STOP 2 THINK

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.

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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/

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/

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/