 Hello, everybody. Good afternoon, and welcome to another episode of Dr. Jill Live. I'm here with special guest, Koot Blaxton, today. And I'm so excited to get to know him and more about what he's been doing. The title already speaks for itself, The Magic of Surrender. And we're going to dive into what this really means and how it could affect you or your health or whatever you're dealing with in your life. Let me just do a brief introduction, and then we'll get right to the show. Koot Blaxton is a beloved inspirational speaker and transformational teacher. He speaks at countless events. He organizes around the world as well as outside events, including A-Fest, YPO, and EO. Real familiar with a lot of those, too. Koot, he's a member of the Transformational Leaders Council, a select group of 100 of the world's foremost authorities on personal development. Winner of the 2019 Unity Award, New Thought Walden Award. He's widely considered the next generation leader in a field of personal development. And his mission is simple, to awaken and inspire people across the planet to access inner freedom, live authentically, and fulfill a true life's purpose. I love it. So what I always like to start with and my guest is, how did you get here? Koot, you've always had a journey, and often our journey really transforms us first, right? And then we go out and help the transform the world. Tell me a little about you. Where did you grow up? How did you get interested in this kind of work? And I'll let you just tell us a little bit about your story. Oh, yeah. I always felt a, because born in Ghana, West Africa, my father's from Ghana, my mother's Japanese. I grew up in London. So I feel like a citizen of the world, like I'm from everywhere and nowhere. I always felt I was a very empathetic kid. And so as a kid, I would feel people's pain very deeply. And there was a part of me that wanted to alleviate suffering in some way. I didn't know what that would look like. And so also, I grew up in a kind of unusual environment. When I was a kid, I didn't know that it was unusual. I just thought this was everyone's experience. And I think that was a blessing, because I grew up with that sense of limitations from the standpoint of, I remember being about seven years old and being lost in the crowd. And I see a couple of women calling on the floor. She picks up the sand that this man walks on, wipes it on her face, and stands up, called that a miracle. And so week after week, I grew up seeing blind people see and deaf people hear. And the same man who said she picked up would look at the person in the wheelchair and say, hey, why you in this wheelchair stand up? Or the same man would look at someone who was coming with crutches, and he would say, hey, throw your crutches away. This man was my father. He was considered the miracle man of Africa, a kind of iconic spiritual guru, teacher, healer, minister, built 300 churches in Ghana, West Africa, a huge church in London, 4,000 people, 5,000 people every Sunday. So grew up in this environment, and I thought this was everyone's life and everyone's reality. And when I was AJ, my speaking career began, because I was thrown into the audience at AJ and told to speak. And that started a whole relationship of communicating and speaking. When I was 14, I was ordained as a minister. And undenounced to me, my father had decided I was going to be his successor. We didn't have a conversation about it. No one told me. It was just announced one Sunday. And I wanted to help people. But when he said that and he announced it, my heart sank. Because I knew that this was not my path. I knew that this was not my soul's journey, my trajectory. But I was too afraid to, I think, speak my truth. I was too afraid to tell my father how I felt my fear was if I speak my truth, if I communicate how I really feel. If I dare to be who I am, that I'll lose his love. I'll be outcast. I'll be alone. And there were literally hundreds of thousands of people in Ghana, part of my father's congregation, that had their hopes and dreams pinned on me now that he made this announcement. So there was a lot of pressure. And I think many of us as human beings, we allow fear to hijack us and fear to stop us from expressing our voice and our creativity and our gifts and sharing the world. And so for four years, I kind of suppressed myself and couldn't muster up the courage to have that conversation and went through a lot of internal conflict and turmoil and questioning. And when I turned 18, it was a pivotal moment in my life because up until that point too, I had been reading a lot of self-help books. My father's bookshelf were books from people like Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra, Maryam Williamson. And so this is kind of how I immersed my consciousness with these amazing books. And so when I turned 18, I felt this calling to come to the US, like my soul was guiding me, like go to America, go to Los Angeles specifically, Southern California, because this is where all of the authors lived. And I wanted to go into this field of personal development, spirituality, personal growth. And it didn't make sense to my mind. And I think sometimes what our soul guides us to do isn't always convenient or doesn't always make sense or isn't always logical, but I really believe that when you follow your soul, you always guided. You end up in the right place, even though the road that you take doesn't make sense. And so I looked into my future at this point and I saw that I could follow the expected path. I could follow the path that was laid out for me by my father, age 20, age 30, age 40, age 50. I could be successful based on everyone else's standards. But if I didn't have myself, if I didn't have my soul, if I didn't have my own integrity, then what do I have? Like I don't have anything. I don't have, what kind of success is that? And I felt such a deep sense of self betrayal and this feeling of soul sub aside. And the pain was so deep that I knew in that moment what I had to do. And that was have that conversation with my father and leave everything that I knew behind. And it was scary. It was terrifying. I had the conversation, had to make peace with some fears. And my father and I, we didn't speak for two years, which was really great. But kind of longest story short, I ended up winning a green card in the green card lottery. American government gives away 55,000 green cards in the green card lottery. I won the darn thing. And I had this feeling, we can get into that more if you want, but I had this feeling and I won it. And that for me was a signal, a sign from the universe that I was on the right path. And came to the U.S. two suitcases at $800, you know, one in the country, just pursuing a kid pursuing a dream. And when I found many of the authors and teachers that I read about, and then a few years later traveled, went to Israel, went up in India. And it was my time in India that I think really cracked my heart open to a whole not a level of shall we say, realization, a whole not a level of freedom. And it was out of that that I wanted to, was guided really to come back to the U.S. and just started working with people one on one as a 20 years ago as a coach before coaching was popular and just began working with people. And one person came and another person came and before you knew it over months and years, people started coming from around the world. And one thing led to the next and the things just expanded and go to best selling books and here we are. I love your story. I knew just from the little bits that I knew about you that I would really enjoy this conversation but already my smile has helped my whole thing. It's so much part of any enlightened journey and no different from my own in the sense of we grow up in these places and homes with expectations, right? And we kind of have to unlearn. And I too had expectations that I, I love how you said it a little different way but I always say I turned down my volume because I thought it was too much and in my needs and some of that turned it down to be accepted because we very young often equate love with this following the path that we're supposed to. We're doing what our parents want us to or being the good girl or the good boy or the, we know, obedient son, right? Like that's the path and there's nothing wrong with that but what happens is we become more enlightened and find our soul's purpose. We often have to step out and have really difficult conversations but like you said, it's either between ourself or between other people and that choice that you made that crossroads at 18 changed the trajectory of your life. Like there's no way that your soul would be where you're at now doing and impacting the people but it's on just the people listening. You know inside, I'm incredibly analytical. I was bioengineering in the medical doctor but what I had to do is unlearn the mind, right? And had to go here in that intuitive heart sense. And that's just what you're describing is going down into the body and the heart in your heart and your mind they can be in conflict. And the mind, just like you said in part of your story makes sense, right? There's these things in our parts of our journey where we come to a road where it's like our heart or intuition says, go this way. And everything about our mind is saying, no, that makes no sense at all. That's not gonna work out but if we can put that aside and trust that deep intuition and I think it's a God intuition, right? It sounds like there's a similar kind of divine place. That's where the joy and the miracles reside like what you got to see through that through following your intuition was the miracles and the people you've helped. I just, I love it. So from there, you've been speaking and writing in that and yet it's an ongoing journey, isn't it? We have to continue to kind of go from the head to the heart and be in that place. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So what do you do with that client you're coaching? Obviously you're doing it in the book as well but how would you start with someone who says, Koot, I'm stuck. I don't like my job. I don't like my work. I'm not happy or for me, I'm a physician so I'm dealing with people who are ill and they're not happy with their health. How would you start with someone like that to begin to open their minds to what's possible? Yeah, when I work with clients, it's not a informational process and so I don't really give people advice per se and tell people what to do so much. For me, it's really about helping people. I create processes and experiences that help people show we release the layers and the blockages, the layers that we have built up over time through conditioning to function and survive as we let go of those layers experientially then I think every person just reconnects with the truth of who they are and what we've always been all along. And so as a first place to start for those listening in terms of some guidance, I think one of the places that we can start then one of the things that I think keeps us stuck as human beings are all the ways that we lie to ourselves. As human beings, we so often lie to ourselves and many times we don't even know that we're lying to ourselves. We think that what we feel is what we really feel. We think that who we are is who we really are. We're not aware that often who we are and who we become is who we've been conditioned to be and that what we are is really a set of conditioned patterns in reaction and response to things that happen from childhood and parents and ancestors and society and those around us. And so one of the first places to start is really looking at all of the lies that we tell ourselves as human beings in many ways we lie to ourselves and we don't even know. And so we're in jobs that we hate that aren't aligned with our soul. We stay in relationships where we're no longer in love, it's no longer right. We outgrew it 10 years ago, but we stay out of fear, out of guilt, out of comfort. And so I think if someone wants to make a start, if they want to make a shift, if they want a breakthrough, I think we have to be willing to start by telling ourselves the truth, the truth about who we are, the truth about what we feel, the truth about what's going on inside of us, just the truth without judgment, without shame, with it just tell the truth. Sounds simple, but not always easy. Big condition from childhood to avoid the truth and suppress our feelings. To be who we think we need to be in order to get love, validation and approval. But I think if people just start by asking themselves a sincere question, what lies am I telling myself? To me, there is no real transformation without truth. There is no real healing without truth. Like there is no fulfillment and happiness without truth. You can't be truly fulfilled and happy being someone that you're not living someone else's version for your life. And so for me, real truth is spirit, real spiritual practice is truth, real meditation is truth, real therapy is truth, real yoga is truth. And I think if we're willing to start by telling ourselves the truth, things transforms, things truly shift. And so what lies am I telling myself? You have to want the truth more than you want what you have. You have to want the truth more than you want what you think you want. And so many times we keep ourselves stuck with rationalizing and the ways we've learned to survive. And so what lies am I telling myself? And I would also invite people take the pressure off of yourself from having to take action. Because sometimes, because we're afraid of the consequence of what will happen if we speak and tell the truth to ourselves starting there, the ego kind of creates a sort of unconscious defense mechanism of confusion. I'm not sure. I don't know. I'm confused. I don't know what my purpose is. I don't know what my truth is. I don't know what everyone, I don't know if I really want to stay in this relationship. I'm confused when deep down we're not confused. There's a deep knowing. I think there's a part of us that knows everything, but confusion could often be the smoke screen or the survival self-protection mechanism that kind of keeps us safe from having to own and knowing the big action. And so when we take the pressure off of ourselves from having to take action, then we can just be with the truth. The truth might sound like I'm not in love. You don't have to divorce. You don't have to break up. You don't have to make it. You don't have to take any action. But just to acknowledge the truth and be with the truth. I hate my job. You don't have to leave it. But just to acknowledge the truth starts a process inside, you know? And so what lies am I telling myself? What am I pretending to not know? And what is, what are the lies that I'm telling myself? What is it costing me? Because when we lie to ourselves, there was a cost and often that cost is pain. I'm sure you see, you said, you know, your physician. Many times I think when we lie to ourselves it's meant to be painful. To me, the pain is a signal that we're not living in integrity, that there's some part of us that's out of alignment. There's some part of us that we're not paying attention to. To me, pain is a messenger. But often we don't pay attention to the message. We numb it. We distract it. We anesthetize it. We drink it away, smoke it away, eat it away, shop it away, you know, social media in a way where we have, we need to do to not feel it. And often as a result of suppressing that pain that lie, that truth that's not acknowledged at some point will tend to manifest as emotional pain, some kind of depression or, you know, emotional pain. It might manifest as a temporary physical ailment, a backache, a neckache, a shoulderache. It may manifest as some kind of dis-ease of like our unconscious is trying to get our attention. And so I think if we're willing to just acknowledge the truth and deal with the truth and actually begin by feeling, just feeling the pain of the misalignment. Even if we don't take action, that starts a process of marinating inside of ourselves. Then we can feel through whatever the feelings that might be there that may come up and then we can start dealing with it and moving through it. So I think that's a place that we can start. But as children, we were in touch with the truth. I think as children, children are very honest. When we're children, we're free, we're born free. We're in touch with our essential nature. We're in touch with, a child will jump on the table and cry when they feel like crying. They'll hug you when they feel like hugging you. They won't when they don't feel like it. They'll run naked. They don't care what you think. They're in touch with the essence. And I think that's why when we look at a child, we're reminded of that true pure essential nature within ourselves, which is why we melt, which is why we connect to them as adults. So what happened? We were born, we incarnate, we meet our parents. Our parents, they're just doing the best that they can do based on their life and their programming, which often they're unconscious of too. And so now we're born into a preset, pre-framed pattern of conditioning. Maybe dad was an alcoholic. Maybe mom had mental health issues. Maybe they were fighting all the time. Maybe they were great people, but they just weren't able to meet our emotional needs. So firstly, we learn all sorts of strategies to disconnect, shut down and not feel. And that's where the sort of lying starts. So to speak, the self-betrayal starts. We shut down, disconnect, not feel in order to survive and handle the pain of what's going on around us. And we learn all sorts of defense mechanisms. We erect walls around our hearts again to protect ourselves, right? And then we also learn a way of being, we go into the world, the sense of who do I need to be in order to get love, validation, approval. To be loved by my dad. For me, I learned I need to be the good son, the polite one, the appropriate one, the perfect one, the one who takes care of everyone. But in many ways, there's so many parts of my own authentic nature that I ended up betraying. And so we develop a role and a mask and a persona as a way to get that love, validation, approval. We contort ourselves into a kind of shape, a set pattern that we hold on to that gets reinforced by life. And we think the version of ourselves that we've become is who we are and it's not. It's just a conditioned pattern and program construct of what we've learned to be, to function and survive. And then we live inside of that limitation, wondering why do I not feel free? And so I think many times disease or emotional pain ends up being the manifestation of that limitation. And so for me, it's about helping people become free. And so I think we have to be willing to question ourselves like is who I am, who I really am or is it who I've been conditioned to be? And the degree to which we're conditioned is the degree to which we're not free. So I think if we can become aware that we're conditioned and start observing our condition and start noticing and witnessing our conditioning and then have the courage to acknowledge by telling the truth, acknowledge our pain. You're knowing that the pain is there for a reason. The pain isn't bad, it's just the signal, alarm signal bring off often in our body to acknowledge our pain, physical pain, emotional pain and be willing to have a greater safe space to process through and feel the layers of pain that we've learned to suppress. And I think that's where healing can happen. Brilliant, again, just love. I'm just eating this up because it's so relevant and so relevant again to me as a physician with patients with illness. And again, my own life, it starts here about five years ago after the divorce for me and a big awakening. And part of that was who am I? What do I want? You know, and often what the important thing there is it often takes, it doesn't always take but it often what happens is there's some difficulty or illness or something that shakes us a little and that shaking of our stability of what we thought was secure and what we thought was who we were allows us to start to move against those boundaries of that contorted person that we thought we were and actually say, who am I? What do I want? What does this look like? And it usually comes through some painful circumstances. In my own journey, I've done a lot of work around this and like I said, it was going from my head of what I thought I should and I must and all those kind of constructions around my childhood to actually find out what do I really want? What do I really need? And having that self-compassion because there was a judge, right? There was a strong judgment of what I should and I shouldn't and right and wrong and not that that all went away but there's this idea of and the other thing you said is the pain, right? So when we start to, for me, I had suppressed anger I had suppressed sadness. I was optimistic happy Jill, that was my persona and what I realized then as I started to actually deal with those painful things and those emotions when they first come up, they're terrifying because they feel like a tsunami that's gonna come flush and take you out. So I was like, oh, it's no wonder all these first 40 years of my life I suppressed those emotions and remember when I first started feeling there was like two weeks of massive sadness and I thought, oh my goodness, this is terrible is it ever gonna end? What happened is like you're describing as it started to allow that to flow through me it became easier and easier. And now if I have a sad thought or an angry thought or thought that before wasn't appropriate with my upbringing, I let it come and I let it flow through me and I have compassion on myself through that and it's not so bad. It's like a small little wave and it comes and it goes. But because of that the physical this is where it gets into me as a physician and patients of my own health the physical manifestations of suppressing these emotions are too great of a cost to pay. I had cancer at 25, I had autoimmune disease at 26 and other things. And I realized now that some of the cost of my suppression of who I really was and my own emotions was illness like cancer. And it's not every case but a lot of physical elements can be related and some part to exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, for sure, for sure. The body has an intent. The body doesn't lie, right? The body doesn't lie. The body communicates to us, yeah, for sure. And like you said, I loved what you said of those listening who maybe do have pain or illness. I'm not saying it's all caused as your fault or anything like that but I'm just saying those are messengers and they're trying to, it's almost like, hey, for me if I think about my own body my own body is like, excuse me, Jill can we have your attention because you're not treating this in the way that you should. And it took me years to really realize that but I wasn't really true to myself and my body was trying to get my attention through this manifestation of illness and it took some of that to get that to transform into a different place. So love all of that. Tell me about the art of surrender and the magic of surrender because I completely agree with you. I wanna hear how can we, because truly that embracing of uncertainty and that truly flowing with life and trusting that everything is meant to be and is going to take us where we're supposed to go is a heart, right? But it's also where the magic where the things that we experienced that I consider miraculous, that's where it happens. It's on the edge of surrender. So tell me more about surrender. Yeah, I think first I wanna say, yes, on one level it seems hard and I will agree. Yes, it's hard, it seems hard but I'm also gonna pre-frame it to say it seems hard and in fact, surrender is really what is most natural for us as human beings. It's just we've been conditioned and it's because we've been conditioned to hold on in the ways I just shared. We've been conditioned to hold on and then we hold on so tightly to this way of being the survival mechanism, this person that we think we are, that we've become, that we've learned to be based on avoiding pain, getting love, survival, identity, that I'm making a fist right now for this listening and I'm holding on so tightly, holding on so tightly, holding on so tightly. Now, holding on is actually hard but the more we hold on, the more normal it starts feeling but in fact, letting go, surrendering is the easiest thing. It's just that we've been conditioned to hold on to avoid pain, to function, survive, get love, validation and approval. And so the degree to which we're conditioned is the degree to which we hold on, the degree to which we hold on is the degree to which we tend to be identified with the program and the set of patterns that we've become. And to me, this is ego. Ego is not a thing, it's a process of identification and that process of identification, that idea of who we believe ourselves to be and that holding on sense of identification is, that's the aspect of ourselves that resists and for the ego, the self that we perceive ourselves to be surrender can seem difficult because the ego's job, what we think we are that we're not really, the ego's job is to reinforce its existence and survive. The ego's job is to protect us, to make sure we never feel hurt like we were hurt when we were five, when we were seven. We never feel that helpless again. And so all of a sudden, at age five, we learn to sort of become overly analytical, let's say, or we learn to shut down parts of our hearts and we learn to be a certain way. So we want to hurt by dads or moms rejection and now it works for us when we were five but now we're 25 and we're 35 and we're 45 but we fall in love and now our heart is closed and our heart doesn't want to open because we're afraid, the ego is like, I'm not gonna let you open your heart again because if you open your heart again and you surrender to the love that's in, you're feeling you're gonna get hurt, you're gonna be abandoned, you're gonna be rejected. No, so the ego's job is to protect us, the ego's job is to make sure we don't get hurt again. When we understand the nature of ego, when we understand the purpose of ego and when we start understanding that we are not ego, the collection of patterns that we identify with, it starts changing our relationship with ourselves, it starts changing our relationship with life and it starts transforming our relationship with surrender. So it's ego that resists because ego, ego wants everything and everyone to change but it doesn't want to change. And when we understand the purpose of the nature of ego, then I think it starts freeing us up to have, to relate to ego differently knowing we're not it but also it can start freeing us up to relate to it with much more compassion because we understand like, ah, the reason I'm resisting, the reason I'm holding on so tightly, the reason I'm afraid of questioning myself, the reason I'm afraid of letting go, the reason I'm afraid of acknowledging the truth, it's survival, it's a beautiful intention. And so when we understand that, then we can hold ourselves with love and compassion and kindness and understanding and reassurance. And we don't have to force ourselves to surrender or make ourselves surrender, we can just hold ourselves with that compassion and those young parts of us that learn from a very young age, certain survival techniques and mechanisms that are often outdated and what starts happening in that safety and that compassion is the surrender slowly, gently kind of starts happening. And that's sort of a deeper sense but just to kind of have a frame for the conversation around surrender. I believe that surrender is the most powerful thing that we can do as human beings. I really believe that surrender is the password for freedom. I really feel that surrender is the key to your next level, is the real secret to manifestation. In our culture today, we've been programmed to believe, I think mistakenly, misconception that surrender is weak, that surrender is passive, that if you surrender, you're going to be taken advantage of. If you surrender, you're gonna be a doormat. If you surrender, you're going to be a victim. If you surrender, you won't manifest your goals, dreams, and desires. If you surrender, it means giving up, waving the white flag. It means you're gonna get less in life. And what I'm really saying in the magic of surrender is, what if you didn't get less? In truth, authentic surrender, what if you got more? Like more than you could even have projected and visualized and goal set and imagine from the limited perspective of your ego because no matter how brilliant the ego is, our egos are, our minds become, it's still limited because ego is limited to past experience, which is conditioned. And so a life that is lived inside of the mind or the ego alone is still a limited life. And so surrender is when you take the limitations off of life, surrender, every great person, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Mandela, Martin Luther King, Bruce Lee, Bob Marley, Muhammad Ali, I mean, you name it, anyone who did, was great in a sense. They all surrendered themselves. They surrendered themselves to a mission that was bigger than themselves. They surrendered themselves to life. They surrendered themselves to the divine. They surrender themselves to the universe. They surrender themselves to the deep calling of their soul. And in that surrender, they transcended their own ego. They transcended their own human limitation. They went beyond personal power and they were able to tap into a dimension of life that was infinite. They were able to tap into a dimension of life and life began to flow through them and use them and live through them, perhaps even in ways that they could not have even imagined. And so the magic of surrender, magic is that which is beyond your mental capacity to imagine what's possible beyond your wildest dreams. So what if you got more love, more joy, more like what you couldn't even imagine? To me, we all want the magic. When I ask people, who wants more magic? All the hands go up. But then when it comes to like surrendering, very few hands go up. And so surrender is the password to the magic and the degree to which we surrender, let go of that which is in a line is the degree to which we open ourselves to the magic. And so surrender is to let go of control or I should say the illusion of control and control is that master addiction. He goes mechanism, right? To control everything because I can control everything. I won't get hurt. So surrender is to let go of control. Surrender is to stop trying to force and manipulate life to fit our limited idea of what we think it should be where we try to make that relationship happen even though it's not happening. We try to make that career happen or that goal happen even though it's not really aligned. So when we let go of manipulating and forcing life to fit our limited idea, we let go of the idea of who we think we should be. We think life should so that we can truly be available and open and willing and receptive to the life that is authentically seeking to happen. And I think in so many ways without attachment to our ideas of how we think things should be and life should be and people should be, we're not aware but we're often limiting life. We're limiting the infinite. And so surrender is to take the limits off and to let life lead you and to be fully available to the magic. That's when I think miracles happen that often surprises. And if you look at, I think the best things in life, many of the best things in life, we didn't plan them. They just happened in the process of living life itself. And even when things didn't go according to plan and things didn't manifest how we wanted them to, if we look back, how many times do they work out better than we imagine? Or even if someone looks back and go, looks back at a relationship that you really wanted to have happen. Let's use this as an example. If you think of a relationship that you were so sure about, a soulmate, you felt you met your soulmate, the person you're gonna spend the rest of your life with, you know, I remember I met someone 20 years ago, she was amazing. I'm like, this is the one, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with this. I couldn't imagine being with anyone else. And if you think back to that person and then you broke up. And then now, maybe from the perspective of today, you look back and you go, God, God, that didn't happen, right? So when things don't happen from the perspective of the mind or the ego, it seems some way, it seems a certain way. It seems like a failure, but from the perspective of the soul, you know, it's a blessing, it's a race. And so the ego is limited. And so surrender is the willingness to trust. Like even when we can't see the trust and even when we don't trust, it's still unfolding for our good. Because even when things didn't work out, you might look back and go, wow, if I didn't lose my job, if I didn't break up with that person, I wouldn't have moved back home. And if I didn't move back home, I wouldn't have met my soulmate today. I wouldn't, this wouldn't have happened, that wouldn't have happened. So I think life has an intelligence that has, that is beyond us because life has been around for billions and billions of billions of years. And I think that's the magic. It's just a willingness to trust life. Absolutely. I, I so again, so agree with you and I can talk about my own life. I know my ex-husband would agree with this as well. Our divorce for both of us was the beginning of us really awakening. And we now are great friends and different, you know, not in relationship, but friends and respectful. And we both see how the power of that divorce really transformed us into a much better version of ourselves. And it wouldn't have never happened. And it was hard. It wasn't easy at the time. But now looking back, it's one of the best things that happened. And I think about your, your analogies with letting the surrender allow the magic to happen. And so many of the really special things in my life, I'm just getting ready to publish my own book and working on a documentary. And both of those things, the divine gave me the division seven or eight years ago on the book. And I just, it was funny because I remember having a really intense retreat for about, you know, eight, four to six weeks where I was just delving into who I was and where I wanted to go. And I felt this like come to me, you're supposed to write your story. You're supposed to write your book. And I remember literally in tears talking to God and be like, God, who am I? I don't know what I'm doing. What if nobody reads my book? You know, I don't know what I'm doing. I can't write. And that's the ego, right? That's the ego giving excuses. But I surrendered and I remember just hearing my soul. You know what? It doesn't matter if no one even reads it. It matters if you follow your path, your journey, you're supposed to do this. And let me take care of the details. And what happened in the next seven years was so many chapters were written. I couldn't have written it at the time but I had to wait and surrender to the timing. And the timing now is much better than it would have been seven years ago. But during that time, I just kept it in my heart knowing that it would happen. I had complete faith that when the time was right, the resources, the people, the publisher would all come in the way that they were supposed to. And it did. And it's way better than I could have planned. And the stories that I can tell now through that last seven years are so powerful and profound. I would have never had that had I tried to do it in my own strength seven years ago. And then the documentary, just a year or so ago, I'm just sitting in my chair meditating and it was during COVID. And I thought, you know, people are no longer reading as many books, they're on screens. And I'm still gonna write my book but I wonder if I'm supposed to do something on screens. And I just had the vision, you know what? Do a documentary. I have no experience. I'm not a producer. I have no experience at all. But I'm like, okay, I'll do it if you help me out here. And I just started moving forward within seven days. I had producer, director, executive assistant and within three months we had investor who funded the full project. And that would have never happened if it had been in my own power. It was literally surrendering and trusting. And then just like showing up every day with like the wonder of a child and saying, what's gonna happen today? What miracles do I get to see today? And living that way. And again, I'm still in the process. I don't have it all made. But I love the freedom that you talked about because I used to live this way. And I'm showing a fist for those of you listening. And I was analytical controlled. I made my to-do list. I made my five-year plan, my 10-year plan, right? And here's the thing, nothing wrong with that. Just so people are clear just to clarify, I think this is important to clarify for people. It's like the surrender mean you can't set goals. The surrender mean you just sit there. So just to be clear, I think surrender is, it's about see the old paradigm is you ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want? What do I want? You make plans, make plans, you make plans based on your own limited sort of perspective, okay? And you can manifest that way, but it will often end up limited because we get so attached to the outcome being the outcome. And sometimes the goal is not the goal. It's just a necessary evolutionary carrot that takes us on the journey that we need to go on so that we can go on evolve. And that's sometimes the blessing. And so in surrender, you ask different question. What is it that life is seeking to express? What is it that the universe is seeking to express? What is the deepest expression, the deepest impulse of my soul that is seeking to express? And then you align with that. As you align with that deep impulse of life, that deep intention of life, then when you get that vision, when you're clear like this is what's true, this is the documentary, this is the book, this is the business, this is the project, not what you think you should be doing, but what's most seeking to express from the depth of your being that unconditioned part of your soul. Then you can align your thinking, your strategy, your ego, your plan, your mind, ego is now in service to your soul. And then you can take action, full action. So surrender isn't just sitting around doing nothing, that's laziness. Surrender is not an abdication of responsibility, right? And it's not an excuse to just, oh, whatever's gonna happen, I'm just gonna go with the flow. That's not necessarily just surrender. Surrender is the few deepest truth. Align with that, give 100% but don't be attached to the outcome. And I think that's the art. When you're not attached to the outcome, but you're involved fully and showing up fully trusting that life will lead you. Life will, as you are in action, life will lead you. Life will show you. It's knowing though what your soul is supposed to do in the world. Like I love your bio because a lot of those things I relate to inspire and encourage and love are really what my soul is supposed to do, right? It doesn't matter. But the how, you let the how develop itself. You let the how you're supposed to do that come about and manifest in your life without an attachment. It has to be this way, right? And I think that's exactly what you're describing. Yeah, that's the openness where you give 100%. But you don't like, it's got to be, it's got to be this, like for instance, the magic of Surrender book was not the book I thought I was going to write. Yes, I love it. I had other plans. To be honest, I wanted to write a different kind of book. And I sat down with an entire whiteboard of ideas, hundreds of brilliant ideas, but none of, at the end of the day, if I was really honest, if I was really, this is what honesty came into play. If I was really honest, none of those felt true. None of those felt authentic in my own integrity. Yeah, I could have written about them. Yeah, I could have, it could have been a nice idea, but it didn't feel aligned. The only word when I looked at that whiteboard that felt true was Surrender. And that's when I knew like, this is the book that was seeking to be written, not necessarily the book I wanted to write. And when I got my ego in alignment with my soul, that's when the magic happened and that's when everything started to unfold. So I had to surrender to the book about Surrender. Yes. And I think when we're able to live in that harmony, ego in alignment with soul, that's when we're in the flow of life and nature and life supports itself through the fulfillment of that vision and intention. And so I would say that also our goals, our goals don't just, I have chosen us. Your goals choose you. And if your goals choose you, they don't belong to you. If they don't belong to you, they belong to life. And if they belong to life, then life knows how to fulfill itself through you. Your job, my job is to surrender, is to say yes, you are part to show up. And that's when I think life does the rest. That's when life begins to manifest. When we get out of our own way and we say, okay, I feel the vision, I feel the calling, I'm gonna follow it, I'm gonna write this wave because the wave is moving and I don't have to make the wave. And many of us are so worried about how to, we go to the ocean with a surfboard and we say, how do I make the wave? Right. If I take a hose and I make a wave with water, then no, the wave is the wave and the ocean is the ocean. And I think we start learning to catch the wave that's authentically ours. Yeah, I love that. Cause even with the divine, sometimes we'll have a conversation, me and the divine. And I'll be like, you know, it's your reputation on the line. I'm here, I'll do whatever you want, but I kind of like to let that go because it truly, one of the things you said that I wanna, before we wrap up, that I think is really important. You talked about self-compassion and I found that to be just core with healing, right? Like you just, but I also find, if I wanna love people, my patients and my friends and family and like truly unconditionally show them that kind of love and acceptance and give them a place where they can transform, I can only do that if I start with that compassion to myself because we often reflect the, if we have self-loathing or judgment or those things to ourselves, we're going to project them on those we love. Do you wanna talk a little bit about like why self-compassion is so important? Cause I think that's a core too of what you're, yeah, I think it becomes a little difficult to truly love other people if we're hating ourselves. I mean, we can't to a degree, but it's limited, you know? And I think the more we're able to embrace those parts of ourselves, the less we will project them outside. When we reject parts of ourselves, when we hate parts of ourselves, when we deny parts of ourselves, we will often then project that onto other people. And then as a result, when we see them in other people, we will judge them, we will blame them, we'll make them wrong, but many times when we see other people, they're reflecting towards those parts of ourselves that we haven't made peace with. We haven't acknowledged, we haven't brought compassion to so it's hard to be compassionate to them when we're not compassionate to those parts of ourselves. But what I found is what we truly been loving and acceptance and healing. And healing is the application of love to those parts of ourselves that are hurting. And when we bring healing and compassion to those parts of ourselves, then we project less. Then when we see someone being egotistical or being selfish or being out of antiquity or being a certain way, fill in the blank, then we're much more able to have compassion for them and knowing that in pain, because we've embraced and we've acknowledged that part of ourselves. And I think that's the foundation, real self-love is the foundation. And ultimately all relationships are a mere manifestation of our unconsciousness, all relationships are a manifestation of us. And to me, there's no real relationship out there. We're in relationship with parts of ourselves that is projected out there. And so the more we love ourselves, I think the more we will be able to hold the space and love what we see out there in the world. Wow, and we need that more than ever in our world. So where can people find you? Where can they get your book? Tell us a little bit, cause I just love talking to you. I could go in a whole, I could go hours. Yeah, the book is available on Amazon, that's one. A special free event I'm doing, depending on people listening to this conversation. July the 12th through the 19th, an entire week, I'm doing a free event online called the Surrender Summit. I want to invite everyone to register for free and share with your friends, www.thesurrendersummit.com, that's thesurrendersummit.com. We can register, I'm bringing some of my friends together on that summit, people like Neil Donald Walsh of Conversations with God, John Gray, Barbara DeAngeles, Martha Beck, Dr. Sue Morta, John D. Martini. There's about 20 people that are going to also be a part of the week-long event, so thesurrendersummit.com. For people that want to go deeper, you can check out my website, Kute Blackson. Twice a year I do an event in Bali. It's 12 days, it's perhaps my signature event where we take 20 people and we go on a deep transformational journey together and it's life-changing, it's profound, it's very special, it's called Boundless Bliss Bali. So people can go to www.boundlessblessbali.com. Perfect, and I'll include all those links wherever you're listening. Kute, it was absolutely my pleasure to get to know you. We'll include all these links. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your desire to change the world through inspiration and all the things that you do. I really appreciate it. Thank you, appreciate it.