26 Apr, 2022

Pete Cohen  0:01

Happy, beautiful, amazing day. It's Pete Cohen. It is the Future Self podcast and today's podcast we're talking about rethinking the importance of stopping, rethinking, reevaluating, repositioning, and getting re energized about who we are and where we are going. I will see you after the theme tune greater things that are expecting some.

Pete Cohen  0:51

Happy beautiful day. Thank you so much for joining me for the Future Self podcast. Everything we do is about the future, every single thing that we do, and I've been podcasting now for six years and we've been launching a podcast every day, not every day. That would be interesting. Every week, sometimes twice a week for six years. We've been extremely consistent with what we do. And everything that we do is simply about helping people look at life with a fresh pair of eyes. I think we all know deep down that we don't really change when we are told what to do. How many people do you know that like being told what to do? If I said to all of you, hey, go upstairs and tidy your room. How many of you would immediately jump up and go? That's me. I'm jumping upstairs. I'm tidying my room because Pete Cohen told me to it's unlikely but if I told you that tidy new room every single day at a particular time of day would lead to you becoming a millionaire. in one year's time. You probably think I was crazy, but just imagine you believe me. How many of you would go okay, I'm going to tidy my room. It's absolutely fascinating how I think in most people, there is a rebel. Would you not agree? There's a rebel inside all of us that basically doesn't want to be told. That kind of wants to do things our way. As Frank Sinatra would say, I did it my way would you like to be able to look back one day and say, You know what? I did it my way. I worked out. Really who I was I stopped and looked at life with a fresh pair of eyes. Let's be honest, there's probably never been a more important time. than that right now than to stop and look at what's going on. Our world is at war once again. And if we don't stop and kind of look at what's going on, then I think well, what do you think happens? History. That's it. You've got it. History definitely has a habit of what what is history have a habit of doing? History has a habit of repeating itself. And rather than looking at the history of humanity, I want to look at the history of you. Now you are a part of history, but what part of history do you want to have? Because today in this podcast, I want us to kind of rethink the model that we're currently using ourselves. It's all very well, for us to look outside of ourselves and look at everything else that's wrong, rather than looking at ourselves. And when you look at yourself, what do you see? What do you see in you? When you look at yourself? Are you aware of of of the greatness in you? Are you aware of that? The greater things that are stuck inside my head? Are you aware of the great things that are stuck in you or are you aware of the things that are wrong? The things that aren't working? I'm really curious, I'm really curious about the experience of being you. And if we don't stop then what happens if we don't stop then history repeats itself, our history keeps repeating itself. Now, on the 20th of March last year, my mum passed away she left this earth and she had a massive impact on my life huge if it wasn't for her. There's no way I would be who I am today. Now, you might think repeat that's pretty obvious because you wouldn't be alive. Yes, I get that. But what I'm talking about is the lessons that she taught me. She taught me some great lessons of how not to do things, but she taught me in the main How to Be a Good, humane human being. She taught me one of the most important lessons and this is it. There's an answer for everything. Yes, she did. Tell me Pete, you have an answer for everything. But she also showed me that there is an answer to everything and she showed me this from a very early age. My mum was a serial diet. I don't know how many of you have ever been on a diet or maybe your mums or dads or your friends or family. I just remember watching my mum trying to find a solution to the challenge that she had about her weight.

Pete Cohen  5:21

And I can remember I remember her hoarding all of the diet information that she had all these diet classes that she went on Weight Watchers Slimming World, or even remember she went on this diet called AIDS where they were these like little fudge things that you were in between meals. She went on the Israeli army diet. I mean, you name it, she'd been on it, and she'd lose weight and put it back on again. And I didn't know what was going on. But she was looking for a solution for that for years. And I don't know why that was maybe why I became a personal trainer. But when I became a personal trainer, you can imagine that most people had an issue with their weight and they wanted to lose weight and lose ended up maybe losing but they ended up losing weight but obviously feeling like a loser and then going back to what they were doing before because that's what human beings tend to do. Right? Isn't that fascinating? When you think that's one of the most fascinating things about human beings how ridiculously predictable we are. Now I've been watching the Star Wars movies in the right way round as opposed to watching the fourth film first, which came out in 1977. Because the fourth film came out first the fifth film came out second, the sixth film came out third, and then the it gets so confusing, but I've been watching them in order, right and I've actually seen for the you know, you see in 1977 Han Solo, and then you see him in the last couple of one the last film is dead. He's not really dead, but the actor, you know what I mean? And you see that he's still the same person in terms of, you know, 50 years or 40 years on he's still scavenging and being a bit of a smuggler. And you see this Can't you see it in films and I think we see it in ourselves, which would you not agree? Would you not agree? I'm just really curious for people that are listening. Who will you be next year? Who will you be the following year? Who will you be the year after that? Especially if you want to make any jumps. I think it's so important that we've just stopped and we rethink about the model, the models that we are choosing to move through our world. And I'm not talking about anything external. I'm talking about us internally. Let's stop for a moment. Let's pause. Let's take our minds what's going on in Europe at the moment just for a moment and look at ourselves. Because I think it's not learning from experience. It's reflecting on experience. And if you want to make the jump to something the jump to where if you know that yeah, you know, there are some gaps in your life right now. Yeah. Mind. mind. Mind. I mean, are you aware of some gaps in your life are you are you aware of maybe some areas in your life that you want to improve? And really, I'm curious, what are those areas we know for most people most of the time it would be their health. Most people would like to make improvements with their health like, I would like to have better movement in my right leg. Right now after having snapped my Achilles last year, but that's not happening for me. No way, Jose, whoever Jose is that that's up to Pete Cohen to do something about that right. And it's very easy to just not do it. You know, what fascinates me I was talking to some people the other day about stretching you know, with our stock one start one challenge that we have one of my stops sorry, one of my starts is to stretch every day for 60 minutes. That's that's a big commitment right? But I can do that. And I'm making some headway, but what was it that kind of made me decide to do that? What made me decide to start stretching every day is I was in really inflexible, and it had to get so bad that I couldn't turn my neck to the left, because it's so tight. And my hamstrings, and quads were just so tight. It's fascinating, right? I'm the only person here is I'm still amazed and fascinated by the experience of being me that I have to experience excessive amounts of discomfort and pain to make me change. itself fascinates me. But it's only been over the last few years that I've decided to build a different relationship with the person I am committed to becoming. And who are you committed to becoming? How strong is that commitment? Because I do believe that we can either be driven by pain and suffering, or we can be driven by inspired inspiration and possibility or both.

Pete Cohen  10:19

Or both. And I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm sure I'm not the only person in this world right now that realize I'd been at war with myself for most of my life. And again, we can look outside of ourselves and look at the war that is going on. And I think we all need to step up and make some decisions about this. Just like with COVID. I think COVID was a very kind of similar thing of people just waking up and going. This is really happening. But what part do you want to play? Do you want to be passive around all of this or do you want to be active? What do you want to cultivate within yourself? This is the thing I'm really interested in the cultivators. we rethink what we're doing. We have a unique opportunity to actually be the change that the world wants to see. Now, we all know who said that right? We know that Gandhi said that to be the change that you want to see in the world and what one man did but he didn't do it on his own. Obviously, he gave loads of other people the vision of possibility of what could be achieved with peace. Now I'm just really curious as to rethink the peace that we could find in ourselves. Like I had a massive wake up call over the weekend and I'm just gonna lay it out here and just let you know what happened. So we had a memorial service, I say a memorial service. It wasn't it was just a gathering of my mom's friends. And this was on Saturday, my mom passed away a year ago. And my brother who's just my brother, who's four years older than me, who's my brother is amazing, right? He's one of the greatest, kindest human beings on earth. He's dedicated his life to helping others. He's a psychotherapist. And he's also my best friend and he's my brother. And it was amazing the event that we put on so he called me on the day and said, if you've got any photos or videos that you could, you could bring along and I kind of said Yeah, because I've at a big family events have always kind of collected stuff. And you know, on camera, and made films about this. I've made films of very significant things in my life. Many of you who listened to the podcast know that when my wife was given 18 months to live 12 years ago, the doctor who was treating her in Houston, Texas was being taken to court and if he'd been convicted, then they would have taken my wife off the treatment. So I just thought, you know what, I'm going to film this. I'm going to film all of this. And I made a documentary about it, because I just thought, I need to document this. And hundreds of 1000s of people or maybe not hundreds of 1000s but 1000s of people have actually seen that. And I'm really pleased that I made it because it really gave a lot of people the opportunity to kind of look at life differently. And to see the lengths that I would go to find a solution. I'm not I don't think I'm the only person that would go to great lengths. I'm no I'm not the only person. But what was driving me was desperation. It was an inspiration. I was being driven by desperation. But I've also in my life always been driven by enthusiasm and possibility and you know, the opportunity to film something. So I filmed my mum and dad's 50th wedding anniversary. My both my parents aren't here anymore, and I filmed my mum. Their 50th wedding anniversary, my mom's 70th birthday. And I took some of these videos with me and we had there was a big projector in this place. This was on Saturday. Lots of my mom's friends were there and I put up some films in the background and just to kind of let let it play with no volume, just you know, images and film in the background. And the reason I tell you this is because there was at one point I was looking on the screen I was thinking Hang on. What they're watching here is exactly the the room that we're in now.

Pete Cohen  14:26

And it was 10 years previous to where to the day that we're in that room celebrating my mum and dad's 50th wedding anniversary and my mum is not a speaker My dad loves to speak but my mum and my mum actually got up and she started speaking now can you imagine this? This is when this whole thing is going on. So I say excuse me, everybody. Let's just watch this. So every then everyone is watching my mum talking about my dad. And then my dad standing up and talking about my mum and lots of people in this audience. Were actually in the audience on Saturday. They were there 10 years before and I didn't really have much of a time to kind of take in what was going on because we were still kind of entertaining everybody that was there. I could see my nieces. My three nieces were very upset because they were very close. To my parents. And then the event finished and we drove home. Now how many of you have ever heard of a road called the M? 25? Right? It's quite a famous road in the UK. You want to be very careful on that road because anything can happen on that road. And something did happen and there was an accident and we were stuck and didn't move for an hour, turn the engine off and just sat there now I'm not a big fan of traffic. Right. I'm not a big fan of traffic. I don't know anyone who is but most people I know. It wouldn't be their thing of choice to do. I don't like to be stuck for me being stuck is always a signal to act. It's a signal to do something, but I couldn't really do anything but I was feeling frustrated. Because I didn't want to be where I was. After an hour we were able to start moving again. And then guess what happened? The car broke down. And we're on the 25 this is a dangerous road. So we pull over and I'm thinking to myself, hang on a second. I've got breakdown cover. Because I had a car. I had a Mercedes that was on a lease and I gave that back I had my mom's car and then I swapped my mom's car with my brother's car. I've got my brother's car. It's like it's like, I don't know, it's quite an old car. I've been doing much driving recently, like many people around the world, and I thought no, I'm gonna break down cover and then the batteries on my phone and my wife's phone had run out. And it was scary because you're not supposed to be in the car you're supposed to be supposed to. If you if you're on a dangerous road, get out. But I could charge the phone it was quite complicated. But every single thing that you could think could go wrong kind of went wrong was going wrong at that moment in time and I don't mind telling you I just lost it. I just absolutely last I mean, I didn't go crazily lose it. But my wife kept kept her call. Whereas I was just like, You know what? And I regret you know what I did? You know, but what was really interesting and I'll give you the conclusion of that in a moment, but I just wanted you to take a moment because I wanted to share this with you. This was my mum speaking 10 years prior to her passing away, just listen to what she's saying here.

Unknown Speaker  17:37

And we've got lots of some of you don't even know each other although we've made a few introductions already happened. But you've all been very special to us in lots of different ways at different times in our lives. Here I Go Again, stop it you were not miss Anthea, didn't you? Want to tell me to fish fingers? Yes. You know Asti greasy fish fingers, a new

Unknown Speaker  18:04

cup and then you use your friends thank you to this man sitting next to me the best friend chatting and loving me through our ups and downs for always being there for me. Okay, I'm now waiting. I didn't say anything.

Pete Cohen  18:43

So I don't know how much of that you could hear my mum was just saying it the the end there at our wedding. I didn't say anything. And my mum really wasn't the sort of person to get up and speak but she was speaking. And it was at the same venue as we were on Saturday. And I showed this and you could see it really touched a lot of people but I didn't really have an opportunity to take in what was actually going on. You know just to reflect on the experience. We don't learn from experience. We don't learn from experience. I don't believe we do. I think we learn if only if we reflect. We reflect on experience the experience of us and that's what I'm asking everyone to just stop if you want to just pause and if you want to advance in your life. I think it's really important to kind of slow down and the reason I'm telling you this whole story was yeah, we broke down and I did get out of the car and we did join a break down a company. There and then then I got back in the car and start the car up and the warning light had gone off and I thought okay well maybe the cars actually okay now so I got back in the car we got back in the car I said hander I think we're fine. Let's just let's let's go I'll just stay in the in the in this lane here right by the you know the lane to if you were broken down and we drove home. Now again, why why am I telling you this? Well, as I reflect on that experience, I realized a few things. What a waste of time it was getting, getting really frustrated and upset, angry at the situation. Because the car was alright anyway. What a waste of time. And I was talking to one of my mentors last night about this and I was explaining to him that I really feel like the universe was talking to me. Really feeling like my mom and my dad and other people that have passed away. Were kind of sending me a very clear message to stop slow down. Find peace in myself

Pete Cohen  21:06

and then since then, I've found a piece of myself which I haven't felt for a long time. No need to rush there are lots of things to do but what's really important versus what's urgent. And that's why I ask everyone who's listening to this just to take a moment and think about actually what is really important. And that's up to you to decide. Because I'm not here to tell you what you should and shouldn't do. It's it's none of my business. But my business is definitely being the people's coach, being the person that helps people just look at life with a fresh pair of eyes. Because there's never been a more important time, I believe, than right now today to rethink, to reposition to reevaluate, and maybe make some different decisions. Because as Jim Rohn said, all those years ago, the things that separate us from all other animals is choice. So this podcast really is about rethinking rethinking the model that you're using. Because I think we have a choice we can we can speed up or we can slow down and as I've said I don't think we learn from experience. I think we learn from reflecting on our experience. We can keep on the hamster wheel. I can keep on that hamster wheel but I've stepped off. We can do what we've always done and always get what we've always got

Pete Cohen  22:53

what got us here is probably going to take us to a very similar place. Rather than doing more and just staying busy, I think it's time to step back. What do you reckon? Give yourself an opportunity to rethink and perhaps listening to this is just part of that process. But as my mentor said to me yesterday, he said it starts off well forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for what you did to yourself and I thought that was really important as well because I was giving myself a bit of a hard time about it. Mainly for my wife because she bared the brunt of the war that was in me on Saturday night. She was exhausted yesterday. And I know I was partly responsible for that. How we feel affects everything. If we wake up to the stories that we're telling ourselves, we can expand our awareness we can give ourselves more time. We know that when we give ourselves some time when we step away, that's where our creative juices can really take off. We get out of our daily routine. We take like a mini retirement, you can take a mini retirement for a day. If you really want to kind of I don't know what Grant Cardone would say Tenex your life then I really think it's important to step back. I honestly believe that we're not kept up and kept from our goals from obstacles. I think we just kept from our goals by a clear a path to lesser goals. The shiny object syndrome with the people that I coach that are a part of Mi365 Elite Pro we were talking recently just about distraction. How it's so easy for us to get distracted, right? So easy. And the word distraction comes from the same root as the word traction. And that comes from a Latin word Tahira which means to be pulled. What's pulling us? Are you being pulled by who you think you are? Or are you being pulled by the person that you want to be? Now if you're listening to this, I'd say you're a leader. You know the fact that you've been listening to this for however long you know, and we know leaders are learners. Right? Leaders are learners. We love to learn the self assessment. Sometimes we just need to go back to go forwards. There's actually a term called essentialism, which is about it's about kind of doing less, but doing it better. I think now is the time for us to act based on our on our desired future circumstances. You know the person that we actually want to be to be an example. Because right now what's going on in the world I'd love to know from you. What is this signaling to you? If the world was giving you a message? I believe that I was getting a very clear message the other day and I'm very glad I got that message. Because I found something in myself that the greatness it was always there. But I just needed something to happen. Which happened which really just has made a massive, massive difference. The greater things that are stuck in SAM my hay so what is stuck inside you? Right, the things that are stuck in Sam and what is the future that you're committed to? Because I'm ready. The question is, are you What's your biggest takeaway from what you've just heard?

Pete Cohen  26:39

Because this podcast is absolutely committed to helping you work out the future that you want to go out and create and to find peace in yourself. Can finding peace in ourselves can cultivating peace in ourselves, make a difference. Now, if you don't believe me today, get really upset or frustrated or angry and then go and hang out with some people that you know really well and just see how long it takes for those people to go. What's wrong, they'll know that so quickly you don't even have to say anything. What have you cultivated some peace in yourself right now if you took a few moments to just find peace in you is that possible? Is that something that could be done? Could you take a few breaths could you go beyond the noise?

Pete Cohen  27:52

Could you breathe in peace? Peace of mind

Pete Cohen  28:02

could you give peace a chance

Pete Cohen  28:10

could you spread the energy of peace from the top of your head to the tips of your toes? From your toes? To your nose? Into your hands? Did you find peace in yourself? Could you take that feeling and could you double the feeling Could you be moved by peace? Could you give peace to others?

Pete Cohen  28:48

Can we be the difference? That's going to make the difference. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to the podcast and just let's all give peace a chance. Let's be the change that the world is asking us to make right now. We will see you next time for another Future Self podcast.