EP #128: The Art of Surrendering - Why We Grieve During Growth with Kute Blackson, Transformational Speaker & Best-Selling Author

(gentle music) Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stephanopoulos, and this week is all about exploring the art of surrendering. They say that one of the secrets to a well-lived life, free of suffering, is the ability to just let go and surrender. This is something that I really have difficulty with. I have found that the times in my life where I learn how to let go of wanting to take control over an outcome of a situation or control over people, whatever it may be, I end up being much happier and pleasantly surprised with how things do turn out. So for my own lived experience, I can attest to the magic of surrendering, but it is so much easier said than done. And in theory, the idea of letting go sounds great, but it's actually really hard to do. So I am thrilled to have transformational speaker, best-selling author, Koot Blackson, on the podcast to talk about his teachings around the art of surrendering and how we can actually learn to let go of the things in life that we can't control and to learn to let go of the idea that we can control everything. You'll learn a little bit more about Koot in this interview, but he's written two books, You Are the One and his newest book, The Magic of Surrender, which is really a guide to move you past inner struggle to discover the power of letting go of control and how letting go does lead to more. He talks about how surrender isn't something that's passive, it's actually about being strong and courageous. Through his work and through his teachings, he's changed thousands of lives around the world. So he has a ton of wisdom to share. And I think what you hopefully will be able to take away from this interview is firstly, how we can understand what intuition feels like in our brains and in our bodies and how to distinguish feelings of anxiety versus feeling our intuition, understanding what derails us from following our own intuition, the actual practice of surrendering and the role that fear plays in disrupting our ability to let go, how grieving is actually a very key component to surrendering and why we often grieve as a byproduct of experiencing spiritual and personal growth. And lastly, of course, Koot shares how he defines happiness and what brings him endorphins. I hope you all enjoy listening to this episode, but before we dive into it, reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. You can follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, anywhere you listen and stream the show and also make sure to follow on Instagram and TikTok at Everyday Endorphins to stay up to date with interviews and events. And lastly, but not least, you can also subscribe to the Everyday Endorphins sub-stack to hear more about episode recaps and any random thoughts that have been popping into my mind on health and wellness and happiness. - Hi, Koot, thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. It is so great to have you here. - Thanks for having me. - I'm really looking forward to getting to chat with you today because so much of your career and what you dedicate your life to is in alignment with the mission of Everyday Endorphins, which is around finding things in life that spark joy, anchoring on the things in life that bring you happiness. And I think there's so much intersection between spirituality, mindfulness, the art of surrendering, all of these topics we're gonna discuss today. But I would love to start with having you kind of walk us through your background and what got you into transformational speaking and how you developed a passion for speaking towards these topics that are so critical for so many people to hear and learn about. - Yeah, I would say my entire life has been involved in spirituality and seeking in some way. My childhood was a bit unusual, some would say. I didn't think it was that unusual. I thought it was like everybody's. I mean, I think that was a blessing because everything in my childhood for me seemed normal, but my first memory is as a young boy. The first day I was born in Ghana with Staphyrka, my father's from Ghana, my mother's Japanese, my brother's from London, and they've been to US. So I feel like I'm from everywhere in Norway. And as a young boy, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. And so that drove me very deeply into seeking and asking the questions of who am I, who am I really, and what am I really, and what do I belong? That drove me sort of spiritual, even I didn't know it was a spiritual thing to ask these questions. And so my first memories as a young boy are remember being around age 678, seeing a crippled woman calling on the floor and she picks up the gravel that this man walks on the sand and she wipes it on her face and stands up. And we could call that a miracle. Week after week, her group seemed white people see and deaf people hear. People stand up out of Warchie as the same man who's gravel she picked up with, look at a person in the wheelchair and say, why are you sick, stand up? You're not sick and you put his hands on them and they would stand up out of the Warchie or people would come in with crushes and would touch them and they would be healed. And so I grew up around this sense of the miraculous and possibilities, but I just thought this was a normal experience, you know? And that was a real blessing to grow up with the sense of possibility. My father, this miracle workers, my father, he built 300 churches in Ghana, West Africa, a huge church in London, hundreds of thousands of people in Ghana, 5,000 people every Sunday in London. My mother being Japanese, and I was the hardest grew up meditating with my mom going to church on Sundays and my father being very mystical, very spiritual in nature. So it was a blessing, I'm not saying perfect, but a blessing in many ways to grow up in this tradition. So at a young age around age eight, because my speaking career began because that's when I started to speak in my father's congregation in front of his audience and that began a relationship with speaking and sort of receiving information. When I was 14, I was ordained as a minister and given the mandate to take over my father's operations so to speak his organization. And that was a whole nother journey because I remember being 14, I knew that this was not my path, I knew that this was not my destiny, but I think like many of us, I was too afraid to speak my truth. My fear was if I really spoke my truth, then I would be outcast, then I would be alone, then I would be abandoned, right? Then I would use my father and so I said nothing and went along with it and tried to fit myself into a box to become who I thought I needed to be in order to get love and validation and approval, became miserable in the process. Also during this period of time, I went very deep into seeking to understand the question of like who am I, then why am I here? What's the purpose of life? And so I was speaking to my father's office and he had literally a thousand books on his bookshelf and I began reading books on spirituality and self-help from the Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Luis Hayes of the World to East and Mystic, Strishna Murty, and Osho, Marishu Maheshiyogi. And so this began, I read 800 books, I think by the time I was 18, in the field of spirituality and personal wealth. And that began a journey for me, you know, that was very intense and really deep and meaningful. But when I turned 18, I had some decisions to make that was a very pivotal moment in my life where I knew that I chose not to go to university and I felt my soul calling me to, I want to become, go into the spiritual field and go to America because all the authors I read about lived in California. And so sometimes when your soul guides you, it doesn't make sense, it's not always logical, it's not always convenient. But I think I have found through my own lived experience in my life that when you follow your soul and you don't compromise your inner guidance, you will always be guided on the right path, you'll always be guided to the right people, even though the routes and the road that you take may not be the one that you most expect. And so yeah, that began a journey. And I had to leave everything behind, I renounce everything left the ministry, have the conversation with my father, say goodbyes everybody, became a bit of an outcast, it had speak to my father for two years. And I ended up winning a green card in the green card lottery. And that's what enabled me to come to the US, like another miracle, right? That enabled me to come to the US as an 18 year old kid with two suitcases, $800 in my pocket and just following my soul. And that's really what I've endeavour to do, my whole life is just follow my soul. Even if things didn't make sense, even if I couldn't see where I was going, even if I was confused, even if people thought I was crazy, whenever I'd dare to follow my soul, things attended to work out better than I could have imagined. And so, yeah, I came to the US and found teachers and mentors and studied with some of them. And then the story short ended up traveling to Israel and Thailand and walked the Camino who had both his fame ended up in India. And that became a very profound transformation of experience. And that's when I came back to America again, 21, two years ago, began coaching people, and working with people one on one. And that evolved and that grew. One person came and evolved my own way of working with people and life transformed and people started to understand. started coming from around the world. Groups are small groups and larger groups and larger groups and two best-selling books. And who we are. So that that became the journey, you know, for me, of seeking and growing and evolving. And yeah, that's that's the short story. Yeah, that's the short story. I love it. You said a lot of things that I want to touch on. The first being this common theme of coming back to your soul, of coming back to your own truth, there's so much noise in the world around us that distracts us from like what we actually want to do, what we actually want to pursue, the type of person that we actually want to become. And it's really difficult to come back to that inner knowing and to identify like what that intuition is within us. So when you say knowing my truth, coming back to my soul, what does that mean? And how can we actually implement that into our lives? You know, I think sometimes it's really easy to confuse anxiety with trusting our intuition and vice versa. So how do we make that distinction? Yeah, I think you know, your true intuition has a different quality to it, right? And that's that that anxiety has a certain edge. It's like how you know real energy versus you take caffeine and you're feeling adrenaline and it's like, is that real energy or that's just you've caffeine up? And so there's a difference when you really have true energy. There is a relaxedness and a focus that is different than being jittery, right? And you've got this sort of adrenaline energy versus focused energy. And so I think what I will say is there's not really a hack, right? Like what five steps is your intuition. What I will say is I think the truth is we are all intuitive. We all have knowing. There's a part of us that at the deepest level that knows everything because at that deepest level we are everything. So deep down you already know everything you need to know. You already know the answers. And if you're asking the question, the reason that you're asking the question is because you know the answer and the question is arising from the answer itself. And so we have to just trust that we know, I mean, how many times have we been in a situation in a relationship and that the when we broke up with the person we told our best friend, I freaking knew that shit wasn't going to work. I knew that was I knew I knew we know, but we often don't listen. We often don't truly pay attention. We often aren't aware. We often aren't conscious because our conditioning and our ego tends to crowd us. And so for me, the real way of tuning into intuition is not some overlay from the outside in. The truth is it takes a bit of work. And like any good thing, it's worth it. You know, you want to get fit and healthy. You go to the gym, it takes a bit of work, right? And so every single thing that happens to us is stored in your nervous system, right? From the moment you're born, you see things around you. Mum says something. Dad says something. Energy smells. Kitchen. bathroom. Pain. Her. Trauma abuse. Glamp parents. Everything that's happening is imprinting in your psyche. And so you're everything is stored in your nervous system. The nervous system is the antenna to the world. So information comes in. It gets filtered through your nervous system. Based on the conditioning and the state of your nervous system, the degree of pain, her, trauma, incomplete emotions that you're carrying, now information comes in and your capacity and ability to interpret this information is severely impacted by the state of your nervous system, the state of your consciousness. And so many times, information comes in and you want correctly be able to interpret it clearly because your lens is clouded. And so intuition, we all receive intuition. We all have intuition, but as intuition comes through, depending on where we're at in our consciousness, we may not be able to clearly interpret what we're guided to clearly. It gets interpreted through our reactivity, through our fears, through our conditioning, through our predispositions, through our traumas, through our dysfunctions. And so now the, what we think is our intuition, is our intuition. It's distorted. And now we have a distorted conception of, oh, my soul is guiding me to, my soul is guiding me to sleep with this person even though I'm married and it's just my soul guiding me. My soul is guiding me to do XYZ. My soul is, it's like, it's not your soul, it's your conditioning. And so truly, I think the real real answer is to really be able to discern clearly requires a process of really doing vegan work. There's not escaping doing the inner work. Now, initially we don't want to hear that because we want like, oh, here's the four steps, right? It just give me the four things that I can do. But the truth is, if your lens is clouded, you won't see clearly. If your lens is clouded, right, your perception, your consciousness is clouded, you won't interpret what your guidance is clearly, clearly even if your guidance is coming through. You understand? You won't be choosing based on pain and I felt I'm worthy. So I thought I'm worthy. So I want to achieve this and this is the goal I want to achieve. So I can prove that I'm worthy to my mom and my dad and bullies in high school, but it won't necessarily be authentic, right? And so the more we can do the mental, the emotional spiritual therapeutic psychological healing work, right? But then we can clear the pain, the hurt, the trauma, the emotions, the feelings, the assessments, the unworthy nurse and brigloving in compassion to ourselves. Then we clean our consciousness, clean the lens, release things from our body and our nervous system and our emotional body so that we are now able to see more clearly and perceive more clearly so that we can tune into the information, listen to the information, hear the information and discern the information more clearly because we're less conditioned and clouded by our past. To me, that's the process of life. And so on one level, we become more and more intuitive. We tap into the intuitive knowing that is there the more we heal, the more we transform, the more we come into alignment, right? So that's sort of the bigger answer. Now, what I will say is we all receive intuitive guidance, but even where we're at now, many times we're not paying attention because we're so distracted. Many times we're not paying attention because our senses and our consciousness is dull and numb by past pain, dulled and numb by drugs, alcohol, food, digital overloads, so we're not in tune and we're not paying attention to the guidance and the clues that are coming. Now, the third thing I'll say is many times your true intuitive guidance arises from a deeper dimension of your being, not your conditioned ego mind. And so because your true inner guidance arises from the deeper dimension of your unconditioned being, not programmed by your past experiences of your ego or your conditioned mind, it often won't make sense to your mind. It often won't fit into the limitation of your current mind's capacity. So when information arises because it's not limited to the past, you won't always understand it. I'm guided, but it doesn't make sense. I'm not going to understand because it's not meant to fit into your current mind's capacity. And that's a sign too that if you receive a guidance and you're like, "Yeah, yeah, completely understand this. Probably it's not your guidance is your ego." Many times the true intuitive guidance will arise and it might feel like, "Yes, something feels like the shoe kind of fits. Something feels right. I don't quite get why I'm being told to go to Brazil. I don't understand why something's nudging me to go to that coffee shop. I'm not sure why something's nudging me to go to that workshop, but it's kind of like, "Yeah, it's just a flow. There's a flow. There's something." Now you can't resist that. You can. But if you just let go and relax and don't force and project, there's a natural rhythm and a flow to the river. And if you just relax and feel that intuitive guidance arises. And now many times how we block that guidance is because it doesn't make sense to your current mind. The ego kicks in and tries to understand it because we think that if we can understand it, then we can be in control. If I can be in control, then I won't get hurt. But if I don't understand it and I'm guided and I'm following this guidance, I'm going into the unknown and that's terrifying and that's scary. And I might get hurt if I'm following some guidance that I can't quantify or that's not linear in a certain way. So how we block our guidance is the overanalysis to try to understand and figure it out and make and understand what it means and now we block the connection. So what I have found that I invite people to do is you don't have to know anything. You don't have to know where you're going to get to exactly where you need to be. Just feel the impulse like, "Oh yeah, yeah, something, something, okay, go." Yeah, feel that. It often doesn't have a charge. Like, "Urgh." It's just like, "Hmm." That is often a very subtle nudging. It's not a charge like, "Yeah, it's just, hmm." What if I called, so what if I called for them? "Hmm." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then Stella calls me, "Oh, I just think you're about." "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." She'd have called you, right? And so it's important that you listen to it. You follow it. You just take a step and that is sort of the openness to following the intuition. Now, I would tell people, "Create spaces and stillness in your baby life to listen." Many times we don't create the stillness to truly listen because we're afraid. We already know what's there. So we can sense what's there, but we're afraid, oh shit, if I really become still. I might actually hear the truth that's there. And I don't really want to. What I hear the truth is, they're so, let me stay busy and if I stay busy, I don't have to really listen to my deep knowing that this isn't right, I can distract myself. So create the spaces in stillness to listen. Number two, listen and acknowledge what arises without judgment. Number three, take action, be obedient and take action. Many times we don't be still, but then when we're still, we're not really listening. But then when we're listening, we don't acknowledge what's there. Then if we do acknowledge what's there, we're often not obedient to following the guidance. Many of us, we know, but we don't act. So I think the fullness is, you listen, you're obedient and then you act. That's when life gets interesting. That's when life starts manifesting in ways that you couldn't have really imagined because it wasn't you imagining it was life imagining through you that you were following. Yeah, wow. I mean, I feel like you're speaking directly at me. All I do is overanalyze. But this is the strategy of the mind. If you can observe, it's natural. The overanalysis of the mind is a very beautiful, I'm well-intended intention to try to keep you safe because if I can analyze and analyze, and if I can just understand it, I'm not gonna get hurt. I can be in control. So we have to sort of get into relationship with that part of ourselves. And just kind of reassure ourselves, like, hey, it's okay, thank you. Thank you for overanalyzing. I understand that this is what I have done to function through my life to be safe and have some type of illusory control, but we're calling that. And so I think if we can be aware with ourselves so that we don't let the overanalysis just take control, then we can work with it because it won't just go away. You're not gonna just stop analyzing. It's a part of you and a part of your gift, but we have to have a relationship with it so it doesn't just run you and take over. - What I'm hearing is that our intuition is something that is a bit more quiet. It's like an inner guiding. - Sometimes it can come through loud. Yeah, sometimes it can come through very loud, like, do this, but it may not always make sense, right? That's why we often don't follow through. And there can be tension when there's this desire to follow our intuition, but it's not making sense to us in a rational brain is like, oh, we want to figure this out. So what happens when your intuition is telling you to make a decision, but you know that the decision is really uncomfortable and causes fear. Like it's going to cause those negative emotions, fear and anxiety. How do you then act upon that intuition? First, you have to acknowledge the intuition and you have to be willing to be honest with yourself. Because if you're not, the ego, the ego will feel the uncomfortable like, oh shit, out of control, alert, alert, alert. And then the ego will start making up all sorts of, the ego's very sneaky. It will start rationalizing my hate there. My soul is not really, my soul is guiding me that I don't really want to do that work. So I don't really want this relationship. It's not right for me because this person is like this and they're like that and we'll start rationalizing all sorts of things to give us a reason to not follow the intuition we're guiding. And we will, like we'll do, we'll convince ourselves out of that intuition because it doesn't make sense and because of this person and it's freaking dumb or Trump and it's my mom and it's my cat and it's my friend and all those reasons will be like, you know, rational and seemingly logical that we will hide behind to justify why we're not taking that lead, why we're not going through and following in that inner guidance because of the economy and there might be legitimate reasons that will use those to hide the truth of what we feel. And we'll hide, so we have to be aware to not let the ego just hijack us. So what that sounds like is, if you have an intuition, you acknowledge, I am guided to turn left. Yes, I am guided to turn left. This is what I'm guided to do. If we put everything aside, this is my guidance. I am terrified to turn left. I don't know if I am ready to turn left. That might mean, you know what, I'm not gonna turn left right now, but I'm not gonna bullshit myself and pretend that I'm not guided to turn left. I'm guided to turn left. This is what my intuition is saying, but I'm too scared right now in this moment to turn left. So I'm just gonna like pause here, maybe work through some of my fears, with a coach, with a teacher, with a guide, whatever I need to do to move through some of my fears. Breathe, relax, acknowledge, but I'm not gonna lie to myself and convince myself that this is not my guidance. This is my guidance and I'm gonna acknowledge the truth that I'm terrified. When you acknowledge that I'm scared, you're no longer resisting the fear. And then you can be with and explore, what is it I'm afraid of? 'Cause many times we allow fear to run us, and we don't even know what we're afraid of. I'm afraid of what? I'm just afraid. I'm afraid what's so, so, so, you can even make go to the extreme and what's the worst that would happen? And what's the worst? Most of the time, the mind goes into the future and creates a negative future fantasy about all the worst case scenarios. But if we're really realistic, I did this with a friend with a client a few months ago. Actually, there was a client a few years ago. She was afraid of leaving her job. Her soul was guiding her to leave her job and she was terrified of leaving her job. Because, you know, oh my God, 'cause she wanted to be a coach. And then if I don't make money, 'cause I have this really good job, but if I don't make money as a coach, then what? So we just kept going out, like then what? Then I would run out of money. How long would it take it to, like let's extrapolate. Let's bring it back to the grounded reality. Well, it will take me about 18 months to be at zero. Okay, it's not bad. 18 months of not making any money, any sales to be at zero. This is like worse. Do you think it's realistic? You'll like make no money? No, but let's just say you're making no money for 18 months. Okay, so I invite people to just face the fear. Fade, turn and face it. This is part of surrender. Turn and face the fear. Then what? Then I would be broke. Okay, then what? Would you be homeless in downtown LA living on Skid Row on the street? Ah, no, no, no, no. No, I would be up. So what would be the worst? The worst would be I would sleep on my sister's couch for a few months. Okay, then what? Then this is what she said to me. Then I would, it's worst case, I would go back and get my old job back or get a similar job back. And then what? Then I would start making money. So I said, well, then technically what you're saying is right now you're at your, at your at your job. So you would get back, you would end up back at your job or a similar job. So technically right now you are living in your worst case scenario. And when she realized, well, the worst case of what would really happen is not going to be like what we make up. Like I'm going to be dead. You know, I'm going to be, I'm going to be skewed on the cross like Jesus, the worst case as well. If you can make peace with the realistic worst case, not that ego's projected illusory worst case, but the realistic worst case. If you can make peace with that, the fear tends to slowly start to lose its power over you. And that's the freedom. You feel the fear, you breathe and you relax. Because many times when you have a vision or goal and you don't feel, you don't feel some fear, you're probably playing too small. You're living too small. When you feel some fear, right, to me that's a sign that you're growing. That's a sign that you actually evolving. Because there's no growth during the same thing over and over again. There's no fear. If I said walk from here, from your living room to your kitchen, there's no fear in that, because there's no growth in that. So the growth is moving outside of your comfort zone. If you feel some fear, great. You are going in the right direction. But you don't have to let the fear stop you. Relax, breathe, expand, explore, like I just said, make peace with the worst case scenario. And take a small step, because many times we stay in fear and paralyze because we think about all of the things we have to do all at once. But if I said, well, let's break it down. One small step you could take, send an email to my boss, send an email to my client. Can you do that? Yeah, that's not that scary. Send an email. Make a phone call. Whatever that small step is. So when you're able to chunk and break your goals down to the next small step, forget the 2000 big steps and the next small step, yeah, it becomes doable. You don't think about climbing Mount Everest. You're thinking about just, okay, once run twice around the block, yeah, I could do that. And so if we can break it down in that way, then we can build on momentum and start moving forward, amazing forward. Well, you know, in your book and then your coaching philosophy and your speaking, you talk about. how surrendering is actually not passive. When we think of this word surrender, it's like a sit back, relax, not do anything. That's not what surrendering is about. There's so much strength to surrendering. Like we're talking about, it's about doing the work that is hard. There's a lot of courage that you have to gather to face your ego, to face your conditioning, to face your fears. When you let that fear drive and shape your behavior, and you let it have control over you. But that's hard to live a life of resistance. That's hard. - It's even harder, I think. - It ends up harder to live a life of smoothness and resistance and fighting. That's hard. In fact, surrender is your natural state, really, if you think about it. And it essentially surrender is easy. It's just that we've been conditioned. And so for those listening on audio, I'm making a fist and I'm holding a pen. If I hold onto this pen so tightly, it's harder first. But if I keep doing this eventually, this starts feeling normal. This holding on feels normal. If I said, okay, just let go. Technically, letting go is easy. It's effort, just let go, that's easy. But we've become so used to just holding on, right? For safety and survival and all of that stuff that letting go feels hard. But truly, the letting go is what's normal. And so that's why I say, it's really a normal state more than anything. Exactly. So the letting go is our normal state, but it is difficult to do so. And this is interesting because when we think about the act of letting go in the context of happiness and joy, there's conflict because it is hard to do that. It's not gonna make you feel happy in the moment, but it's our natural state. It's actually easier in the long run to let go. So can you talk a little bit about, how you think about the act of surrendering, the act of letting go, the act of trusting yourself, in relation to feeling joy and happiness in our lives. - No, I think if you're resisting, if you're resisting, you're gonna suffer. If you're resisting, you're gonna be contracted. If you're resisting, you're gonna feel constriction. And, and, and, look, let's just get graphic for a moment. If anyone here, if you needed to take a shit, if you've needed to poop really bad, just to make the point. And you just say, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hold it in. Do you feel joy? Do you feel bliss? Of course, the years went, it's painful. But that's what most of us are doing in our life. And then we wonder, like, why am I frustrated? Why am I unhappy? Because we're resisting the natural flow of things. You know, we have this misconception in our culture that surrender was weak, that surrender was passive. That surrender was giving up. That surrender is waiting the white flag. That surrender means you're gonna be a doormat, you're gonna be left behind, you want to manifest your goals, your dreams, your desires. In surrender, in truly, what if you got more? More than you could have planned. More than you could have imagined. I think that surrender was really the most, we have to shift how we hold surrender. Like, like, the frame of how we hold it. Like, what if in surrender, you got more than you could have planned? You know, I think that surrender is the most powerful thing that we can do. It's the key to manifestation. It's the key to the next level of life. If you look at all of the great ones, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Mandela, Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, none of which were weak people. At some point, they got to the point of their lives where they all had to surrender. They surrendered themselves to life and the flow. And that's, they got themselves out of the way and that's when life was able to flow through them. And life was able to use them. Life was able to move through them. In ways that they could not have planned and imagined for themselves. To me, that's the way the magic happens. And so surrender is a letting go of control, or actually the illusion of control. Surrender is when you stop trying to force and manipulate life to fit your limited idea of how you think it should be and who you think you should be, it is a letting go so that you can stay open and available. And I think when you're open and available and you're not holding your breath, you feel more joy. Okay, let me be graphic for a moment 'cause I just wanna make a point to everyone. So just make this human, right? Because people think, oh, surrender some will thing, like for the daddy Lama and the monks and the yogis and then the mystical people, but it like I can't live. So random, just normal person. It's not true. Everyone listening, I want everybody to think about your most blissful sexual experience. See, I'm gonna prove that you don't have to be spiritual. Your most blissful sexual encounter with your beloved, where you were together, love making. It was blissful, right? Was it not folks? It was just, it was joyful, it was blissful. You felt joy. I want everyone to just check. Did you go to your love making experience with your laptop and say, okay, honey, we're gonna make love for exactly, no, no, no, we're gonna make love for two hours and 22 minutes today. And I mapped out the entire plan of our love making encounter tonight. We're gonna start at 741 and we're gonna go to nine something. Okay, step one, lie under bed at exactly 69, 72 centimeters to the right. Then you're gonna kiss me at one minute, one minute and 30 seconds into it that you're gonna do this. And I'm gonna do that. Then you're gonna take a close off, is that how it is? How no, right? What made the love making so joyful and blissful and ecstatic? That's just a human example, right? What made it? It's because for a brief moment, you let go, you surrender. In that surrender, you allowed the flow and that's what was blissful. That's the possibility of surrender. That's the possibility of living life is my point. If you live life with that openness in relationship, not forcing, like imagine you're making love with your partner, like forcing me one way, no, no, no, you move, no, you move, no, you, it's like, that would be hell. So when we can dance with life and flow with life and allow life to show us, and our life to be thus, if you relax, life has a flow. And to me, part of surrender was allowing life to show you the flow. That's where the magic happens. So there's two questions I would just say to just wrap this part, is we're conditioned to ask in personal growth and self-help. What do you want? Get clear what you want. You gotta know what you want. What do you want? Take your goals and hustle and go, grind what you want. Now I'm not saying you can't manifest what you want with your ego, but it will be limited because the ego is limited. And you might get everything that you thought you wanted on it to realize that what you thought you wanted was what you thought you wanted, based on who you thought you were, you know. And many times your goals can be projections of unmet needs from childhood, didn't feel worthy, didn't feel enough. So if I can just have the car, the house, fit this idea of what society thinks then I'm gonna be lovable, maybe miserable. The question to ask is, and what do I want? The question I invite people to ask is a different question. What is it that life is seeking to manifest through? What is it that life is seeking to? What is it that my soul is seeking to express? The truth, what is the deepest impulse of what life is seeking to manifest through me? And then you can open yourself to listen and catch that vision. It's like a wave. You're not making the wave, but you are feeling for the wave and you're catching the wave of life. And that's when I think the magic happens. And so then you can feel, what is it that life is seeking to express through me which may not always be what your ego thinks? Then when you feel that, then you can align your ego and your personality and your planning and your resources and your marketing and your goal setting in alignment with that. And then you can give 100%. Then you give 100%. So serenade doesn't mean you sit there and do nothing. When the wave comes, you go. You give 100% to your vision without attachment. So it might mean you work harder than you've ever worked. You might be you work 24 hours a day, 18 hours a day, but you're working in alignment with a vision that is true. I guarantee you Mandela worked long hours. I guarantee you Martin Luther King worked nonstop. Gandhi worked nonstop. Mother Teresa worked nonstop for the vision, right? So you work, but I say don't be attached to the outcome. Because sometimes the goal that you think is the goal is not the goal, it's just the necessary, the goal takes you on the necessary journey so as you can grow and evolve and learn the lessons. But when we get so attached to the goal, we just want this thing that we're not surrounded and open. It's so beautifully well said. And something that I heard as you were speaking around learning to dance with life and what life brings you is this idea of needing to cultivate that sense of presence so that you can listen. There's no other way to be in tune with the flow of events, the flow of what life is bringing you unless you're present in that moment. And I teach yoga outside of my day job, outside of the podcast that I run. And through the practice of teaching, through having my own personal practice, it is something that allows me to cultivate presence, or at least to work on those muscles of staying present and finding a sense of calmness, of quieting the mind, which is why I love to teach yoga because I try to approach the practice from that perspective and show others that that's really what it's about. And it's hard to find a sense of presence in life. It's really, really difficult, but I think you've really laid out so many great strategies or just pieces of wisdom for how people can think about seeking out moments in their lives where they can live. can just create stillness. How do they do that? How do they put that into their routine? And I think it's something that we can all think about because in order to really be in tune with what's being thrown at you or the way that things are unfolding, you need to trust. And in order to trust, you need to also cultivate that sense of presence. So all these ideas are very interconnected. And you just articulated it so beautifully cute. So, you know, as we transition into, you know, towards the end of this interview, I do want to ask you to talk a little bit more about your book, The Magic of Surrender. I mean, I think we covered a lot of your philosophy on Surrendering. Yeah, I think I've said a lot about it. If there's something specific about it that you would like to ask or know. Yeah, well, I would love to hear a little bit more about what is one main takeaway that you would like people to come away with from this book. There's something I also, that I think might help because there's so many nuances and levels to Surrender, right? In that, in a nutshell, I take away, but then I want to get to the thing I want to say, which is, I believe that Surrender was the most powerful thing that you can do. Surrender is the key to your life. It is the key to unlock true magic miracles and greatness. It is the key. If you look at Jesus who was a mystical master teacher who realized his true essence, his true nature, even he said, he gave us a code. He said, it's not I that does the work. It is the father, the father, the mother, the divine, whatever intelligence you believe, right? It's life that does the work through me. So he realized that it wasn't him that was life. And I believe that what life, if you surrender, what life can do through you, what the infinite intelligence can do through you is more than you could even imagine. It's beyond you. It's bigger than you. Like Mandela's life is not a life you can sit there and strategize in a goal-sitting workshop. It's bigger than that. It's beyond that. But life is beyond that. And when we surrender to life, that's when we activate and get into the flow of life. And that's when life's potentiality activates and starts to manifest. And that's where the magic happens. And most of us, we want the magic. We are yeah, we're not willing to fricking surrender. We want to hold onto who we were. We want to hold onto what we know. We want to hold onto what was. But the next level of your life requires the next level of you. And the next level of you requires that you let go of who you were, requires that you let go of what is no longer a line. Requires that you let go of everything and everyone that is no longer a vibrational match. But the ego tends to hold onto who we were and what we know for a sense of comfort and preservation. Like our surrender, but like not this relationship that's not working. And I want to surrender this, but I want to surrender that, but universe give me my soulmate. It doesn't work that way. You have to make room. When you let go and you surrender, what is no longer a vibrational match? You make space. You make space for the new. You make space for more abundance. You make space for more grace. Because if there's no space, universe can be sharing you with blessings. But if you're not open, you can't receive it. And so yeah, let go. What do you need to let go of? What do you need to release? What is no longer a line? And so even that one key element that I want people to understand in surrender is there is no true surrender without grieving. Grieving is a key element of surrender. Now many times people confuse acceptance as surrender, but acceptance is not surrender. Between acceptance and surrender. Acceptance comes before surrender. Between acceptance of surrender in the middle is grieving because surrender is a death. It's a death of who you thought you were. It's a death of the ego. It's a death of the life that you thought. It's a death of a relationship. It's a death of, you know, an idea or a fantasy. It's a death in some way, shape or form. And so we have to truly move into surrender, which is the open-hearted participation in the process of life. Like I'm open. I'm ready. I'm available to embrace life fully, right? Participate in life. You have to allow yourself to let go and grief. Because if you don't allow yourself to let go and grief fully, there'll always be a part of you that's holding onto something in the old. And when you're holding onto something in the old, your heart won't be open to the new. And so allowing yourself the process of grieving and feeling and releasing allows you to be open. I would invite people to sit with. What have you not fully allowed yourself to grieve right now? It's, yeah, it's so important to learn to sit with negative emotions, to go through that grieving process. I'm so happy you brought that up because I've in your response reflected back on times in my life that were pretty difficult, where I really felt like I hit an inflection point where I was changing deeply and I couldn't articulate it. I couldn't really understand it. And it took a lot of time and a lot of grieving to then get out on the other side and look back and be like, oh, that's why I was doing this. That's why I was gravitating towards this person or that thing. And it was really difficult and it took a long time. But you have to look back on those hard experiences and be so grateful for them because it allows you to open up that portal to be open to new experiences so that you can start attracting the things that are in alignment with this higher vibration. So no one said it was going to be easy. And frankly, it's not. There is a grieving process. Absolutely. I'm really glad you bring that up. It's, it's funny because when I was going through a pretty difficult time in the past year, I remember talking to one of my close friends who's very spiritual and I had expressed that it felt like I was kind of going through a rebirth. And the act of rebirth is you experience a death. So it's, you know, a very similar language and thought and perspective I had shared, you know, just from what you're saying. So really, really glad that you bring that up. One question that I want to leave you with that I ask every single guest on the podcast is tied to this concept of finding joy in life, seeking out those endorphins. And I think one of the beauties in life is that joy and beauty, you know, all these good things are always around us. We just need to create that clarity and wipe away the fog to be able to see it. So with that being said, what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? What is something that, you know, sparks joy in your life? Joy, I don't know if I, I find associate endorphins with joy for myself. It's fascinating. That's fascinating. Because I think sometimes people might associate endorphins like this, like, you know, high energy, you know, high thing, right? And sometimes I think it can be very subtle. And so more and more, look, there's so many things I've done in my life and so many things like I've been to 60s, 70 countries. I've driven every freaking car I've wanted to Lamborghini's to world voices to you name it. So I've achieved, I've experienced and at this stage in my life, it's not the highs that give me joy or the endorphins that you can enjoy. The mountain top, you know, that party, that thing that will, it's just, I think where I find the real joy now is in the simple moments of life, the ordinary moments of life, not the peak moments of life, but in the everyday moments of life is where I find the joy more and more of this stage in my life, you know. And so what does that look like? Opening the door and seeing my 11th month old son smiling because he sees me coming through. I would say just hanging out and spending time and doing incredibly ordinary things or doing nothing with my wife, just sitting in a cup of coffee and really doing nothing. This is what brings me joy. And so I would just say it's the ordinary things that bring me joy. It's the ordinary moments that bring me joy. The joy isn't so much because of things. I think joy is our nature. And so the joy is just more and more in experiencing each moment without projection or resistance. Because I think joy is in every moment more than anything, you know. So that's what I would say there. That's what I would say here. That's such a great response, I could, I think, you know, finding joy in kind of the mundane is really important. And it allows us to seek out and then appreciate the beauty of life that maybe isn't normally at the top of our conscious awareness. So thank you for such a great response. And you know, I want to land with this. Where can my listeners connect with you, find you, follow you and also get your books as well. Listen, thanks for the interview, thanks for the opportunity. People can find the book, the magic of surrender, the paperback version on Amazon. Check it out. Super easy read. Secondly, I would say if you've been inspired by today's interview in some way, and maybe you feel, you feel ready for the next level of your life, you feel that you've been put on the planet for a purpose that's bigger than yourself and the readiness to transform and heal and connect to your power and share your kiss with the world. Twice a year, I do a very special event in Bali. It's my most life changing work. Last year was going to be my final year, but 2024 is going to be my final year of doing this event. I've done 22 of these events in Bali. And there's, they're very special. And they're truly life changing. And so if you feel ready to just catapult to the next level, the event is called "Boundless Bliss", the Bali Briggs Experience. It's 12 days with me in Bali. You can go to www.boundlessblessbali.com/boundlessblessbali.com. The event is January the 20th, 2020. 31st you can go to the website find out more and apply. I want to go. I did my overteacher training in Bali and I've been meaning to go back. I love Bali. So this is a very unique experience. Wow. Where in Bali is it? I'm just curious. We could everything is secret. Oh my goodness. Well I stayed in Changu and I loved it for my yoga teacher training. Yes. You will not be in Changu. Oh my goodness. Okay. Well now I'm gonna have to go to this website and look into it. Now in seriousness it's truly a unique life changing experience. Hmm. That's fantastic. Well thank you so much Koot. I'm gonna link all this in the show notes. It was such a pleasure having you on the podcast and until next time. Yes. Thanks for listening to this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard, make sure to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer. You can also follow along the Everyday Endorphins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events, and all things related to mental health, well-being, and happiness. Don't forget to keep spreading Endorphins and find things in life that bring you joy every day. Until next time.