask yourself what something means.

For you, if you’re reading this, don’t think you’re strong in sales and are not particularly inclined to have enrollment conversations or sales conversations with people, it’s a good thing to ask yourself. What do you make no mean to you or for you? Had you had an adverse reaction to that, you probably wouldn’t have made a move forward in your life from that point. It would’ve stopped you dead in your tracks. You didn’t have very much to fall back on at that moment. You’re in a new country. You don’t have any money, and here you are. You’re given an opportunity to battle something and get through something that would otherwise have crushed you right there, but you didn’t.

That helped me too in terms of the whole no conversation because I was so passionate about personal growth, what I was doing, and the product. Because I was so passionate, it meant something to me. It could be anything for someone. It could be a supplement or whatever it is. I was authentically passionate and a believer in personal development and self-help. I knew what it could do for people. I was coming from that place of believing and wanting to be of radical service that when people said no, I wasn’t just asking for something for myself. I knew that what I was bringing to them was going to serve them and add value to their lives.

 

My focus wasn’t on myself. It was about making a difference. That shifted the whole relationship with no as well. When they said no, I figured they didn’t understand the value yet. They aren’t quite getting what’s possible for them yet. For me, it became about, “It’s all about me. I need to be able to skillfully help them understand.” If I have a freaking Ferrari, and I’m like, “I want to give you the Ferrari,” they’re like, “No.” If I’m like, “Instead of giving $400,000, I’m going to give you this Ferrari for $1,000,” and they say no. Clearly, they don’t understand. It was more about the focus shift from myself to being of service. That also transformed my relationship with their response.

This is a big deal because there are lots of people that are in the network marketing space to this day. I had a wonderful meeting with a network marketing company that wants me to keynote a celebration event. They’ve got a big national conference thing. That space and business model has continued to thrive. There are some great companies in the space, and there are some companies that are not so great. There are some distinctions in what you said now that you loved the product. You loved what it was you were offering to people.

It’s like Jim Rohn is speaking at this moment. The bigger the why, the easier the how. The why was so strong for you. The purpose of what you were doing and the value in the service you are providing was so strong that it overshadowed or outdid the little voice, fear, and insecurity that’s triggered when a person clicks, hangs up on you, gets angry, says no. “Don’t call me again. How did you get me on my number? Take me off the list,” or whatever things people hear on a routine basis to this day, not many years ago, but ongoingly.

I learned this lesson in a different context. I was a lifeguard years ago at a beach. It was a very busy beach in New York on the South Shore of Long Island on weekends with Jones VJ. We used to get 100,000 patrons there on a Saturday or Sunday. Most of them came from the city, came out in buses and things. There were some fields that you could drive to and other fields where the buses would show up. We worked until 4:00, and that’s where the buses went.

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You’ve got a lot of non-swimmers and all that thing. In any event, we made a lot of rescues. On the days when the ocean was active and rip currents and things like that, we’d make hundreds of rescues in a day on a Saturday and Sunday. I learned from our captain of that field that he had a mantra. He said, “Nobody goes down in our water.” He then went on to say, “You make the save, or you die trying.” That was the level of intensity when we sat up on that stand. For 6 or 7 summers I worked there, we never lost anybody in our field. People drowned at the field to the West and the East of us. It’s a brutal thing when you hear those whistles go off and know that somebody is under and is not found. Now, it’s a search and rescue. It’s a scary and awful feeling.

Nobody went down at field for in that time period before that and after that. There have been drownings there, but in a lot of years, it was that intense mantra and commitment that nobody goes down in our water. You get in the water. You make the save or die trying. That’s very much the passion. More than the passion, it’s the purpose that’s driving a certain activity or a certain way of being. It sounded to me when I was listening to you that your purpose in conveying that message to people about personal development and how they could help themselves was not giving them. You’re not offering them a Ferrari. You’re offering them a lifesaver.

That’s how I felt. Because the vision was so big, the no was so small. It was like having an ocean, and someone threw a little pebble. I didn’t care. That was the shift.

The other thing that got activated in me was this book called The Life You Were Born To Live. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book, but it’s a Dan Millman book. The proposition in the book is a magical, beautiful book where my interpretation is that the challenges in our lives are signposts to our true purpose.

 

The challenges aren’t things we necessarily have to look at and think, “I wish that didn’t happen. That’s a drag. That’s unfair. Why me?” and all the rest of it. I’m not saying we want to invite the challenge or that the challenge is something we should wake up and go, “Bring me more of that.” It’s much the same way you described how you overcame some of these things early on, which was to have the courage to stand up for yourself, to your truth, and embody your truth in the most difficult way, which was in the presence of a powerful being like your dad and a powerful community that had expectations of you.

To stand in your truth and embody that was a defining moment. It was a pivotal time. You come to this country with nothing and hear that word no again and again and have no money and resources but become so purpose-driven, so willing to be bigger than those challenges. In many ways, that has informed you about your life’s purpose. I’m asking you. Did it inform you? Did it clarify it? How much would you say your life represents the truth of that statement or the level at which the statement is accurate, which is that the challenges in your life are signposts to your life purpose?

The challenge is all preparation. Maybe we don’t go yet, but what if we did go when the problems arose? If you look at these big wave surfers, like Dave Kalama, who we met in Hawaii, and Laird Hamilton, they go seeking the biggest challenges possible. They spend their entire day going where the biggest challenges are. They look for the biggest challenges. They don’t go to the ocean and go, “It was a great day. There was just a three-foot wave.” For me, going through different challenges, coming to the US, speaking to my father on and on, being broke, having no money, building a business, getting rejection after rejection, and trying to do a TV show and getting rejected, all of those challenges prepare us. All of the heartbreak prepares you.

We are being cooked by the cosmic chef, being prepared. Every divorce, pain, and trauma is an ingredient in the soup called you that we are being marinated to be prepared to serve to the world. They’re a necessary part of our evolution. When we can start celebrating those challenges at the moment as they’re happening, we move ourselves out of resistance. When we’re out of resistance, not fighting the challenges as they occur at the moment, it releases the grace that is active and the gift that’s available in the challenge at the moment because we’re not busy resisting it. All those challenges have prepared me, made me stronger, and given me different insights, perspectives, and ways of seeing things.

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All those challenges have been required.

All of the challenges and failures have made me humbler and more compassionate about people’s processes and what people have been going through. I look back and realize. If certain things occurred for me at a particular moment back then initially when I wanted it to, number one, I would likely not have been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to truly fulfill the purpose that was seeking to happen.

Let’s think about this. Those challenges that became part of daily life for you pointed the purpose out to you in many ways. Now, your work is about helping people in the way that you’re describing now. It’s not an accident that you’re speaking the way you speak. This is not the first time you’ve had an opportunity to share from your soul how it is that you live a healthier, better, and more harmonious life. I don’t want to speak your message. I want your message to come from you, but I shared your mission earlier to awaken and inspire people across the world to access freedom, live authentically, and fulfill that true life’s purpose. How on Earth could you be living your purpose if you didn’t get those challenges to deal with?

That’s why when I look back and go, “That didn’t happen. If that happened, how could I have gone through that experience?” I realized some things not even happening that seemed challenging at the time was grace. If someone’s reading and are like, “My vision didn’t happen. My dream didn’t happen,” it’s grace. When things don’t happen according to plan, give thanks at the moment because it’s grace.

 

There is a purpose to your problem as you’re going through it. Look at Mandela. Imagine Mandela, 27 years in prison. That’s a big challenge. Imagine if he didn’t go through that. Would he have become the person he was? Even in the psyche of the masses, would he have been right to become president? That had to happen. There’s a purpose, and we can celebrate as it happens. Give thanks as it happens and look for the lessons and the evolution because success in life is not just a matter of what you attained, but it’s about who you become as you go through the process.

For me, you’re defining resilience. When we teach this part of the work of pivot, we talk about how important it is in the evolution of this process of change and utilizing change. That resilience is the key. You’ve given us a few of the key ingredients in that resilience recipe. It’s the ability to reframe situations quickly. There was an incredible Harvard Business Review article that compared high-performing athletes, the Olympic gold medalists, and the top performance in professional sports to high achievers in business, entrepreneurship, and those kinds of things. What they found was the commonality among the highest of the achievers was their ability to recover quickly.

It’s their ability to recover from setbacks fast, to get back up on the horse, and bring their heart rates down to a resting level even in the midst of stress, the stress of the moment, the stress of the point, or in between the points, in between the games, that it could recover quickly. Resilience was the key and a ritual for recovery. It was so powerful. This idea is that we cultivate certain conscious practices that I would call rituals and you might call habits. That makes you more resilient and helps you to be able to bounce back quickly so you can continue to explore and be curious about how it is that your purpose is unfolding based on even the things that you would least invite, which is a challenge.

I love how you also brought into the picture the fact that there are some people like Dave Kalama, Laird Hamilton, or some folks chasing after the biggest wave or challenge so that they can sharpen themselves and their tools in the face of those challenges. I’ve got a couple of questions left for you. One is related to what we said. Are these rituals for resilience? Do you have rituals yourself that helped create more resilience?

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Let me start off with some of the basic rituals. One basic ritual is I exercise every day. It’s non-negotiable. People say, “I don’t have time.” You have to make exercise a choice to not be a choice, and so I’ve made exercise that choice not to be a choice. It sets the foundation for my physical and mind because the body is a structuring thing for the spirit to come through. I do some form of exercise for an hour or an hour and twenty minutes, pretty much daily in some way, shape, or form, and it makes a huge difference in my life. How I feel once I exercise is radically different than any day I don’t, which is rare. That’s the basic ritual. I meditate every day, usually twenty minutes a day, sit in silence and just be. Those are some simple ones.

I don’t know if I can call that a ritual or something I look to practice daily. It’s something that started when I was a teenager looking at my future with my father and deciding what I should do. One of the things I found that keeps us stuck is all the ways that we lie to ourselves, assess ourselves, and don’t tell the truth to ourselves, “I’m in a relationship, but it’s not so bad one.” We know it’s not aligned anymore. We’re not in love. It’s completed its cycle, or I’m working a job, and I hate this job. To shift one’s life as a ritual and a daily practice, we have to be willing to tell the compassionate, ruthless, radical, authentic truth to ourselves about what we feel, where we’re at, and what’s going on for us in terms of our own inner process.

Deep down, there’s a part of us that does know. If we could say as a practice or ritual, ask yourself, “What lies am I telling myself? What lies do I consistently tell myself? What am I asking myself? What am I pretending to not know?” One of the games that we play is this game of, “I’m confused. I’m not sure. I don’t know.” Deep down, we know. We have to stop playing this “I don’t know” game as a part of us that knows everything because, at the deepest level, we aren’t everything. I am seeking daily to ask myself, “What lies am I telling myself? What am I pretending to not know? What do these lies cost me?” It’s a daily process of feeling the truth and the pain of the lies.

Many times, we feel the pain of being out of alignment or the lies we tell ourselves. Because we’re afraid of the consequences, we distract ourselves. We social media away, eat away, sex away, drink away, whatever it is, to not feel the lie we’re telling ourselves. We end up wasting so much of our life and our precious time. The reality is every single one of us would be a Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Oprah, you, me, or the baker on the street. We all have one thing in common. We have time. Practice this daily practice of facing the truth. Truth is real yoga, meditation, prayer, and spiritual practice. It’s this practice of looking at yourself, eye to eye, heart to heart, and speaking and telling the truth. That’s been a huge thing for me not to be assessing myself.

 

Another practice that I do is the daily practice of feeling my death. It’s making death on a daily basis, not avoiding it. It’s not some morbid thing, but facing the fact that you, me, Bob Marley, David Bowie, and every single person are going to die. I am going to die. It’s bringing death close, pulling death to my cheek, and going, “If I was going to die today, if today was my last day, would I be ready? What’s ungiven? What’s not spoken? What’s not shared? What’s unforgiven? Who do I need to forgive?” It’s feeling death and remembering it as a profound inspiration to get my life correct.

It’s a profound inspiration to realize I don’t have time to waste because when we all die and meet our maker, whatever we believe, we can go to God and say, “God, I wasted those four years in a relationship that wasn’t right. Could you give me those four years back?” God is going to say no because there’s no refund. Here’s a profound practice for me. This is a practice that will cure procrastination. This is a practice that will dissolve fears. Face your death like, “I am going to die. This is my last day. Today could be my last day now, and feel it.” It gets things pretty straight and puts things in perspective. When I do that, this thing I’m worried about over here about this person puts everything into perspective.

“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointeth my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” It’s the 23rd Psalm. I’m not a scholar of the Bible. I love reading sections of the Bible. That one is one that I committed to memory some years ago.

It comes in handy at funerals, for sure, but it’s a daily prayer. As you said, Kute, “To be present with something that is a reality is a reality for all of us.” It’s one of those things we might not invite to be now. We have no idea when it will be. As you did earlier, you took a breath at that moment, feeling what it would feel like for this to be the last moment. How are you living at this moment? There are people at this moment now as we breathe, taking their very last breath, which makes this moment sacred.

Even though you do nothing, life is still living through you. Share on X

It’s sacred for so many people, including ourselves, whether the ax is hanging over our head in this second, the thread is as thin as can be, frayed just enough, and it releases or doesn’t. It’s still a sacred holy moment that we get to share with each other and share either in the present or in some exploration of the past or the future. It was amazing when you were speaking. I was thinking that truth is so important.

Give ourselves the gift of truth in the present as opposed to living with some regret or worrying about the future. Probably 90% of the day, the waking thoughts that most people entertain during the day are either thoughts of the past or thoughts of the future. It’s usually regret or fear. It was Osho that said, “The past is dead. The future doesn’t exist.” We know that there’s no energy that has any life to it except the present, this moment. We are endowed and empowered in such an incredible way in the present moment when we’re in the present moment occupying it.

Thank you so much, Kute, for sharing that. To unpack that would take us days because you shared so much that I thought was so incredible. I love the book by Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World. If you’ve not read that book, get that book. It’s this tiny little thin book. One of the scrolls in this book that Og shares are to live this day as though it is my last. I say that every day. I say it before I go to bed at night. When I’m conscious during the day, I remind myself, as I am now, that we live this day as if it’s a last, which is what you’re talking about. Kute, what a wonderful opportunity to chat and have so much more curiosity about you and what you’re up to. I want to ask one final question. What’s the next challenge for you at this moment?

There are so many. Part of my vision is to take spirituality and personal growth to the masses using media. We’re working on some things TV-wise and media-wise. That’s a challenge to spread. It’s like what’s happened with hip-hop. People like Russell Simmons regrouped and took their part with Alex in Brussels. It’s in Bombay, Berlin, and everywhere. It’s infiltrated the collective consciousness of the new generation.

Our vision is to create a more awakened culture on a mass level.

It’s like Mike Ivan saying to Jay Z, “It’s not sneakers. It’s speakers.” Take it to the masses. Everybody out there, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode as much as I hope you enjoy it. I pray and want more than anything that you take what you’ve read and put it into some useful action for yourself, whether it’s to create some ritual or conscious practice or a new habit for yourself, whether it’s stillness, getting out and exercising, moving your body, and creating your own rituals for resilience and recovery. At least in my experience and Kute’s as well, this is the key element to the thing that you might call success or the ability to get things done and get your goals accomplished. It’s to be able to be resilient, hear that word no, and put it in its proper perspective, which is usually about somebody else and their vision.

It’s nothing to do with you necessarily. It’s things like that. I love that I’ve got to spend this time with you. I feel so grateful that we were here together. If you’re not yet subscribed, please feel free to do that. You can go to AdamMarkel.com and subscribe to the show. Please leave a review on iTunes. We love the feedback and those reviews, so please do that as well and join if you haven’t yet already checked out our Facebook community, The Start My PIVOT Community is growing, and people are incredible in that community. They’re sharing their vulnerable pivots, giving support, receiving support, and doing amazing things. You can get there by going to PivotFB.com.

As we conclude our show, we’ll do the same thing in a different way to book in the beginning with the end, and that is to be in gratitude. Take a deep conscious breath at this moment. I’m going to wave a magic wand, and with it, my prayer, intention, and wish for all of us is that we get to wake up tomorrow.

You get to wake up physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually that we wake ourselves up, that we are a little more conscious tomorrow even than we are now. It’s a good sign. We’re on a good trajectory to be a little more awake tomorrow. Step one is that we wake up. Step two is that we are grateful in that moment because as we take that deep conscious breath of the new day, we realize that there are people who are taking their last breath at that moment. There are also people being born who are taking their first breath at that moment, and it is a sacred moment.

Lastly, if you’re inclined to say these words, they’ve changed my life. I dare say a lot of people’s lives from all of the people we’ve heard from, when you put your feet on the floor or even while you’re still in bed, you can declare out loud, “I love my life.” I certainly have loved this time, and I can’t wait to spend more time with you guys in the future. For now, I will say ciao and peace.

 

Important Links

• Kute Blackson
• You.Are.The.One
• The Life You Were Born To Live
• The Greatest Salesman in the World
• iTunes – Change Proof
• PivotFB.com – Facebook

 

About Kute Blackson

A beloved inspirational speaker and transformational teacher, Kute Blackson offers a fresh, bold look at spiritual awareness for a whole new generation. Born in Ghana, West Africa, Kute’s multicultural upbringing as the child of a Japanese mother and a Ghanaian father has spanned four different continents. His unique lineage lay the foundation for his approach to breaking down barriers and unlocking an individual’s true gifts and greatness.

A beloved inspirational speaker and transformational teacher, Kute Blackson offers a fresh, bold look at spiritual awareness for a whole new generation. Born in Ghana, West Africa, Kute’s multicultural upbringing as the child of a Japanese mother and a Ghanaian father has spanned four different continents. His unique lineage lay the foundation for his approach to breaking down barriers and unlocking an individual’s true gifts and greatness.