As many of you know, my fiancé passed away from cancer in 2016. I had the opportunity to be with him throughout that whole journey.
Just days before he died, I believed that there would be healing. I truly thought there would be a magical moment and everything would be perfect from there on out. I would have given everything: my bank account, my businesses, my homes–everything. I told God to take it all for that healing moment.
However, I knew that I wasn’t in control. I was forced to learn surrender in that season.
Kute Blackson has a very similar story to mine. He had to come to grips with his lack of control when his mom was diagnosed with cancer. After doing everything he could to help her heal for months, he eventually realized all there was left to do was surrender.
As a result, he wrote his book The Magic of Surrender.
How The Book Came to Be
Once Kute’s mom passed away, he looked at her life and at the lives of some of the great men and women of history. People like Muhammad Ali, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Mandela, JFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. may be may not have been the most handsome people or the richest people. However, they all made a huge impact because they got to the point where they had to surrender themselves to a purpose that was bigger than themselves.
It is when we get ourselves out of the way that we can make a difference in the world. That’s when these great people of history tapped into their true greatness, purpose, power, and potential and began to use them. We can all do the same.
There’s an idea that if you surrender, you might get less. However, what if we considered a bigger picture of what greatness really is? Truly, greatness is to live for more than yourself.
Just because you’re making money doing something doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.
Making money doesn’t mean you’re happy or truly living your purpose either.
However, if you surrender, you can actually get more: more joy, more love, more abundance, more perspective, more connection, and more than you could imagine with your conscious mind.
This is why Kute’s book is titled, The Magic of Surrender. If you want the magic, you have to surrender. You have to let go of what’s no longer aligned.
To grow and evolve, we have to become the next-level version of ourselves. This requires that we release and let go of the thoughts, beliefs, patterns, addictions, relationships, and structures that are no longer serving who we are today. This is why surrender is the key to freedom.
How to Surrender
We are all, whether we are aware of it or not, in a process of surrender. It’s not about when you surrender or if you can surrender. We’re all being surrendered every moment. It’s hardwired into our physiology. Every time we breathe in and out we’re surrendering. Therefore, it’s not really about whether we surrender but about how we participate with the process of surrender.
In order to start participating with it fully, stop lying to yourself. We all lie to ourselves in so many ways. We lie to ourselves about who we are, what we feel, what we want in life, and what our purpose is. So, to begin to surrender, start telling yourself the truth about who you are and what you feel.
Then ask yourself what you’re pretending to not know. As human beings, we constantly tell ourselves that we’re confused. If we’re confused, we don’t have to do anything about our situation and we don’t have to face the consequences. However, deep down, we know what to do.
Thirdly, ask yourself what the pain and the cost are for not telling yourself the truth. We feel this pain but tend to distract ourselves until we don’t feel it anymore. This keeps us stuck in certain patterns and prevents us from truly letting go and surrendering. So be willing to fully feel the pain.
After asking these questions, give up any sense of pressure that you have to do something. Just sit with the truth of whatever you discover.
If you’re not sure how to know if you’re lying to yourself, a feeling of pain is one way to know if something isn’t in alignment. Listen to the message of that pain to bring yourself back into alignment.
Once you have discovered and sat with the truth, the next phase is acceptance. You have to start moving into acceptance that that is the way things are.
This entire discussion brings me back to one of my favorite Scriptures, Jeremiah 29:11. It says something along the lines of, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you.”
This always brings me back to surrender. The life I’m living today is the life I was meant to live and I wouldn’t change a minute. I wouldn’t change a thing because every lesson was meant for me in every situation I experienced.
If you want to learn more about Kute’s book and how to surrender, check out Episode 068: The Magic of Surrender with Kute Blackson.
