Kute Blackson
Appearances
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Most people never crack open to surrender because they missed the phase in the middle. The phase in the middle is grieving. Surrender is a death. It's a death of your ego. It's a death of who you thought you were. It's a death of a phase of your life like, well, I'm no longer 20. I'm 30. I'm 40. I'm 50. It's a death of a dream, a death of a job. It's a death of something.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
How helpless and how painful it was when I was five and seven, et cetera, et cetera. So if we can just understand, that's how ego starts getting created. Ego, which is the source of resistance, is not a thing. Ego is a process. Ego is a process of identification. Identification with ourselves as name, form, body, with ourselves as that way of being. So for instance, as children, we learned also,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
oh, who do I need to be in order to get love, validation, and approval from my parents? Oh, for me, as a kid, I'm a preacher's kid, I learned, oh, if I'm responsible, if I get all A's, if I'm good, if I take care of everyone, if I smile, if I'm nice, if I never feel negative, Everybody loves me. Shit. Let me just do more of that. So, you know, I disconnected and betrayed parts of myself.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So we learned to develop all sorts of roles, masks, personas, and identity that we learned to become that we think now we can taught ourselves to be this person, Coot, right? Or John or Susan or whatever our name is. We learned to become this person. And we hold so tightly onto that, that gets reinforced by teachers and parents, society and those around us. We think that's who we are.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
The version of ourselves that we've been patterned and conditioned to be to avoid pain and get love. And now we've become this persona, the overachiever, the successful one, the driven one, the whatever you want to call it, the independent one. And so now we've become this person. We hold so tightly onto that and we think that's who we are. But it's not.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's just what we've been conditioned to be to survive. And that holding on is the survival mechanism to avoid pain and get love. When we recognize, so we have to realize that we are conditioned. And we're not who we think we are, really. And that's why we often hit a limitation in our adulthood. That's what got us to that point. Cannot get us to that next level.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Cannot get us to that level of true, authentic greatness to fulfill our true soul's destiny. It gets us to a point, but we end up reaching the edge of the egos, who we think we are. We end up reaching the end of the ego's capacity to manifest life. And that's often why We have a breakdown. That's often why we get fired in the spiritual context.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
That's often why these events happen in life to break us down, to force us to surrender, not because we're doing anything wrong, but to force us to surrender so that we can go deeper and crack open and find who we really are. So ego isn't bad. When we realize, ah, shit, what's stopping me from living in that flow is my ego. But I'm not my ego. It's my conditioning.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And the degree to which we identify with ourselves as ego is the degree to which we are sometimes afraid. of surrendering because it feels like, oh shit, if I surrender, I am dying. And it's terrifying for the ego. So if we can realize that and then have compassion for ourselves, What's resisting and what's doing this dance? It's not me. It's just some of my conditioning.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Thank you for having me.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And I'm not my conditioning. And I don't have to judge it. I don't have to fight it. I don't have to force it, beat it into submission of surrender. Maybe I can just meet that with some love. Maybe I can just meet my, if we can see ourselves doing our dance, then maybe I can see it has a positive intention. It's trying to get me love. Oh my God, it's like terrified of being hurt again.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So I'm doing this dance. And if we're able to see that and have the empathy and then meet ourselves with love and compassion and mercy and kindness, so that when we are afraid, when we are acting out, when we are doing our thing, then we can hold ourselves and say, hey, it's okay.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's that loving, it's that compassion, it's that empathy that begins to allow that deeper egoic part of us to relax and then surrender completely.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So just first step is that's understanding the nature of ego. That's, I think, why we don't surrender. That begins the anatomy of understanding why we are doing this, right? And so in terms of the phases of surrender, at first we are often, let's say, unconscious, right? We're just doing what we're doing, living what we're doing, thinking that we are who we are. This is me. This is life.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
No, I think it's quite normal, to be honest. I would say you'd be more crazy if we started the conversation by saying, yeah, surrender's easy. I love surrender. It's a piece of cake. That would be more unusual. I think more normal. And I would break down why. We can go deep into why that is. So it's really...
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And then we create life that often ends up limited in some way. We're unconscious. Maybe then we begin to become a little conscious. We start questioning. Then maybe we start seeing, hmm, maybe there's a different way. And now we're going to denial, a bit more conscious denial. And so now we're living a bit more in denial.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Then the next phase is we realize, hmm, maybe there's more to life than what I'm doing. Maybe there's more to me than what I've been living. Maybe who I am, you know, maybe someone listens to your podcast and they're like, maybe I'm Who I am is not who I really am. And I need to question who I am. We're afraid to question who we are because if I question who I am, then who the hell am I?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Ego freaks out, starts resisting. And so that next phase from denial is resistance. That's why we're resisting because it feels like... Who would I be if I'm not what I am and what I think I am, which is not really what I am, but like, who will I be? So resistance is a natural egoic human response, okay? It's normal, completely normal. Most of us resist our entire lives and then we die, right?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so resistance is natural. To meet that with compassion and empathy and love is the key to melt that resistance so that we can then allow ourselves to feel some of the pain, those feelings, those emotions, the pain, the hurt, the fear, so we can start feeling those feelings and releasing those feelings
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Because as we heal and release some of those feelings that we have been trained to suppress from childhood, then we no longer have to stay in ego to hold on to not feeling those feelings again. And that's where the transformational process is. That's what the transformational healing process is really about, with the therapist, with the guide, with the coach, through seminar, et cetera, et cetera.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So feeling those feelings. So now we're in resistance. After resisting, what we tend to do in the next phase of surrender is we start negotiating. Maybe I can... keep eating donuts in the morning and milkshakes and, you know, Big Macs and work out once a week and be healthy.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
You know, maybe my partner, even though they're abusive and they've been like this for 10 years and it's this terrible relationship, maybe if I change, they'll change. Maybe, you know, they've got potential. So we start negotiating with life. Maybe when I'm 72, then I can finally launch that book and live my purpose. We end up negotiating our lives away, so many of us, and then we die.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And that's the pain. Because... When you negotiate with life and negotiate your destiny, to me, that is already living dead. And so there reaches a point in that negotiation phase where we begin to realize, no matter how much I negotiate, it's not changing. I am what I am. I'm an alcoholic. My partner is what they are. This is the situation. It is what it is.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so now we start getting into reality. That is a necessary phase. What helps in this phase to really move into reality is the willingness to tell the truth. One of the things that keeps us stuck from truly surrendering are all the lies that we tell ourselves. We stay in relationships that we know aren't right for whatever the reason.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's probably you and 7.4, 9, 9, 9, 9, other billion people on the planet have that experience. But yeah, look, Surrender, I'm really excited about the theme of Surrender. I'm really passionate about it. For me, it's a calling. This was not the book I thought I was going to write. So for disclosure, I had to surrender to the book that was seeking to be written because I wanted to write Surrender.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
We work jobs that we know is not the true expression of our soul's purpose. Out of fear, out of safety, out of comfort, kills us inside. And so to me, there is no real surrender. There is no real healing. There is no true transformation without the truth. The truth will set us free. To me, truth is real spiritual practice. Truth is real therapy. Truth is real yoga.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
If we're willing to tell the truth, your entire life will begin transforming. So the question number one to start asking in this phase of acceptance is, what lies am I telling myself? To change reality, you have to see reality for what it is. See it for what it is, accept it for what it is, be with it as it is exactly. Not as you want it to be, not as it could be. This is what it is.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I have an alcohol problem. This is what it is. I'm in an abusive, toxic relationship. This is what it is. I hate my job. No judgment, reality. The truth will set you free. So what lies am I telling myself? Step one. Sometimes we're afraid to tell ourselves the truth. Because we're afraid, oh shit, if I tell myself the truth, what's the consequence?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so the ego, in its sneakiness, starts playing a game of confusion. Well, I'm not really sure if this relationship is right. I don't know. Maybe he can, maybe she can, maybe. We damn well know it's not right, you know? And the moment we break up, I've had this experience where I was like, is she right? Is she the one?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
The moment I broke up, I told my best friend, I knew that was never going to work. My best friend asked me, well, when did you know? Literally, I remember there was a relationship I had. Literally, I met this woman in the parking lot. My intuition said, no. Stay, no. It was very subtle. And sure enough, I went on a date. We ended up in a relationship. It was the disaster. And
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I knew, I knew, you know, I knew there's a part of us that knows everything deep down because at the deepest level, we're connected to everything. And so the ego plays this game of confusion. And so we have to look at what lies am I telling myself? What am I pretending to not know? But when we ask ourselves the question around truth, you have to want the truth more than you want what you have.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
You have to want the truth more than you want what you think you want to real freedom. isn't free. It requires that you let go of what's no longer aligned, what's no longer working. And that's where the next level of our lives, to go to the real next level, real level of super achieving. Like to me, Mandela was a super achiever. That was not a life that you could have strategized and planned.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
That's like true super human achievement. In surrender, that's what's possible beyond your imagination, beyond what you can imagine for yourself. And so we have to be willing to just acknowledge the truth. And I tell people, be willing to actually take the pressure off of yourself from having to take any action. Take the pressure off. You don't have to take any action, but just tell the truth.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Because sometimes the fear of taking action clouds our judgment, the ego's judgment, and we pretend to not know. So we say, okay, I don't have to take action. What does that mean? I hate my job. You don't have to leave. Maybe you have kids and do this. I hate my job. Let that begin marinating. It will start a process inside.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I'm no longer in love with my partner, with my wife, with my husband, with my boyfriend. You don't have to break up. Just let the truth marinate. It will begin a process. And so what lies about telling myself, what am I pretending to not know? And what is the pain? What is the cost? of the lie I'm telling myself. When we tell ourselves a lie, we betray our truth.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
a whole different kind of book. I wanted to write a book that sells, the book that I thought would sell, a book I thought would be the best, a book I thought people would want because when you say surrender, people tend to go, oh shit, and run away. But it was the book that was seeking to be written. So when I surrendered to that, everything flowed. So for me,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
There is a cost and we will feel pain. It's meant to be painful when we lie to ourselves. It's not meant to feel good. So I say the pain is a blessing. The pain is a signal. The pain is feedback that we're not living in alignment. What we tend to do as human beings is we distract ourselves from the pain.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
We sex it away, drink it away, smoke it away, you know, social media it away, work it away, you know, travel it away, shop it away so that we don't have to feel the pain. And that just perpetuates the dynamic even more. And so thirdly, I tell people, feel the pain of the misalignment. Not wallow in it, but just feel it. Don't deny it. Just breathe it and feel it. That starts to process inside.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So now we're in acceptance. Okay. This is what it is. This is the situation. This is what's going on. This is who my partner is. This is who my father is. This is who my kid is. Acceptance. The next phase, people think, oh, after acceptance, what now? A lot of people stay stuck in acceptance. But acceptance... isn't surrender.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Surrender, real surrender is like, you can be in acceptance, like, okay, this is who my partner is. This is who my husband is. I don't like who he is. I'm a little pissed off that he's that way. I feel like, I feel it's unfair and I'm going to hold back my love until they change, but I'm not going to leave, but I accept that this is what they are. All right.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so sometimes we're like, I'm not playing, but I'm going to be on the field. And, you know, that's a form of acceptance, a toleration, shall I say. True surrender is the open-hearted participation with the process of life. like when you roll your sleeves up and say, okay, it's raining outside. It sucks that it's raining.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so to truly move on into, I'm going to embrace the new. You have to be willing to grieve for the old and most of us never truly let ourselves grieve and we want to move on and surrender and that's why we can't open our hearts to surrender because we're not truly letting go and grieving and honoring what was.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I want it to go out with my kid, but let's go out and dance in the rain or let's invite the family in for a dinner and into my dinner at home and play games together and connect as a family. And like, let's make the best of this experience and use this experience rather than be used by this experience.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so surrender is the open-hearted participation to the process of life that's happening, where it requires two things, the belief and understanding that life is always working for your highest good, even if you can't see it right now. That's number one. Number two, the spiritual understanding that you and I, we are souls. We are souls having a human experience.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And as souls having a human experience, we incarnate into this human experience in order to learn, to grow, to evolve. That life is a school for your soul's evolution. And every experience in life, bad, challenging, difficult, heartbreak, divorce, betrayal, everything is part of the curriculum.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
for your soul's evolution if you really get that you stop seeing life as uh this happened and that happened and resisting it you move to a deeper dimension of asking yourself then you're able to surrender in the experience not necessarily to the situation but in the experience to go huh what is my soul seeking to learn in this experience right now that's the surrender
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Surrender, I believe, is actually the most powerful thing that we can do. I just want to start off there. Surrender, I think, is the key to your next level. Surrender is the real secret to authentic manifestation. Surrender is the password for freedom. If you look at the great ones, and so if you type A achievers out there, you look at the truly great ones,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
What is my soul seeking to learn from this messed up relationship? What is my soul seeking to learn from being fired? What is my soul seeking to learn in this situation? The surrender isn't just like, I'm going to sit here in this situation and be a victim and just do nothing. It's like, what is my soul seeking to learn so I can learn the lesson? And I'm going to surrender rather than resisting.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I'm going to really surrender to learning the lesson where I am. Because when you learn the lesson where you are with who you're with, that's the key that unlocks the lock to the next level of experience. So surrender is that.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Between acceptance and surrender, there is a missing face. And here is a secret to surrender that most people miss. Most people never crack open to surrender because they miss the face in the middle. The face in the middle is grieving. Most people miss the face of grieving because you see, surrender is a death. It's a death of your ego. It's a death of who you thought you were.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's a death of like, A phase of your life like, wow, I'm no longer 20, I'm 30, I'm 40, I'm 50. Wow, it's a death of that phase of one's youth to a different phase of one's life. It's a death of a dream, a death of a job, right? A death of maybe as a parent, like your kid becomes 18, 20, moves on. It's a death of a role. It's a death of something.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so to truly move on into, I'm going to embrace the new. willing to grieve for the old. And most of us never truly let ourselves grieve and we want to move on and surrender. And that's why we can't open our hearts to surrender because we're not truly letting go and grieving and honoring what was. True grieving and honoring what was allows you to fully release and let go.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
The challenges in our culture, we tend to avoid grief. We tend to avoid feelings like that. We tend to avoid that because we're afraid it will last forever. We're afraid it will never end. But the thing I would just want people to know is all feelings are temporary. No feeling lasts forever. All feelings that we feel fully with awareness will begin to dissolve.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And grief happens in stages and in layers. And if we can feel the grief, then we can let those layers go. And I think one of the key things is around grieving. If you're able to take that label off of the grief or any feeling, take the label off, don't even call it grief, and just experience the sensation of that feeling in your body. This is like how to grieve or how to feel.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Experience the sensation in your body. Wow, it's warm, it's hot, it's tight.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
If you really be with the sensation of the grief in your body and allow yourself to just be with that without getting rid of it, without forcing it away, without suppressing it, without judging it, and you be with it fully as a sensation, because many times we think that we're feeling a feeling, but we're thinking about the feeling.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So the feeling never dissolves because we're busy thinking and analyzing. But when we can feel the sensation, then the cycle of energy of that sensation of feeling begins to dissolve. And that's how we begin as we're with it. Like, wow. Then we let go. So anyway, those are some thoughts.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Jesus, Buddha, Bruce Lee, Gandhi, Muhammad Ali, Bob Marley, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King. I mean, dare I say, Elon Musk. On some level, they all surrendered themselves. And in the surrender to a deeper vision, in their surrender to the universe, to life, to their deeper calling, they were able to transcend their own ego's human limitations
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Yeah, you know, I was sitting there brainstorming, strategizing in my, I'm not going to say overachiever-ness too, I can relate to you, but in my desire to like write this massive bestseller and have an impact and, you know, number one, New York, what have you. And I was looking, okay, what are the best-selling books out there? Okay, you know, The Magical Art of Tidying Up, right?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
We've all heard of that. Condo, Merrily Condo, Condo Everything. Then I was like, okay, The Salt and Lard of Not Giving a F, right? Oh, that book. And so I was checking out all these books and I thought, oh, wow. Let me come up with something really clever. And I was strategizing with my mind and my brain and, you know, brought my editor in. We were brainstorming.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
wrote literally hundreds of ideas on the whiteboard, all very intelligent, all very clever, all very sexy. Books I thought would sell, books I thought would be best, books I thought my audience would want, books I thought that would grab people's attention and be bestsellers. And to be honest, when I looked at the list on this whiteboard, none of them felt authentic.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
None of them felt like they might make great books one day and I might do them, but none of them felt aligned. They, none of them felt like, yes. And the only word that stood out on this whiteboard that when I looked at it, I felt this, it's an energy. I felt this pull. So I invite people to feel how it feels in your body. Feel where you feel pulled.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Because that deeper pull is what we get to surrender to. Because often we feel that intuition or that deeper pull. That deeper pull often is arising not from your mind or your logic or your conditioning, but from the unconditioned dimension itself. of your true being. It's your soul speaking to you. You know, like Mandela's soul was speaking to him. Gandhi's soul, like the soul is infinite.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
The mind is limited in condition. So I imagine if I wrote a book, it would have been okay, but not like how it is for the surrender book. And so I felt this pull and I felt this pull and it honestly, it just felt It felt true. It felt true. And that's when I felt the feeling of, oh, shit, that's the book. It's about surrender. And everything I had at first, I resisted.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I was like, no, I don't want to write a book about surrender because, you know, who wants to surrender? And after my own ego kind of threw a bit of a tantrum, honestly. took a deep breath and I just had to acknowledge the truth. And the truth is none of those books feel right. That's the book that feels true. And in that moment, it was like a download, an epiphany happened.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I started seeing the book. I started understanding how my entire childhood, my entire life, had prepared me to write this book and deliver this somewhat complex topic for the new generation, I felt on fire with it. And it wasn't for money. It was just like, this is the book that I was born to write. And everything came together.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And I also saw that in a flashback in that moment, that the seed of the book was planted a few years ago, that I wasn't even paying attention. And how that was was, In 2016, my mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer and she was the closest person to me on the planet. She was the reason I knew unconditional love in my lifetime. I mean, she was my everything.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so for her to be diagnosed, it was like, you know, life has a way of humbling you when you're in your highest moments. And When she was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I started flying back and forth between LA and London every month for a week to be with her. And I would sit with her in chemo. I would hold her hand. We would have tea together.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
All the things I hadn't done since I was, you know, in my teens before I left for LA. And... After kind of the initial realizing she's not going to make it, I felt a lot of deep regret feeling the sense of like, shit, why did I, why did I wait till she was dying to take this time? There's so much more I wanted to do with my mom and why did I wait? And
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
What started out as the worst year of my life turned out to be really the best year of my life because I got to just be with her and experience with her and surrender to the process with her. And every moment became precious. Every moment. Like I was so driven to get to some destination that I realized I missed all these moments.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Like all these moments of just sitting and having tea with my mom, all these moments of like washing my mom, wash dishes, all these moments of just sitting in the park and throwing bread to the ducks because I didn't have time. It was so sacred because I thought this could be the last time I ever hold my mother's hand again. This could be the last time I ever see her wash dishes again.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And they tapped into another dimension of potential, another dimension of power. And I believe that's when they were able to access the greatness and life was able to use them in ways that perhaps was beyond what they even imagined for themselves. And so.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
My mother is Japanese, was Japanese, so she would make this sort of homemade sushi. And I thought this is the last time I could see her do that again or drink a cup of tea again. And the preciousness of the moment, It was like surrendering to the moments and every moment, not just the destination. Then the doctor said, and I think this is where the book was planted.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
The doctor said about six months into the process, I got to be with her for a year, almost a year, which was a huge blessing because some people don't get that. The parents just die in a car accident and that's it. And so I'm very grateful for that. And the doctor said, basically, they told us you're going to die. So get your affairs in order.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It could be it could be days, weeks, maybe months, but definitely not years. And so I had been making peace with this. But the reality is, you know, something else. And I remember feeling really heartbroken in that moment and in the parking lot. I was in the car with my mom and I turned to my mom. I was like, wow, I'm never going to see her. This is it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And I looked at her and I asked her two questions. I said, are you afraid? And this little Japanese woman looks me in the eyes, I tell you, and she says, no, I'm not afraid. Clear as day, I'm not afraid because I know I'm not this body. She goes, this body is just a temporary vehicle for my soul. And I'll be with you. from the other side. So don't worry.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And I was like, wow, like the level of her conviction, you know, it was like in the, like, it's one thing to know when life is good, but when, when you're about to die and you still have that, it was powerful. So I said to her, mom, is there anything I can do for you in your final days to make your life easier? Like I wanted to be a good son. What do you need? What do you want?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And I was like, wow.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And in that moment, I realized that she was free. She was free, not dependent on anything in life. She was free because she surrendered. She wasn't attached to living. She wasn't attached to dying. She was truly open to the highest good. for her soul's journey. I mean, truly open to that. And in that was her freedom. And I realized this is why she didn't cry this whole year.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Emotional woman, didn't cry, didn't complain, didn't feel like a victim. She was at peace. And I really, I got surrender in that moment in life, how it's lived in daily life. I saw it in the face of my mother, you know, and it was a really profound moment. So that's kind of how the book came about. And it wasn't expected, you know, wasn't expected. Like nothing about the book was expected.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
There's so many misconceptions, I think, in our culture today that surrender is weak, that surrender is passive, which is why we're afraid of surrendering. Surrender means giving up, waving the white flag, selling everything, moving to the Himalayas. Who the hell wants to do that? Surrender means being a victim, being left behind, being a doormat, being taken advantage of.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
The publisher showed me the book cover. At first I was like, hell no, that's not the book cover. And then I had to surrender and I thought, That's the book cover, you know, the title of the book. When I wrote the book, I was working with my editor. And again, I was trying to come up with sexy titles. We had hundreds of sexy titles. I mean, if I told you the titles, some of them are so funny.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And we came up with this title, Magical Surrender. I was like, ah, that's too easy. No, no, it's got to be. And I was like, no. Like the book had a soul of its own, an intelligence of its own. And I think if we're willing to trust life, has an intelligence of its own. It has a magic of its own. Life has been around for billions and billions and billions of years. It has an intelligence, you know.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so if we look at the best things in our life that have happened, we didn't plan them. They just happened. Oh, I'm going to plan to meet my soulmate at this time and, you know, in a coffee. It just happens. If you look at the things that didn't go according to plan, And see how many of them turned out better than you could have imagined. Now, someone might say, no, but I was homeless.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I lost everything. Yeah, but if you look at even the worst thing that happened that you thought was the worst thing in the moment, because from the ego's perspective, we're not able to often see why something is happening in the moment, only in retrospect.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
But sometimes even the worst thing that happened that forced maybe someone to move home or to move countries or to what have you, in the moment looked like the worst thing. But then a decade later, we start seeing, wow, if that didn't happen, I wouldn't have ended up over here and met that person. So I think surrender is the willingness to allow life to lead us and allow life to show us.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Because life has an intelligence and people often say, well, how do I trust life? How do I trust? I'm like, how do you not trust life? Every moment of our lives, life is proving to us. Like right now, you and I, we're sitting here and we're breathing. We've been having this beautiful conversation and I'm breathing, you're breathing, everyone listening is breathing.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
We're not sitting here going, uh-oh, how do I breathe? I go, that is breathing us. Let's be with that. Let's meditate on something is breathing us right now. And that same something that's breathing you and breathing me is breathing all existence.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And that same life force, that same something that's breathing you is processing and functioning the trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of cells in your body, coordinating your liver and your kidneys and your eyes and color and speech and sound and brainwaves and nervous system. And so many more complexities inside of us that we're not even aware of.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
The same intelligence of life is function of the sun, the star, the moons, all of existence. Whatever we want to call it, call it whatever, but it's something. And we don't trust it. Like you ate this morning. I ate this morning. What did I have? I had some cereal, some eggs. Eat the cereal. My hand doesn't become cereal. There's an intelligence inside. And so...
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I think surrender is trusting this intelligence. Surrender is trusting the innate intelligence that's inside of us to show us, to reveal itself. And I think when we do that, life has a way of, I have found, to me, I call the book the magic of surrender, because life has a way, the magic is that which is beyond what we can imagine. We all want magic. I want magic. Who wants magic?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I want some magic, that which is beyond what I can imagine. But we don't want to surrender. We want to hold on to the old. But the next level of our life requires the next level of us, which requires letting go of what's no longer aligned. And often we don't realize that when we hold on, it's the holding on. We're the one that's blocking our blessings.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
That if you surrender, you won't manifest your goals, dreams, and desires. You're going to be homeless. You're going to be broke. If you surrender, you're going to get less than in life. And I'm actually saying no. If you surrender, what if you didn't get less, but you got more?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Like, for instance, I was speaking to a client and they're like, I really want to manifest my soulmate, this amazing, juicy, alive, vibrant relationship. But they're staying in a toxic relationship and waiting for their soulmate to show up in order to let go. You know, how does that happen? And so surrender is letting go of what's not aligned, letting go of what's no longer vibrational.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Because holding on is your affirmation of your lack of trust in the universe. And that's what you'll attract even more. When we let go, we're affirming, universe, I trust you. I trust life. I trust the universe. As we let go, we shift our vibration. We raise our vibration. We bring ourselves into more alignment with what we do want.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And we unclutter our energy system and our lives to create the space for new blessings. And yes, I will say you will lose people when you surrender. You will lose things when you surrender. But what I will say is who you lose and what you lose was not truly in alignment. with your highest anyway, because what is truly yours will be yours and cannot not be yours.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And what is not yours can never be yours, even if you try to force it.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Thank you so much. The book is available on Amazon. So as of May the 3rd, the paperback version came out on Amazon. So I would just say go get the paperback because it has some cool things in it, too. And then I'm going to do something special for those that get the paperback. I did a free live event on May the 14th. I'm going to give people access to the replay.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So when you get the paperback version specifically, go to www.koote, K-U-T-E, Blackson, my name, B-L-A-C-K-S-O-N.com, kooteblackson.com forward slash Blackson. Reinvent Seminar. Go there, enter your name, your email, and your receipt info. We'll give you access to the replays and a bunch of free gifts. Also, if people want to know more, my website, keeplaxon.com.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
If people want to dive in to a deeper transformation experience twice a year, I facilitate a 12-day event in Bali in July and December. It's called Boundless Bliss Bali. And so www.boundlessblissbali.com. And the Instagram and Facebook, just my name. Say hi.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
More than you could actually imagine and project with your mind, with your will, with your personality, with your ego's capacity to create your life. Because the mind and the ego... which we can talk about too, is limited in its ability to see what's possible, is limited in its ability to see what is beyond. And so surrender is a letting go of control, or I should say,
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
the illusion of control because we think we're in control and even when we think we're in control many times we're really not we just have the illusion and so control is the master addiction and it's the ego's strategy to try to control everything because the ego ego's job is to is what we think we are what we've been conditioned that we are the ego's job is to reinforce its existence to keep us safe and prevent us from getting hurt again like we were hurt when we're children
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so that's why we tend to control everything because if I can control everything, then I'll never be hurt ever again. And so it's so limited and it ends up limiting us. And often we end up being controlled in the drive to control. So surrender is letting go of control in a certain sense, controlling everything.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's a letting go of trying to force and manipulate life to fit into, once again, our limited idea of how we think it should be. It's limited because... When we set goals just from the ego and the mind, we're not able to see the amazing infinite possibilities. We just see a small perspective and we get so attached to what we think we want. We get so attached to our goals, our dreams and desires.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Like, no, it's got to be this. No, this person has to be the one. And maybe they're not. But in our effort to force something to be, we don't realize we're limiting the universe. We're limiting the infinite. We're limiting the divine. We're limiting nature. We're limiting life. And so surrender is taking the limitations off of life.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's letting go of the idea of who we think we should be, how we think life should be so that we can be truly available, truly open, to allow, to be receptive, to allow the life that is authentically seeking to happen, to reveal itself. And it doesn't mean that you sit there and do nothing. For the Taipei folks out there, it doesn't mean you sit there and I'm surrendered.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I'm just going to sit on the couch and like sales are going to magically happen. I'm surrendered. I'm going to sit on the couch and like my soulmate's going to just knock on my door from the middle of nowhere. No, surrender means feeling. It's a shift from the question, just to kind of complete the context. The old ego-based model of creating life is what do I want? What do I want? What do I want?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And it's for drive, pushing, pushing, forced drive. The challenge is ego is limited. You can create life from the ego, but it will always be limited. The shift in the question is from what do I want to a bigger question. It's an infinite question. And that question is, what is it that life
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
What is it that the universe, what is it that my soul, what is it that life is seeking to express through me? And to feel what that is, to feel the deepest impulse of what life is seeking to express and to feel that, to attune to that, to align with that. And then once you're in alignment, you're like, this is what's true. This is what is in my integrity. This is what's authentic.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Then you can align your thoughts, your feelings, your strategy, your planning, your go-getter personality, your actions together. Now in alignment with what's authentic rather than chasing something that is really not real, not authentic. And so it might mean when you surrender that you work harder than you ever worked. But what you're working for is like, you think Jesus didn't work hard?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Do you think Bruce Lee didn't work hard? Do you think Muhammad Ali didn't? Like, do you think Mother Teresa was lazy and didn't work hard? They worked like crazy. 24-7, Mandela, Martin Luther King, nonstop, 24-7. But they were in alignment with the deeper vision of what was true. And maybe like, let's look at Mandela. Mandela surrendered.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
That took him to what, 26, 27 years in prison, somewhere kind of unexpected. So we could say, Should he have not spent 26, 27 years in prison? What if he didn't? Two things. Would the consciousness of the world have been ready for and rallied behind him in the way that it did? And would he have developed, like, to spend 27 years in prison, you have to go really deep in yourself.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And so perhaps that was the universe's way of preparing him to develop the mental, emotional, spiritual soul force that he could come out and be that empathetic and visionary and compassionate to be able to move the world. So what if he didn't, you know? And so I think surrendering is that openness and availability.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
That's natural.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
No, no. It's part of the process of life. You're like, you're so on course. Just know. Here's what I would say. Part of surrender isn't just, oh, I'm fully surrendered now. I read The Magic of Surrender. No. Part of real surrender. is the ability to not even force yourself to surrender.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Like, I'm going to make myself surrender because this becomes another ego strategy to control the process of surrender, which then keeps you doubly screwed, doubly not surrendered. So now my ego says, surrender. I'm going to control surrender. Now you're doubly stuck. So if you can just even begin by recognising I'm not freaking surrendering right now. I'm doing my control thing right now.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And I'll explain why. Wow. Okay. Observe that. And rather than forcing and judging and like, what's wrong with me? If you can just surrender to the fact that in this moment, you're not surrendered. That's actually a deeper level of surrender where you can be with, wow, I'm not surrendered right now.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And I don't have to judge my, just notice that and be with that and acknowledge that and surrender to that. You may not be fully surrendered in this moment and it's okay. And if you can just meet yourself in that space with a bit of compassion, then there can be a relaxation rather than surrender, surrender. But no, surrender. I need to surrender. No, I should be sure I'm what it's like.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
I'm not surrendered right now. Let me just be with that. So here's the thing. I think this might help as well. I'm going to kind of break down the anatomy of why we don't surrender. And I think this understanding will really help. What I'll say actually before I do that is life is a process of surrender. So on some level, you can't not surrender. It's just surrender.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
How are you going to go about that? How are you going to participate with the process of life that is happening? Because the moment you're born, we begin to age. Then we turn 50, 60, hair falls out, wrinkles. You can't turn back time. surrender. Then we die. We can surrender now. We can surrender tomorrow. We can surrender at the moment of death of those that believe in another lifetime.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
We're going to surrender. So surrender is the process of life. And so here's what happens and why it's difficult for us as human beings. Or I should say, why surrender seems difficult. And I'm going to say why I say seems in a second. It seems difficult. And to a degree, it is. But here's why. You have a kid. You mentioned you have a kid. As children, we're born free.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
like when your kid is born they're just like these light beings of divine energy they're not like they're just being light being pure they're kind of surrendered they poop when they feel like pooping and they don't judge themselves like ah what's wrong with me i'm pooping they cry when they feel like right why did i cry i'm waking my mother up they're just being whatever they're being right and you're pissed off upset type they're just still just googling and smiling and and and
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
They surrender to whatever it is that's happening, whatever it is that they are. They'll run, they'll bang their head, they'll cry, then they're over it and they move on. They're not still four days later thinking about, oh, the time I banged my head four days ago on that coffee table. They're just in the natural flow of living the flow of the essence. They're surrendered. So what happens?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's like we were all there three once, but what the hell happened to us all as human beings as we hit 20 and 30 and 40? We incarnate and we were born into a preset pattern of conditioning. We met our parents. Our parents are conditioned based on their childhood and their parents and their parents and ancestral. Now we're born into a kind of ancestral conditioning from our generations.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
And maybe dad was an alcoholic. Maybe mom had mental health issues. Maybe they were fighting all the time. Maybe there was trauma, abuse, dysfunction in the family. Maybe they were great people, but they just didn't know how to meet our emotional needs. And that was painful. So two things happened in terms of why and how ego changed. Ego, which is the source of resistance. Why ego gets created.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
If we understand this, it can shift your relationship. The first thing is we begin as children unconsciously to learn a defense mechanism strategy to shut down, disconnect, and not feel the pain that's going on around us. So we start suppressing, suppressing, suppressing, suppressing, suppressing layers and layers of unfelt feeling, anger, hurt, pain, guilt, shame, fear, helplessness.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
We start suppressing that in order to function and survive. Layers and layers and layers of unfelt feeling begin to build up and our true light, our true essence gets kind of hidden and buried underneath the unfelt layers of emotion. And also in that we learn all sorts of defense mechanisms and strategies in order to not feel so now we become... We erect walls around our heart.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
It's a survival mechanism. Walls around the heart. We begin to disconnect. We begin to shut down. We begin to, you know, analyze, go into our minds. We begin to go into like overachiever mode because if I can overachieve, then I don't have to deal with my feelings. I don't have to feel helpless. I don't have to feel, you know, whatever it is that we're feeling. Often it's helplessness, it's pain.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
So now we've become this thing, this defensive mechanism thing that we hold on to tightly and now we're driving life this way. It worked for us when we were five. And we become this thing. We hold tightly onto that in order to never feel that pain again. Worked for us when we were five, but now we're 25. We're in a relationship and now we're doing the same thing.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
Confidence Classic: Finding The COURAGE To Let Go With Kute Blackson Transformational Teacher & Best Selling Author
Now we're 35 in a relationship, doing the same thing. And that defense mechanism is holding on ego, holding on. We're holding on so tightly to that way of being in order to never feel that pain again. Hence, we are controlling who we're being and how we're being. And if we think if we can control all these elements, I'm never going to feel pain.