Explore every episode of the podcast STOP 2 THINK

What Does STOP 2 THINK Really Mean?

This one came about almost by accident. Ray called me on a free afternoon before he flew home, and we ended up recording the episode that finally explains, properly, what this whole philosophy is actually named for.

We got into where the name Stop 2 Think really came from, including an older project of Ray's called Two Think, and what suspending the outdated persona, performance, or person actually means in practice. I also talk honestly about how gradual my own stopping has been, not one clean moment, but something that is still unfolding.

In this episode:

• Where the name Stop 2 Think actually came from
• What suspending the outdated persona, performance, or person really means
• Why my own stopping has been gradual rather than instant
• Romans 12:2 and what it means to be transformed by the renewal of your mind
• The we met because of a volcano line, and why it worked so well on live television
• 
  

Pull quote: "Stop means suspend the outdated persona, the outdated performance, the outdated person."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 5, where we step back three years to the very beginning, just weeks after Hannah's funeral, and where Stop 2 Think was truly born.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Celebrating in the Suffering

I recorded this one walking to, and then reflecting after, a live ITV interview about Hannah's Story, the first time I had to tell our story on television.

Ray and I walked together beforehand, talking through intention and timing, and then you hear the interview itself, followed by our conversation straight afterwards, still processing what had just happened. It captures the whole arc of that day, the nerves beforehand, the interview itself, and the emotion once it was over.

In this episode:

• Why I chose to wait for the right timing rather than force the film out earlier
• Telling the full story on air, meeting Hannah, her diagnosis, treatment, and her death
• Why speaking a lost loved one's name every day is itself a form of celebration
• The difference between sitting in grief and standing in it
• Hannah's father being there for the premiere, and what that meant to me

Pull quote: "Celebration is a way that you don't have to sit in it. It's still going to be there. You can stand in your grief. You can move with your grief, and celebration is the key."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 4, where we finally properly explain what Stop 2 Think actually means.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

You Couldn't Make It Up — Finding Stillness, Purpose and Peace

Ray flew in to stay with me and my family as the premiere got closer, and we sat down together to record this one. I wanted to ask him what it actually takes to find stillness when your whole life suddenly feels like it is moving fast again.

We recorded this at home, with Ray staying with us in the run up to the Hannah's Story premiere. We got into discernment, the tangible versus the intangible, and something I had not quite said out loud before, that the same relentless drive that once helped save Hannah's life was also the very thing that kept real contentment out of my reach for years.

In this episode:

• What discernment actually means to me, and why it goes beyond anything you can measure
• The moment my own relentlessness helped save Hannah's life, and what it cost me
• Why contentment only really arrived for me in the last 280 days, not before
• How much Ray and I discovered we had in common, coming from the same fitness industry
• The pole between the tangible and the intangible, and why I think it matters so much for wellbeing
• 
  

Pull quote: "You have to stop. We must have stillness. We must be able to pause."

Follow us here.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/⁠⁠

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/⁠⁠

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/⁠⁠

Watch Hannah's Story: ⁠⁠https://petecohen.com/hannah⁠⁠

Visit Pete's website ⁠petecohen.com ⁠

Celebrating Through Grief — Hannah's Story

Welcome to the very first episode of the STOP 2 THINK Podcast.

Three years to the day since I lost my wife, I sat down with Dr Ray Sylvester the night before an ending became a beginning.

This is where Stop 2 Think really starts for me. I recorded this on the third anniversary of Hannah passing, the night before tickets went on sale for the world premiere of Hannah's Story. Ray and I looked back on five years of friendship and asked the question that ended up shaping everything that followed, how do you learn to celebrate a life instead of only mourning its loss.

In this episode:

• How a chance meeting on Clubhouse became a five year friendship
• The scripture that changed how I thought about suffering
• Why Ray told me to flip the name of my own app, and what it actually meant
• The real story behind the making of Hannah's Story
• What it means to stop performing kindness, and start actually receiving it

Pull quote: "You need to find a way to celebrate in your suffering."

If you are new to Stop 2 Think, this is the place to start. Come back every week as we walk through the conversation, episode by episode, that became this whole journey.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Where It All Began

This is the very first conversation Ray and I ever recorded, walking around his Indianapolis neighbourhood just weeks after Hannah's funeral. There was no plan and no audience in mind. It was just two friends trying to make sense of the darkest weeks of my life.

I flew out to be with Ray the day after Hannah's funeral, and this walk captures where everything genuinely started, before either of us had any idea it would become anything at all. It is raw, unscripted, and probably the most honest, unfiltered conversation in the whole series.

In this episode:

• The middle of the night phone calls during Hannah's final months
• How gratitude and grief showed up in the very same moment for me
• Ray's own season of uncertainty about staying in America
• The volcano and ash cloud that first brought Hannah and me together
• Hannah's own phrase, just get on with it, and what it actually meant
• 
  

Pull quote: "You have to stop and consider things and look at the true value of them."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 6, recorded during my first visit to Indianapolis, where we start to explore what it actually means to live with intention.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

When Scott Edwards Jimena reached out to me, I had no idea just how much this conversation would stay with me.

Like Hannah, Scott is living with glioblastoma. But this isn’t really a conversation about cancer. It’s a conversation about what happens when life forces us to STOP.

Scott shares, for the first time publicly, the childhood trauma he carried in silence for more than thirty years and how confronting it completely changed the way he sees himself and the world around him.

We talk about identity, vulnerability, fatherhood, purpose, spirituality, healing and why so many of us spend our lives wearing masks.

What struck me most wasn’t Scott’s diagnosis—it was the peace he has found despite it.

His story is a reminder that sometimes the greatest transformation begins when we stop resisting life, stop running from ourselves, and have the courage to discover who we really are.

I genuinely believe this is one of the most honest and courageous conversations I’ve ever recorded, and I hope it encourages you to stop, reflect and perhaps see your own life a little differently.

I hope you enjoy it.

Follow Scott on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/scott_edwards_jimena/

Celebrate the Journey

As the first series comes to a close, Ray asked me a question I had never quite asked myself before. Not how do I celebrate Hannah, but how do I celebrate the whole journey, including who I used to be.

We recorded this one walking an old railway path in South Buckinghamshire, looking back across thirty one episodes and ten months of raw, unscripted conversation. It started with a walk round Ray's Indianapolis neighbourhood just days after Hannah's funeral, and it has brought me all the way to a recent, unguarded conversation on Davina McCall's podcast. This is the episode where the whole series comes full circle, and where celebration finally turned inward, toward me.

In this episode:

• What I finally understood, ten months on, about celebrating in your suffering
• The moment on Davina McCall's Begin Again that changed how I share my own story
• Why an overactive nervous system can run for years before you even notice it is happening
• Purging, and how I use sauna, journaling and meditation to deliberately release the old me
• The harder question Ray finally asked me, how do you celebrate the old Pete, not just Hannah
• 
  

Pull quote: "This transition from old Pete to new Pete deserves celebration. Celebrating the old Pete, because without the old Pete, this narrative wouldn't exist. So nothing is wasted."

That is the first series of Stop 2 Think, complete. If you have walked the whole way with me and Ray, thank you. Go back to Episode 1 and hear where it all began, or reach out and tell me what has stayed with you.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/⁠

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/⁠

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/⁠

Watch Hannah's Story: ⁠https://petecohen.com/hannah⁠

Visit Pete's website petecohen.com

Significance Without Dominance

Recorded on my last evening in Indianapolis on that visit, this episode introduces one of the sharpest tools in the whole series, the difference between something being significant in your life and something being allowed to dominate it entirely.

Ray and I got into the Serenity Prayer, and why willpower driven diets so often fail while genuine identity shift tends to last. I also opened up about something harder, my own instinctive reaction to Black Lives Matter, and what it actually took for me to stop and look at things properly with a fresh pair of eyes.

In this episode:

• The real difference between something being significant and something dominating your life
• The Serenity Prayer, taken further than its usual reading
• Why willpower driven diets fail, and identity based lifestyle change tends to last
• Ray's own experience as a Black British man, and the honest limits of empathy
• My own instinctive reaction to Black Lives Matter, and what it took to actually reconsider it

Pull quote: "Making a decision to say that something is significant and treasure that without making a decision to say it will dominate."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 23, recorded the jet lagged morning after ten days together, where we go back into the difference between performance and the person underneath it.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Who You Are Is Bigger Than Where You Are

Recorded on another walk with Ray, this episode pushes further into Viktor Frankl's ideas and sharpens the distinction between circumstance and identity even more than before.

We talked about why where you are always includes time, meaning even something you have already overcome still carries the shape of what you escaped, while who you are carries no such attachment at all. I also opened up about the letters that came in after my parents died, describing them both as people who always had time for others.

In this episode:

• Why where you are always includes time, and who you are does not
• Carol Dweck's fixed versus flexible mindset, and which one I was actually showing
• The letters that came in after my parents died, and what they revealed about who they really were
• Where research itself came from, interpretation, long before it became obsessed with numbers
• Triggers, and why how we respond to them is always a genuine choice

Pull quote: "Where you are is always contingent on context, and context is always time as well."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 22, recorded on my last evening in Indianapolis, where we explore the difference between something being significant in your life and something dominating it entirely.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

When Life Changes Everything

This is a solo episode, no Ray this time, just me talking directly to you, recorded while I was genuinely waiting, phone in hand, for a very special delivery to arrive. It is one of the most emotionally raw conversations in the whole series.

I talk honestly about the sheer amount of travel I had taken on recently, and address, directly, the suggestion from someone that it might be avoidance. I also tell the full story of Hannah becoming a quilter after her diagnosis, and the quilt she started but never got to finish herself.

In this episode:

• Addressing head on the suggestion that all my recent travel might be a way of avoiding my grief
• Meaning as something you give your own life, not something you simply find waiting for you
• How Hannah reinvented herself as the bespoke quilter after her diagnosis
• The Michael Jordan shirt quilt she started, and the friends who finished it after she died
• A stranger I met in a hotel who had also lost his wife, and the instant kinship we shared

Pull quote: "I think we're love."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 21, where we go even deeper into Viktor Frankl and what it really means to be bigger than where you are.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Journey Beyond Circumstance

I recorded this one walking with Ray the day before Thanksgiving, deliberately, as a kind of prequel to a much harder conversation that follows it. I wanted to give you the context first, before you hear something far more raw.

We talked about branding as identity, and about Steve Jobs's Stanford speech, connecting the dots, love and loss, and facing death. I also admitted something that felt strange to say out loud at the time, that despite everything, I felt more content and more alive than I had in years.

In this episode:

• Branding as identity, and why so much of the world confuses where you are with who you are
• Steve Jobs's Stanford speech, connecting the dots, love and loss, and facing death
• Admitting, out loud, that I felt content and alive in the middle of active grief
• Real connection built across distance and different beliefs, without ever needing agreement
• How you treat someone in a position of lesser visible status, like a waiter, and what it actually reveals

Pull quote: "You are connecting the dots in terms of meaning. What does it mean to you because you are still here?"

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 20, one of the most personal episodes in the whole series, recorded while I was genuinely waiting for a very special delivery to arrive.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Where You Are Is Not Who You Are

This episode states the idea that everything else in this series ultimately returns to, as directly as we have ever said it. Ray and I use real, well known lives to prove the point, because I think it lands harder when you can see it actually lived out by someone else first.

We talked about Nelson Mandela, twenty seven years in a cell and still choosing not to be defined by it, about Arnold Schwarzenegger realising, right at the end, that none of it was ever really about him alone, and about my friend MJ, who lives with a permanent disability and taught me something important about the limits of comparison.

In this episode:

• Nelson Mandela's twenty seven years in prison as the clearest possible example
• Arnold Schwarzenegger's documentary, and his realisation that it was always we, never just him
• My friend MJ, and what her story taught me about circumstance versus identity
• Simon Sinek's Golden Circle, and the difference between a label and a real why
• Dolores Jordan's vision for her son Michael, long before anyone else could see it

Pull quote: "Your circumstances never define you; they're a moment in time."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 19, a walking prequel recorded the day before Thanksgiving, setting the stage for one of the most personal conversations in this whole series.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Waiting for the Sunrise

This is one of the rawest episodes in the whole series. I was genuinely uncertain, in every direction, professionally and personally, and I told Ray plainly that I know who I am more clearly than ever, but had absolutely no idea yet what to do with that knowledge.

We talked about the seven people I consider my great guides in life, and Ray gently pushed me to look honestly at what I was actually afraid of. This is also where I first admitted, out loud, my hesitation about writing a book about my own life.

In this episode:

• The seven people I consider my great guides in life, and Ray's place among them
• Being in the middle of the night, not yet ready for whatever comes next
• My own hesitation about writing a book about my life, wondering if anyone would want to read it
• Seneca's formula, purpose as preparation, which we control, plus opportunity, which we do not
• My early academic struggles, and how they quietly prepared me for the work I do now

Pull quote: "Purpose is the integration of two things: one you can control, and one you can't control."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 18, where we finally say, as directly as we ever have, that where you are is not who you are.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Discovering Your Way

This episode is a direct pushback against the idea that there is one right path to real change. Ray and I made it clear, neither of us wants to prescribe anything to anyone, because the only change that ever actually lasts is the change someone finds for themselves.

We talked about how much digital information has changed our ability to focus, the difference between the hedonic pull of the senses and what we actually intend to do, and a story about a friend's husband who transformed his health after a heart attack, not because anyone told him what to do, but because he owned it himself.

In this episode:

• How constant digital information has reshaped our ability to focus on anything
• The hedonic pull of the senses, and how it quietly works against stated intention
• Why Ray refuses to prescribe a lifestyle change to anyone he works with
• The Biggest Loser statistic again, this time applied to ownership versus imposed structure
• A friend's husband's heart attack recovery, driven entirely by his own ownership of it

Pull quote: "I don't think we should be telling anyone what to do ever."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 17, one of the rawest conversations in the whole series, recorded while I was genuinely uncertain about what came next.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Here's Episode 15, in my voice, with the corrected footer.

Episode 15: Designing Your Backstage

This episode takes the front stage and backstage idea from the last conversation and turns it into something practical, the actual physical spaces and objects that quietly shape how we feel about ourselves.

Ray and I walked through Erving Goffman's three elements of any performance, setting, appearance, and manner, and I told him the whole story of an enormous table I bought on impulse in China back in 1999, and what it actually took, decades later, to finally get it into my own home.

In this episode:

• Goffman's three elements of performance, setting, appearance, and manner
• The story of my huge table, bought impulsively in China in 1999
• Growing up with a best room that was never actually used
• My old coach Raphael's question, where is home, and what he really meant by it
• Discipline, traced back to its root meaning, student

Pull quote: "You are making an investment in you where no one is seeing that."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 16, where we ask whether there is really only one right way to discover who you are.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Person Behind The Performance

This episode introduces one of the most important ideas in the whole series, the difference between front stage, the version of me the world sees, and backstage, who I actually am when nobody is watching.

Ray and I got into Erving Goffman's idea that we are all performers on some level, and I opened up about my own childhood, my dyslexia diagnosis, and a lifetime spent quietly looking for validation from outside myself rather than from within.

In this episode:

• Erving Goffman's idea that everyday life is really a kind of performance
• Front stage, what the world sees, and backstage, the conversation only I hear
• Jane Elliott's classroom experiment, and how quickly arbitrary labels can shape self worth
• Four questions Ray asks people, who are you, what is your value, who do you serve, how do you serve
• My own dyslexia diagnosis, and a lifelong search for validation I did not even know I was doing

Pull quote: "If we leave our backstage dormant and non-intentional, then the front stage informs our backstage."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 15, where we take this idea from theory into practice and start designing our own backstage.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Back to Calm

This one is different from the rest. Instead of a conversation with Ray, it is a full guided meditation, my gift to you, turning the one percent of your day idea from the last episode into something you can actually do, right now, rather than just think about.

It runs about fourteen minutes and twenty four seconds, exactly one percent of your day, and it is designed to help calm your nervous system, not through effort or control, but simply by giving your body permission to come out of alert and into rest.

In this episode:

• Settling the body, and noticing tension without needing to fix anything
• Lengthening the exhale as a direct signal of safety to the nervous system
• The repeated phrase, I am safe, I am calm
• A simple colour visualisation to help spread that calm through the body
• Calm as something you allow, not something you have to force into being

Pull quote: "This calm is not something you created. It's something you allowed."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 14, where we go back to a conversation and introduce one of the most important ideas in this whole series, the person behind the performance.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Stand Up For Your Authenticity

Recorded on the same Indianapolis visit as the last episode, this one brings the whole attachment versus authenticity thread to its fullest conclusion. It closes with a piece of advice from my late coach Raphael that has genuinely become one of the most important lines in this entire journey.

I went deeper into my own school days than I ever had before, tracing a lifetime of feeling not enough all the way back to being singled out at five years old, and assessed again at ten. Ray helped me see that even a real, hard won achievement, like beating a future Olympian in judo, can be undone in a moment by someone else's disbelief, if you let it.

In this episode:

• Attachment as something necessary for survival, authenticity as a later, deliberate choice
• My own school trauma, traced back to being singled out at five and assessed again at ten
• The runner I met in a shop, and why plateaus are a necessary, unglamorous stage of growth
• My judo story revisited, beating a future Olympian and still doubting myself afterwards
• Raphael's instruction, cross out the if in life, so that only legacy, le, remains

Pull quote: "You can't outlearn your potential. Your potential is always a scope of expansion of self that you can't breach."

That brings this stretch of Stop 2 Think to a close. If any of this has resonated with you, go back to Episode 1 and walk the whole journey with us, or reach out and let us know what stayed with you.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Here's Episode 12, in my voice, with the corrected footer.

Episode 12: Hurry Sickness, Why We Struggle to Stop

This episode names, directly, the thing that makes stopping so hard for almost everyone, hurry sickness, a genuine clinical term describing constant, compulsive urgency. It also introduces the one percent of your day idea, fourteen minutes and twenty four seconds, for the very first time.

I admitted, live, that I had been awake since four that morning and had not stopped once. Ray and I went through the real signs of hurry sickness, and why it is so often a defence mechanism rather than simple busyness.

In this episode:

• The clinical origin of hurry sickness, first named back in 1974
• The real signs, impatience, interrupting people, endless to do lists, imposter syndrome
• Hurry sickness as unintentional urgency, energy spent in entirely the wrong direction
• Why hurry sickness can be a defence mechanism, a way of outrunning something painful
• The one percent of your day, fourteen minutes and twenty four seconds, introduced properly

Pull quote: "Hurry sickness sometimes is a defense mechanism. What we do is we distract ourselves by running away from something that hurts us."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 13, a guided meditation putting the one percent idea into real practice.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Art and Science of Stop 2 Think

Recorded shortly after cycling seventy five miles into Hungary with my brother, this episode tackles something that runs through the whole series, why knowing what to do so rarely translates into actually doing it.

Ray and I got into the science of change, which is freely available to anyone, versus the art of actually sustaining it, which is where almost everyone struggles. We also talked about The Biggest Loser, why so many contestants regained the weight, and what real relationships have to do with any of it.

In this episode:

• The science of change, which is easy to find, versus the art of sustaining it, which is not
• The Biggest Loser, and why almost all contestants regained the weight afterwards
• A shared thread of dysfunction that runs through Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity
• King Richard, the Williams sisters, and deliberate preparation for opportunity
• The Harvard longevity study, and why relationship quality outweighs even diet and exercise

Pull quote: "New experiences only come from intention. It's difficult to find new experiences outwardly because that's in your strength and your will."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 12, where we finally name the thing making it so hard for any of us to stop, hurry sickness.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Stop Before The Start

Recorded while I was on holiday with my brother, this episode gives stopping its most practical shape yet. Ray laid out a genuine, usable structure for what stopping actually involves, step by step, and I had a real realisation, in the moment, about what I am actually good at.

We talked through aware, acknowledge, appreciate, act, and appraise, and why most of us only ever stop when a crisis forces our hand rather than choosing it ourselves. This is also the episode where I finally named, out loud, that helping people stop is genuinely my gift.

In this episode:

• The four part structure: aware, acknowledge, appreciate, act, and appraise
• Why major stops usually arrive through crisis rather than genuine choice
• Appreciation broken down into value, respect, cherish, treasure, and admiration
• Realising, in real time, that helping people stop is what I am actually good at
• Building small, deliberate stops into an ordinary day, rather than waiting for a big one

Pull quote: "We stop to become aware, we stop to acknowledge, and we stop to appreciate."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 11, recorded after a seventy five mile bike ride with my brother, where we explore the art and science of Stop 2 Think.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Tangible and The Intangible

I recorded this one on a genuinely significant day, what would have been Hannah's thirty ninth birthday and our ninth wedding anniversary. Ray and I went deep into faith, suffering, and the idea that what cannot be measured can still be entirely real.

We talked properly, for the first time, about Romans 5:3 to 5, and what it actually means to rejoice in suffering rather than simply staying attached to it. I also opened up about my own uncertainty over what comes next professionally, alongside Ray's own uncertainty about his job at the time.

In this episode:

• A full explanation of Romans 5:3 to 5, and the path from suffering to hope
• The difference between what is tangibly absent and what is intangibly still present
• My own uncertainty about my career, and Ray's parallel uncertainty about his job
• Roger Bannister's four minute mile, and how belief spreads once someone proves something possible
• Whether it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all
• 
  

Pull quote: "Rejoicing in your suffering gives you patience, perseverance which then gives you character. And then in character there is hope."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 10, recorded during a family holiday, where we get properly practical about what stopping actually looks like.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Head, The Heart and The Habit of Intention

This episode explores the relationship between what we think, how we feel, and what we actually do, and why trying to change one without the others so rarely works. It is also one of the most personally honest conversations we had recorded up to that point.

I opened up about turning to sugar for comfort, both while my mum was dying and again after Hannah passed, and Ray helped me understand why real change so often has to start with a small action rather than with willpower or new thinking. We also talked about the song we played at Hannah's celebration of life, and what it actually meant.

In this episode:

• The head, heart, habit model, and why change often has to start with habit
• My own comfort eating, both during my mum's illness and again after losing Hannah
• The heart described as an oil tanker's engine room, storing emotional memory
• Abracadabra, the song played at Hannah's celebration of life, and what it means
• Why starting with one small new habit works better than a dramatic overhaul
• 
  

Pull quote: "Lay down new experiences. Look at a habit, a new habit you've never done, and just that small win."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 9, recorded on what would have been Hannah's birthday and our wedding anniversary, where we go deep into the tangible and the intangible.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Here's Episode 7, in my voice, with the corrected footer.

Episode 7: The Power to Stop and Listen

Recorded with me back in the UK and Ray still in Indianapolis, four and a half thousand miles apart again, this episode leans right into genuine listening, both to each other and to the first wave of feedback the podcast had started receiving.

We talked about the letters shared between listen and silence, the difference between personal development and what Ray calls service development, and Viktor Frankl's story of a man who died after his hoped for release date passed and nothing changed. This is also the first time we read listener feedback out loud together.

In this episode:

• The letters shared between listen and silence
• Service development versus personal development
• Hindsight, which happens to us, and foresight and insight, which only come from stopping
• Viktor Frankl and the prisoner whose body gave up when hope alone was not enough
• Reading the first real listener feedback out loud together

Pull quote: "I think people want more from their life, and I think the pandemic has shown them that they have to start with themselves as opposed to blaming another."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 8, where we explore the head, the heart, and the habit of intention.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Living With Intention

Recorded during my first visit to Indianapolis, this is where Ray and I moved from raw grief into something more practical, what it actually means to live with intention, day to day.

We got into the idea of pre contemplation, thinking about something before it happens, and I shared honestly how rarely I had stopped to appreciate my life with Hannah while she was alive. This episode introduces several ideas that ended up anchoring the whole rest of the series.

In this episode:

• Pre contemplation, and thinking about something before it actually happens
• The woodpecker story, and being intentional without needing a guaranteed outcome
• The ganoderma mushroom, and why something has to stop before something else can start
• Fasting and autophagy as biological examples of stopping enabling repair
• Why I so rarely stopped to appreciate my life with Hannah while she was alive
• 
  

Pull quote: "Stopping allows us to appreciate."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 7, recorded once I was back in the UK, where we explore the power of really stopping to listen.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Who Are You, Really?

Recorded after Ray and I spoke together at a global health and fitness conference, this is one of the most personally exposing episodes in the whole series. I admit, openly, to something I had been doing quietly for a long time.

I told Ray about eating an entire Toblerone on a plane, and connected it, in real time, to Hannah's own one indulgence, smoking, the single thing she ever did purely for herself in a life spent giving to everyone else. We also worked through a genuinely useful exercise, two columns on a page, where am I and who am I, that I had actually done on the flight over.

In this episode:

• Why fame and possessions never actually fulfil people from the inside, however much they accumulate
• Admitting, openly, to eating an entire family sized Toblerone on a plane
• Connecting my own comfort eating to Hannah's one private indulgence, smoking
• The where am I, who am I exercise, done honestly on the flight to Los Angeles
• David Goggins, and what it actually looks like to reject comfort entirely

Pull quote: "The easiest thing we can be is ourselves, and the hardest thing is to be something we're not. However, the world teaches us the opposite."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 30, the final episode of this stretch, where we ask what it really means to stand up for your own authenticity.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Journey Continues, Identity, Attachment and Authenticity

Recorded on my last day in Indianapolis, right after Ray and I spoke together on stage for the very first time, this episode goes deeper into identity, attachment, and authenticity than we ever had before.

We watched the Bob Marley film One Love together that morning, and it gave us a way into something I have said for years without ever quite knowing what to do with it, you can't unpickle a pickle. Ray took that phrase somewhere genuinely useful, pulling the pickled onion apart layer by layer, and I got triggered live, by nothing more than a cancelled flight, and we used it as a real example right there in the moment.

In this episode:

• Watching Bob Marley's One Love, and his own genuine ambiguity around identity
• You can't unpickle a pickle, and Ray's extension of it, pulling the pickled onion apart
• Getting triggered live by a cancelled British Airways flight, and what it actually revealed
• Viktor Frankl again, and the real freedom that lives in the space between stimulus and response
• Marley's idea of I and I, and what it means to remove hierarchy from how we relate to people

Pull quote: "What you can't do is unpickle the pickledness, but you can pull the onions and get the layers back, to see the essence of who you really are."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 29, where I open up honestly about my own struggle with comfort eating and what it actually means to ask, who are you, really.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Open to Everything, Attached to Nothing

This episode introduces a guiding principle that has genuinely stayed with me ever since Ray first said it, being open to everything and attached to nothing. It goes right to the heart of what Stop 2 Think actually means, and why real openness is so much harder to live out than it sounds.

We got into branding, of all things, using an exercise Ray ran with three hundred students where ninety eight percent owned an iPhone yet almost none of them could give an actual reason why. We also played with a simple perception exercise that reads as I am nowhere until you slow down enough to see it can also read as I am now here.

In this episode:

• What being open to everything and attached to nothing actually means, and does not mean
• The iPhone exercise, ninety eight percent ownership, almost no genuine justification
• I am nowhere and I am now here, the same letters read two completely different ways
• Diet and exercise trends across my whole career, all really just brands carrying meaning
• Your right is someone else's left, a line from my old coach I still use to this day

Pull quote: "Being open to everything attached to nothing is a decision to at least be open."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 28, recorded after we spoke together on stage for the first time, where we go deeper into identity, attachment, and authenticity.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Living From the Inside Out

Recorded in Los Angeles, this episode leans on the work of trauma expert Gabor Maté to explain, with real precision, why authenticity and attachment get so easily confused with each other, and why untangling them is genuinely hard work.

I opened up about something small but revealing, a moment at the airport with my parents where I ate food I knew wasn't good for me, purely out of what I now recognise as separation anxiety rooted all the way back in childhood. Ray helped me see that authenticity has no competition, while attachment is built entirely from the five senses, starting from the moment we're born.

In this episode:

• The tension between the external world everyone sees and the internal one only I know
• Cold plunge exposure, and the real link between challenging the body and shifting the internal state
• Who you are only ever exists in the present moment, where you are is really just yesterday's residue
• The airport story, eating out of separation anxiety I hadn't recognised in myself before
• Why authenticity has no competition, while attachment is built entirely from the five senses

Pull quote: "Authenticity has no competition; authenticity has no compunction, it just is."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 27, where we explore a guiding principle that has stayed with me ever since, being open to everything and attached to nothing.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

Becoming By Overcoming

I recorded this one after a dramatic stretch of travel, from the wealth of Hong Kong and Macau to a Ugandan orphanage full of children who have already overcome more than most of us ever will. It introduces one of my favourite ideas from the whole series, the tree and its fruit.

Ray and I talked about how fruit is never really for the tree itself, only for others, and how the deepest growth in any life often happens completely unseen, in the roots, during the hardest seasons. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, Ray coined an acronym on the spot, RESL, that has stayed with me ever since.

In this episode:

• The metaphor of the tree, and why fruit is meant to be given away, not kept
• Meeting children at the orphanage who had already found the strength to leave unsafe situations
• Receive, exchange, and sow, the RESL cycle Ray built in real time as we talked
• Meeting Mandela, who runs the orphanage through a charity called God in Action
• Speaking honestly to anyone listening who has not received the same foundation of love I have

Pull quote: "You are giving love into the future, but you don't know explicitly where it's going."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 26, recorded in Los Angeles, where we explore the real difference between authenticity and attachment.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Investment of Becoming

This episode explores what it actually means to invest in who I am becoming, not in some distant, imagined future, but through what I actually do today. It also reframes my own future self work in light of the hardest possible test, real, profound loss.

Ray asked me something genuinely difficult, how do you keep believing in the idea of a future self when the person you most wanted that future with is gone. I told him plainly that becoming that person means being them right now, in this moment, because there is no tomorrow, only what I am actually investing in today.

In this episode:

• Future casting, and why becoming that person happens now, not later
• The seeding paradox, nothing grows tomorrow unless you plant something today
• What actually sustains consistency, loving what you do, not just gritted discipline
• Seneca again, preparation, which we control, and opportunity, which we never fully do
• Why loving myself more since losing Hannah has never once diminished my love for her

Pull quote: "There is a convergence of two things: one you can control, and one you can't control. The one you can control is preparation."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 25, recorded after travelling from Hong Kong to a Ugandan orphanage, where we explore becoming through overcoming.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/

The Person Behind The Performance

Recorded jet lagged, the morning after ten unstructured days spent together in Indianapolis, this episode goes back into performance versus person, but with far more depth than the first time we touched on it.

I told Ray how much deeper my appreciation of who I am had become just from spending real, unhurried time together, and we talked properly about thought life as its own genuine layer of wellbeing, right alongside diet, sleep, and exercise, not separate from them.

In this episode:

• Three levels we operate on, physical, psychological, and metaphysical
• How what you think about before sleep actually affects the quality of that sleep
• Fight, flight, and freeze, and how freeze often hides behind constant busyness
• Wrestling, out loud, with the label the people's coach versus performance coach
• Why so many genuinely successful people say they feel empty once they get there

Pull quote: "We are more interested in you, the person. Then you, the performer."

Come and join me and Ray for Episode 24, where we explore what it really means to invest in who you are becoming.

Follow us here.

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/petecohen_/

Subscribe to The STOP 2 THINK Newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/stop-2-think-newsletter-7474223126868918272/

Follow Ray on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drraysylvester/

Watch Hannah's Story: https://petecohen.com/hannah

Visit Pete's website: https://petecohen.com/