Welcome to the Stop to Think podcast with me, Pete Cohen and
Doctor Ray Sylvester. This episode is called When Life
Changes Everything. But before we begin this
episode, I just want to say a few words.
The conversation you're about to hear was recorded just a few
months after my wife had passed away.
And of all the conversations we've shared from this period,
this is the one that is the most personal and emotional.
If you've been following this series from the beginning,
you'll know that these podcasts document a real journey.
They weren't created looking back with the benefit of
hindsight. They weren't recorded as a way
of living through one of the most challenging periods of my
life. In this episode, you'll hear me
become emotional a couple of times, and I wanted to leave it
in because it's real. Those emotions came from a
profound realization that was beginning to emerge.
One of the central ideas behind Stop to Think is this.
Where you are isn't who you are. My wife Hannah really, really
understood this and she got to know who she was by the most
challenging season in her life. Long before cancer became the
defining circumstances of her life, she had discovered
something much deeper. She knew that she was a creator,
but didn't really create. She had a nine to five job that
she liked, but through her becoming I'll, it really made
her look at what she was doing with a fresh pair of eyes and
she became a quilter. She became known as the bespoke
quilter. She found meaning in creating,
giving and loving. She knew who she was and she
fought with everything she had to continue living that life and
doing what she loved. But the heartbreaking reality is
that despite her courage, she eventually became a victim of
where she was, not because she lacked hope or strength, but
because sometimes life brings circumstances that no amount of
determination can overcome. That realization really hit me
incredibly hard. It also strengthened my
conviction that one of the most important things any of us will
do is discover who we are beneath our circumstances,
beneath our roles, beneath our achievements, and beneath our
struggles. This is a commitment behind Stop
to Think to help people slow down, step back, reflect, and
discover who they really are. I hope this conversation
encourages you to do the same. I'll see you with this podcast I
recorded just over three years ago in November 2023.
I want to just share a few things with with you, whether
you're listening to this podcast for the first time, a little bit
about, you know who I am, because I think that that's the
greatest discovery that any of us will ever go on.
The greatest journey, the greatest exploration to boldly
go where no man has gone before. But that's what they say in Star
Trek. But are we going to a place that
we've not gone before? Or are we going to a place
that's always been there, but we just have not gone there or been
frightened to go there? Or we've gone through certain
things in our life. Maybe that's some form of
institutions, education, family, community, environment, culture
that has perhaps shaped you to a point where who you are isn't
who you are. You know, I talked about this at
an event the other day. I was, I was talking about when
you meet someone for the first time, you know, what's the first
information that you glean from someone?
It's really, you know, what's your name, But you know, are you
your name? What your name was given to you,
unless of course, you've changed your name, but you're not your
name. Your name was given to you.
You're more than your name. And then you'd ask for someone
what they do for a living. And are you do, are you what you
do for a living or is there more to you?
And then people would say, you know, where do you live?
And this is such an important thing that I really want to
touch on. You know, where do you live?
And I'm not talking about where you live in the world.
You know, where do you live in you?
You know, you live in this body, right?
You live in this mind. We live in this thing that we're
carrying around with us, this thing that it's very easy just
to not really appreciate what your body and your mind can do.
And I think what's happened for me is the last few months have
been, you know, the biggest game changing moments, the biggest
stop moments in my life. And I don't know how many months
it is now, but you know, since my wife Hannah passed away in
May this year, I mean, it's been a real, I don't know what the
word is. I'm trying to find the word.
I suppose anyone that's ever dealt with grief of someone
who's very close to them, you know that it's, it's not
straightforward. It's not, it's not a straight
line. Five years ago, my, my mother,
my dad passed away. And then two years ago my mum
passed away. And then in May this year, my
wife passed away. And this experience with my wife
has been so much harder. It's been something which has
been quite hard to make sense of.
And that's one of the reasons I've had endless conversations
with Doctor Ray and my brother and other people.
I I was speaking to a psychotherapist before my wife
actually died. When it got to the point where I
knew that there was no coming back from where she was, I
really needed some help because I found myself in a position
that I'd never been in before. And it was really helpful.
And then since she passed away, I've had another one session
with that person. But Doctor Ray is someone that I
have had a lot of time to try and make sense of this
experience. And then also my really good
friend Dale White, who's head of Suzuki here in the UK and
Ireland. And he also lost his wife
recently. And just this whole shared
experience, because I think life is a lot easier when you've got
great people around you, when you've got people that genuinely
care for you. Now listen, you might be
listening to this. I know people listen to our
podcast all over the world. And I don't know where you are
in the world right now, but wherever you are, I want you to
know that whoever you are, I care for you.
And I'm sure Doctor Ray is the same because let me let me just
go a little bit deeper into a few things here.
So First off, the last few months I have travelled to so
many different places. I have been to Dallas, I've been
to Houston, I've been to Indianapolis where I said I've
been. I've been to Florence, I've been
to Portugal, I've been to Ireland a couple of times.
I'm sure I just came back from Spain.
I'm going to Indianapolis. When when you listen to this or
chances are when you're listening to it, when it goes
live, I will be on a plane going over to Indianapolis.
I'm also going to supposedly we'll see Tibet Pakis not sorry,
sorry, Tibet, Hong Kong, China, and in January I'm going to
Uganda and someone someone was saying to me other day, you
know, do you think it's a good idea?
You know, aren't you just kind of not dealing with what maybe
you need to deal with? And look, I'm definitely dealing
with what I need to deal with. I just find it very therapeutic
to see the world. I love the world, I love people.
I, I love to help people stop. And I think what's happened for
me is this, this journey, this hard yards that I have been
through and going through have made me really stop and look at
who I am. And I have a much higher
appreciation though I am. I think if you listen to my
podcast years ago, you'd see a different person.
And for those of you that have followed my work for so many
years, I mean, look, people also ask me about books.
Someone asked me about which one of your 20 books should I read
And I, I said, I don't think any of them, to be honest.
I mean, there's one which is inspirators, which I think is a
really, which is a good book. But all the others pretty much I
don't really agree with a lot of what I was saying because I have
evolved. I'm not where I was.
I'm, I'm a different person now and I look at so many things
differently through experience, through studying.
And I have always wanted people to just know how great they are.
And I think that's one of my, my skills as a coach is to
genuinely help people stop and look at where they are.
And that's also something that Doctor Ray, I remember where I
was because I've also been to tries in Italy.
I've also been to Vienna recently.
I remember having a conversation with Doctor Ray.
I remember exactly where I was And I, I stopped in my tracks
when I was walking because he's one of those people.
Like any great, what people would call a coach, they
wouldn't really tell you, you know, they're they're kind
enough to give you the space to work things out for yourself.
But he said, Pete, I think really what your onlyness is is
your ability to help people stop, just stop and look and
look at things differently. And it was, it was interesting
because he just told me something that I already know,
but I didn't know it at the level that I know it now.
And then you listening to this podcast, I'd love you maybe just
to be able to stop, even if you're walking or cooking or
cleaning and, and just stop and look within and maybe realize
that there's more to you than meets the eye.
I've mentioned this before, but for so much of my life, I was
looking for validation. I was looking for people to tell
me that I was something that I didn't believe about myself.
And it was a hiding to being burnt out.
It was a hiding to not really enjoying where I was.
And through the passing of my wife, I've really gone on a
journey of looking at who I am. And I was in Malaga, I think
yesterday, yesterday in Marbella and I actually started my
presentation to a whole load of entrepreneur business owners,
fantastic group of people. We had them for three days.
I've, I've never seen such hungry people in the looks of
their eyes to grow and advance and make a difference.
It was truly an amazing experience.
And you should have seen the look on their faces when I got
on stage and said, is it OK for me to ask you a question?
And they all kind of said, yeah. I said, who are you?
And of course, as you can imagine, the room went silence
as it. That's a deep question to ask.
So how about another question that maybe is not so
challenging? What's the meaning of life?
And again, you know, you could hear the pin drop.
So I said, maybe the meaning of life is the meaning you give it.
Maybe that's something you agree.
That's what I believe that mean. The meaning of my life is the
meaning I give it, and the meaning I give my life right now
is it's an opportunity as challenging as it is for me.
And I know this is very self indulgent.
I'm talking a lot about myself here and I appreciate you
listening. But maybe in you listening to
what I'm saying, it'll maybe help you to look at where you
are differently because where you are isn't who you are.
Yes, I am a widower. Do I want to be a widower?
No, of course not. I would want nothing more than
for my wife to be here. I miss her like, like I've never
missed anything. I don't think of all the things
you could think you could miss in your life that you like, a
cup of coffee or, I don't know, chocolate or whatever it is in
your life is you. Do I really miss that or miss a
person? I miss so many people that
aren't here anymore. I miss my dad, I miss my mum and
this number of my friends that aren't here anymore.
Now it's not a competition to say who wins, who you miss the
most. But of course I miss my wife.
She was incredible and I married her, not for a day or a week,
but it was for the rest of my life.
But I tell you, of all the people I know, all the people
I've ever met in my life who I've known personally, who
didn't let where she was define who she was, What do I mean by
that? When you're not given long to
live, when you know that you're facing death and you still say
I'm not accepting this. I'm not accepting where I am
because it is not who I am. And that's what this whole
journey has done for me. It has really made me think
about who I am and what is really important.
And of course, it's difficult. And for anyone out there that's
lost someone, I love you and I appreciate you and my thoughts
are with you. I met a man yesterday in the
hotel, very successful person who's come from nothing.
Who made a business from selling fish and sold it for millions.
And then his son has copied him and built an even bigger
business. And we were talking and then we
realised we knew some of the same people.
And he told me his wife died a few years ago.
And you see this common humanity of humans when we come together
and we care for each other, what we can do for each other.
Isn't that amazing? What we can do for each other,
isn't that just the most amazing thing that you can be there for
someone? You can love someone because,
you know, I think, I believe deep down humans we're just a
couple of things apart from matter and molecules and atoms.
And I just think we're love. I think humans are love.
As I really, I said that yesterday to a group that was
predominantly men and I see them are green.
We are just love. And as I reflect back on the
work that I've done for the last five years at least about future
self and now have a renewed awareness around that because I
know and we've seen this in studies where you put people in
fMRI machines and you wire their brains up and you ask them to
think of themselves. We see a region of the brain
light up. We ask people to think of a
stranger. We see a different region of the
brain light up. We ask people to think of a of a
straight someone in the future, like a year in the future, and
what we see is the stranger part of the brain lights up.
People don't really identify if I said what are you doing
tonight or tomorrow or next week?
Maybe you have an idea, maybe that in your mind exists, but to
helping people see a future self they want to go out and create,
I think is one of the most powerful thing as a coach you
can understand if you're coaching someone, you want
someone to come on a journey or you want to go on their journey
with them. However you look at it, the word
coach comes from a coach and horses, right?
So you ask somewhere you want to go somewhere where do you want
to go and wherever you want to go, What does that look like
where you've gone? You want to be slimmer, fitter
and healthy. You want to build a business.
What does that look like? Well, who's the person that's
done it? And, and helping people realize
that that person already exists. But now I realize that that
journey of becoming your future self for me personally, the way
I look at it is so much easier when you know who you are
already because who you are already.
And that's what I have to thank massively for Doctor Ray is to
really encourage me to stop. And we will continue to have
more conversations around this because we've really enjoyed
spending time together talking about this.
And next week, we will record a few more podcasts to share with
you. And if you're one of those
people that wants to continue that journey of self,
discovering the essence of who you are and bringing that into
the world. See, as challenging as it's
been, I am in some respects better than ever.
I am a better speaker in some respects.
I'm happier than ever. Which sound crazy to people.
It doesn't mean I don't have true really challenging moments
like coming back in my home, which I'm here for a few days.
I have a beautiful picture of my wife with the Angel wings and I,
I see her and I, I miss her. And you know, today, right now,
I'm actually looking at my phone because I've got this ring thing
on it where if someone rings, I've got a really special
delivery coming today. And it's, it's really, really,
and it almost didn't not look like it was coming.
And I have to tell you what this is like, one of my heroes is
Michael Jordan. Someone asked me yesterday, why,
why do you love Michael Jordan so much?
And I told him when I was at university, one of my friends
had a poster that was very wide. It wasn't very high, but it was
wide. It was Michael Jordan's arms.
And I was holding a basketball in one arm, one hand.
And I told who I said, who is this?
Because I didn't know who he was.
And he told me. And then just by chance,
basketball was on television here in the UK on Channel 4.
And I used to watch, I used to watch him.
And I thought this guy because I was amazed by I was studying
sports science, I was really into sport and I became obsessed
by this person. I've been obsessed with him ever
since. Right now I'm wearing a Michael
Jordan T-shirt, Michael Jordan top.
I'm wearing Michael Jordan tracksuit bottoms.
I am all over Jordan. And I collected every shirt that
Michael Jordan wore, every single shirt from being at
school to highs to university to playing for America for wearing
23, wearing 45, wearing 9 for the USA team.
I mean, look, this might be boring the pants off you, but I
collected every shirt. And you know what?
All of those shirts were just gathering dust in a bag
somewhere. And I just said to my wife, I
said, hammer, you know what? I'd love it if you could help me
with this because my wife became a quilter.
See who my wife was was a very intentional human being who
could create. She was an amazing creator, but
it was crazy what she went through because it was only
through having a brain tumor in 2011 game not been given long to
live, making this incredible recovery, refusing to accept,
refusing to accept that what she was facing, refusing to accept
it. And it's amazing because through
that she decided and I never forget that when she today she
told me, she said I want to get this machine.
It's got a long arm quilting machine.
You know, it's a serious expensive piece of kit that she
could start quilting. And it was amazing what she did.
She was known as the bis bespoke quilter.
So people would send her like Liverpool shirts.
One lady, a lady called Anne Gash, had collected a liver,
bought a Liverpool shirt for her son every year from the year of
1 and Hannah made a quilt from every single shirt all the way
up to 18. She made quilts from people that
have passed away from the shirts that the wife had kept, the
shirts of the husband. She made so many amazing things
and some of you are lucky enough in this world to have some of
her work. But the last job that she wanted
to do was to make this quilt, this Michael Jordan thing into a
quilt. But all she was able to do was
cut them up. That was all, that was all she
was able to do. But she had amazing people
around her. That's what I'm waiting for.
I'm waiting for the postman to bring it, to bring it to me.
I'm waiting. I'm looking right now on the
phone which is showing outside my front door.
And hopefully he'll be here soon because her friend Sarah.
Who lives locally? To us, Hannah reinvented
herself. It's a crazy story.
I mean, it's a story of common humanity.
It's a story of someone facing something difficult.
Hannah not only made quilts, but she wanted to teach people how
to cook. She wanted to teach people how
to make things. So Sarah, who had a sewing shop
near where we live, they became friends.
Hannah started teaching classes in there.
Hannah became sick. I just, what was that maybe two
years ago now, a year and a half ago and she wasn't able to teach
and that's all she want. Not many things she wanted to
do. But then we went to Germany,
which is what we were doing this time last year.
But we were going backwards and forwards to Germany and she was
fighting to live and she made an incredible recovery.
She was not where she was. Where she was was not who she
was. She was a fighter, she was a
creator. She sewed it all together and
then we sent it to a few different people who were going
to quilt it, but they wouldn't quilt it because it was just too
thick. It wasn't something they felt
comfortable doing. And then two amazing people, Liz
and Peter from Pinhole Quilting, I think that's the name of their
business, who Hannah bought her quoting machine from.
They became really good friends. She quilted it yesterday.
She got to the one of her colleagues got to the post
office and it was too late. They said we can't post it you,
it's too late. But with a bit of persuasion, I
didn't think it was now going to come until maybe Monday and
maybe I'll be gone to America. So I wouldn't see it till I got
back. But it's coming and I'm waiting
and I'm looking. I'm sure you can imagine it's
going to be quite emotional, opening up this thing the Hammer
started and all these other people put their energy into.
Because I see that humans have just such an opportunity to make
a difference to other people's lives.
And I've always prided myself on that, maybe for years, not even
knowing that that's what I was doing, just what my parents
showed me how to do, which was to be kind, to listen, to learn.
I'm not perfect, but this whole experience has really given me a
deeper sense of who I am. Who are you?
I'd love to help you and support you and you just realizing how
flippin amazing you are and maybe stop looking outside of
yourself and go on that journey within.
And it's not always the easiest journey, but it's a wonderful
journey. And I look at people perhaps
thinking me and watching me over the last three days.
You're talking to everyone. Why are you doing this?
Because it's an honour to be in people's lives.
It's an honour to listen. It's an honour.
What an honour. Because one day I'll be gone and
one of the things will be left is these podcasts.
This is part of my legacy and I just want to thank you for
listening. But I also just encourage you
just to stop and just realize just how freaking awesome you
really are. You know, this young lady who I
know is talking to me about not being intelligent and, you know,
not being having gone to university and you know that
kind of, I'm less than. There's no one who's less than
or more than anybody else. We are all equal.
I am the people's coach and I know that.
I know that no one is better than anyone else.
Everyone has a right to be here. God, does the world need so many
of us to be more loving and kind and look to be there for each
other, as Gandhi said, to be the change that you want to see in
the world. He knew deep down who he was,
but he also knew who he had to become in becoming that better
version of himself. I want to thank you for
listening to this and allowing me to be just real, real.
And thank you, Doctor Ray, for encouraging me to do it, because
I wouldn't have done this if you hadn't have encouraged me to do
it. So if you are listening to this
wherever you are, feel free to reach out to us whether it's on
Instagram or LinkedIn and tell us who are you and how can we
help you? Massive thanks to all of you,
wherever you are in the world. I I have so much love for you
and I'm looking forward to learning and growing with you.
Lots more conversations to have. Thank you for listening.
And if there's one thing I'd love you to take away from this
conversation, it's this. Where you are isn't who you are.
Life will take all of us through seasons we never expected.
Some will bring us joy, others will bring us heartbreak.
But beneath every circumstance is the person you truly are, and
that person is definitely worth discovering.
If this episode has resonated with you, I'd encourage you to
spend a few moments today simply stopping, stepping back, reflect
and ask yourself, who am I beneath everything that's
happening in my life right now? And as always, thank you for
being a part of this journey. Feel free to follow us on
LinkedIn, the Stop to Think newsletter.
Follow Doctor Ray and myself on LinkedIn or on Instagram.
But until next time, keep being you.