STOP 2 THINK

Pete Cohen
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated weekly

STOP 2 THINK Podcast What if the answers you are looking for are not found in doing more, but in stopping long enough to think? The Stop to Think Podcast is a space for reflection in a world that rarely slows down. Hosted by Pete Cohen, speaker, coach, author, and explorer of human potential, this podcast invites you to pause, step back, and reconnect with what truly matters. Through honest conversations, personal reflections, and thought provoking interviews, Pete explores the challenges we all face navigating change, uncertainty, loss, relationships, work, wellbeing, and the constant pre

  1. 1 day ago

    Celebrate The Journey - Episode 31

    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 sufferingThe moment on Davina McCall's Begin Again that changed how I share my own storyWhy an overactive nervous system can run for years before you even notice it is happeningPurging, and how I use sauna, journaling and meditation to deliberately release the old meThe harder question Ray finally asked me, how do you celebrate the old Pete, not just HannahPull 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

  2. 2 days ago

    Stand Up For Your Authenticity - Episode 30

    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 choiceMy own school trauma, traced back to being singled out at five and assessed again at tenThe runner I met in a shop, and why plateaus are a necessary, unglamorous stage of growthMy judo story revisited, beating a future Olympian and still doubting myself afterwardsRaphael'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/

  3. 2 days ago

    Who Are You, Really? - Episode 29

    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 accumulateAdmitting, openly, to eating an entire family sized Toblerone on a planeConnecting my own comfort eating to Hannah's one private indulgence, smokingThe where am I, who am I exercise, done honestly on the flight to Los AngelesDavid 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/

  4. 2 days ago

    The Journey Continues: Identity, Attachment & Authenticity - Episode 28

    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 identityYou can't unpickle a pickle, and Ray's extension of it, pulling the pickled onion apartGetting triggered live by a cancelled British Airways flight, and what it actually revealedViktor Frankl again, and the real freedom that lives in the space between stimulus and responseMarley'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/

  5. 2 days ago

    Open to Everything. Attached to Nothing - Episode 27

    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 meanThe iPhone exercise, ninety eight percent ownership, almost no genuine justificationI am nowhere and I am now here, the same letters read two completely different waysDiet and exercise trends across my whole career, all really just brands carrying meaningYour 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/

  6. 2 days ago

    Living From the Inside Out. Episode 26

    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 knowCold plunge exposure, and the real link between challenging the body and shifting the internal stateWho you are only ever exists in the present moment, where you are is really just yesterday's residueThe airport story, eating out of separation anxiety I hadn't recognised in myself beforeWhy 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/

  7. 2 days ago

    Becoming By Overcoming - Episode 25

    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 keptMeeting children at the orphanage who had already found the strength to leave unsafe situationsReceive, exchange, and sow, the RESL cycle Ray built in real time as we talkedMeeting Mandela, who runs the orphanage through a charity called God in ActionSpeaking 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/

  8. 2 days ago

    The Investment of Becoming - Episode 24

    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 laterThe seeding paradox, nothing grows tomorrow unless you plant something todayWhat actually sustains consistency, loving what you do, not just gritted disciplineSeneca again, preparation, which we control, and opportunity, which we never fully doWhy 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/

See All (31)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

STOP 2 THINK Podcast What if the answers you are looking for are not found in doing more, but in stopping long enough to think? The Stop to Think Podcast is a space for reflection in a world that rarely slows down. Hosted by Pete Cohen, speaker, coach, author, and explorer of human potential, this podcast invites you to pause, step back, and reconnect with what truly matters. Through honest conversations, personal reflections, and thought provoking interviews, Pete explores the challenges we all face navigating change, uncertainty, loss, relationships, work, wellbeing, and the constant pre

Information

  • Creator
    Pete Cohen
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    31
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Pete Cohen
  • Show Website
    STOP 2 THINK

You Might Also Like