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What if the business you built isn’t who you are anymore? Here’s how to evolve without losing everything.

Samantha sits down with Martine Cohen to talk about self-leadership, inner alignment, and the invisible layers that hold coaches and consultants back from their next evolution.

They dive straight into the messy middle, where success doesn’t always feel like success, and identity gets tangled up with the business you’ve built.

Martine offers a powerful reframe: What if fear isn’t something to fight, but something to get curious about? What if success isn’t an outcome, but a side effect of living in alignment?

She shares tools for handling that 2 a.m. spiral, explains why fear and excitement feel exactly the same in the body (and how to choose which one leads), and breaks down what it really means to self-lead, especially when it’s time to pivot or let go of something that no longer fits.

If you’re a coach or consultant ready to step into deeper integrity with how you lead, serve, and grow, this conversation offers the kind of clarity that changes how you move through your business and life.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:

How to separate who you are from what you do (00:59)
A mindset shift to reframe fear to fuel your growth (04:47)
Untangling your identity from your business to unlock freedom, clarity, and your next aligned move (07:12)
Why your brain resists change and the simple questioning tool that helps you shift habits and mindset (15:17)
Quieting the 2 a.m. replay loop so your brain stops hijacking your sleep and focus (19:30)
Reprogramming hidden beliefs and subconscious patterns by surfacing them (24:14)
Shifting from blaming external circumstances to accountability and owning your mindset (35:50)

Want alignment as you scale? Let’s chat.

Your Business Feels Off and You Can’t Explain Why

Your Business Isn’t You (and That’s a Good Thing)

Fear Isn’t a Red Light. It’s a Clue

You Can’t Lead a Business While Abandoning Yourself

Your Mind Is Loud, But It’s Not Always Right

Alignment Isn’t a Luxury. It’s a Business Strategy

Your Business Feels Off and You Can’t Explain Why

So you’ve built the business, followed the plan, maybe even hit milestones that once felt like the dream. And yet, something feels off. You’re not burnt out exactly. You’re not lost, but you’re not quite you anymore either.

If you’ve ever looked around at the business you’ve built and thought, “Why doesn’t this feel as good as it’s supposed to?” you’re not alone. Trust me, I’ve been there. The important thing is, as early as now, you must realise that there’s nothing wrong with you.

Your Business Isn’t You (and That’s a Good Thing)

There’s something not a lot of people will tell you when you start out. The more you grow, the easier it is to mistake your business for your identity.

It’s subtle. It happens when you start thinking, “If this program fails, I fail.” Or, “If I pivot, what will people think of me?”

Before you know it, you’re running your business like your self-worth depends on it. This is the fastest way to get stuck, second-guess yourself, and start playing small.

You are not your offers. You are not your results. And you are definitely not the niche you picked two years ago.

When you unhook your identity from your business, you create space to evolve, to pivot, and to build from where you are now, not from who you used to be.

Fear Isn’t a Red Light. It’s a Clue

Fear is sneaky. It often shows up not because you’re doing the wrong thing, but because you’re stepping toward something new.

The truth is, fear and excitement feel the same in the body. Your brain just assigns a meaning. And most of the time, it chooses the “safer” one: fear.

But what if it’s actually excitement masked as doubt? What if that nervous flutter is your next aligned move trying to get your attention?

You don’t always have to fight fear, you know. You just have to stop letting it drive. So what could you do? Get curious, ask questions, and use fear as information, not instruction.

You Can’t Lead a Business While Abandoning Yourself

One of the most overlooked forms of burnout isn’t exhaustion. It’s actually disconnection. You’re doing the things, showing up in the calls, ticking the boxes, but you’re quietly drifting from your own sense of clarity and power.

And that usually starts with one small but critical mindset shift: forgetting that you’re allowed to change.

Your purpose can expand and your business model can evolve. You’re not locked into past decisions. Self-leadership means staying in relationship with yourself while the strategy catches up, not the other way around.

Your Mind Is Loud, But It’s Not Always Right

If you’ve ever had a 2 a.m. spiral where your thoughts are on repeat, you know this one. But remember, that voice in your head is not always the truth. It’s usually your brain doing what it’s wired to do – to protect you from the unknown.

Your brain doesn’t know the difference between real danger and discomfort. So it says things like, “This launch is going to flop,” or “No one wants what I offer anymore.”

It’s not because they’re facts, but because they’re familiar, predictable. And predictable always feels safer than new.

So start noticing your thoughts without letting them run the show. You don’t have to always believe everything you think.

Alignment Isn’t a Luxury. It’s a Business Strategy

I’m not talking about journaling your way to clarity or burning down what you’ve built. It’s about realising that real growth, the kind that actually feels good, starts from alignment.

When your internal voice is clear, your external results start to match. You attract better clients, you make braver decisions, and you create offers that feel like a full-body yes, not a “this should work” guess.

And from there, the business becomes something that serves you, not something you constantly have to serve.

ABOUT MARTINE COHEN

Martine Cohen is an author, speaker, and transformative coach dedicated to empowering individuals to lead themselves authentically, separate their identity from their emotions and thoughts, and make choices from a place of deep inner awareness and alignment. Martine’s work is rooted in the belief that true success comes from within, and she is passionate about guiding others to find ease, joy, and fulfillment by removing the layers that obscure their inner light. As both a lawyer and corporate leadership consultant, Martine is known for her ability to help high-achieving professionals navigate personal and professional transitions.

WHERE TO FIND MARTINE COHEN

Website: https://martinecohen.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinecohennml/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martine.cohen.73
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martinecohen_/

CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY

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Instagram @thesamriley

TRANSCRIPTION

Samantha Riley 0:03

Welcome to today’s episode of the Business Growth Lab I’m looking forward to today. So we’re going to touch on a topic that affects every single one of that and I can say from a high level, it’s mindset, but it’s so much more than that. So I’m welcoming Martine Cohen to the show today to chat about pretty much decision versus choice and what’s guiding you. So, Martine, welcome to the show.

Martine Cohen 0:27

Hi, Samantha, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Samantha Riley 0:31

I’m looking forward to this. We had a great chat in the green room just now. We don’t know where this interview is going to go, and I think that’s so magical, because we’re going to go down rabbit holes. I can tell already, 100%, that’s what I love doing. Let’s start off with sort of what brought you here because you were a lawyer. What inspired you to get started on what you’re doing now?

Martine Cohen 0:59

So it’s more than inspired. It’s the universe showed me that this is where I needed to go next. And let me explain. You know, we all have that little voice inside of us that tells us where we need to go and what we can be. And sometimes we listen to it, and sometimes we don’t. And in my case, for a while, I had a fear of stepping into my shoes, really stepping into my shoes and embodying everything that I could be in. A lot of us have that at various points in our lives, and so I was literally had a hit over the head, like the universe comes and hits you over the head and says, I’m sorry now you need to be you. And unfortunately, I was in a very serious car crash, some like a car crashed into me, and I had a very serious concussion, and it lasted a number of months. And during that time, I went through an entire introspective journey. I lost the use of my brain, and I was like, Oh, I felt like I was losing myself, because we associate and identify ourselves with our brain, with our achievements, with who you know, external things without realizing it, and that’s what ends up defining us, and we think we are that. So I didn’t work as an attorney. I thought I was an attorney, and I was meant to embody an attorney, and I loved law, and I still do love law. I love mental gymnastics and strategy, but that’s not who I am. That’s what I love doing, and this journey that I was brought on when my brain was dysfunctional and just didn’t get in my way. I had no thoughts. I went inward and I started realizing all the fears we have, everything the limiting beliefs, everything that holds us back from being who we truly are meant to be, and how we can expand and be not different or change, just more of ourselves. Right? I learned that and I and I realized this is not just for me, this is just for the world. And I started giving, you know, sessions and little classes in my living room. And from there, people would come to me and say, I think you can help me, or I think you can help my mom, or I think, and then I was like, oh, okay, let me start coaching. And really, I was shown the way. And it is my clients who, at one point were saying, you have to write this in a book, or this, you know, awareness, or this kind of aha moment. And at the end, at some point in time, I stopped resisting, and I was like, Well, why not? And so I wrote a book, and now I speak and I do workshops, and I’m a leadership and life strategies coach and speaker and author, and I feel that law was my passion, and this is my calling, and I feel privileged both.

Samantha Riley 3:35

You know, what I really love about this story is that, and this is a theme that comes up over and over when I interview people is that we don’t make this decision and go, Alright, we’re going to change perspective, and now we’re going to go and do this, and all of a sudden we’ve got this, this huge business that’s, you know, one funnel away, and we’ve got 100 clients. It’s this like, Oh, we’ve got this little whisper. And, you know, we just try this thing. You said that you said that you started running little workshops in your living room. Tony Robbins did the same thing. And I remember when I first started business coaching, I was actually a health and wellness coach, and people were asking me about how to start a business when we were in the when we were in retreat. And I remember going to my business coach at the time and saying, I’ve got all these business coaching clients, like, what do you think I should do? And like, from the inside, I was confused, and he kind of looked at me, went, I can’t believe you’re even asking me this. Like, it makes perfect sense. This is, this is your thing. It’s and, and it’s, it finds us. We don’t go and find it. And it’s just following those breadcrumbs and having the trust that the universe is putting in front of you for a reason.

Martine Cohen 4:47

Yes, and I would add to that courage, because it’s okay to have the fears. It’s okay to bring them along, but just put them in the trunk. Don’t let them drive right? Because usually our fears drive us, and then we sort of feel like we. Have to answer to them or be limited by them, or we have to fight them or suppress them. And the idea is, no it’s okay. We will have fears. It’s the way we’re made. It’s part of our DNA, but it’s what you do with them, and it’s how much you allow them to take charge that makes a big difference, and what you understand them to be. There really are places inside of our body that just needs some extra compassion and TLC, it’s okay to it’s just not okay to say, I’m I’m going to listen to you and I’m going to stop until I’m not afraid anymore. But saying courage means I’m afraid and I’m doing it anyways, or maybe I’m doing it as I’m afraid, right? But often fear is also sort of saying, you might want to go there, but you don’t feel ready, or you don’t feel capable, or you fear too much or not enough. If you really disinterested to something, or it’s not your path, you’re not be afraid of it. You’re just not going to feel anything. You don’t feel drawn to it. So fear is something we’re drawn to, but for some reason we stop ourselves, or we feel stopped. But if we’re not drawn to it, we’re not afraid. So that’s something to remember, that fear is not necessarily something you need to stay away from, but you want to lean into it and get curious. I do that a lot for my clients. It turn your fear into curiosity. It’s a great brain hack that keeps your brain busy trying to figure things out and going to exploratory mode. But where the fear no longer paralyzes you,

Samantha Riley 6:21

I think I’ve heard that fear and excite? Is it excitement? Are the same in your the same feeling in your body, and that certainly helped me along the way, doing some things where I’m like, Okay, I’m feeling really fearful. But what if it was excitement and just kind of, I still feel fearful, don’t get me wrong, but like just trying to trick my brain from it’s two sides.

Speaker 1 6:46

It’s two sides of the same coin. The frequency is the same. It’s basically our understanding of a situation that’ll make it fear or excitement. Fear is something you’re going to move away from, and excitement is something that you’re going to lean into. But it’s the same frequency, so it’s really how to read a situation, and if our brain decides this is a fear moment or an excitement moment, but it’s the same unknown and the rest of the components are basically the same.

Samantha Riley 7:12

Before we dive deeper into that, I want to go back and touch on something, because I don’t want to miss this. You talked originally about you are, you weren’t an attorney like you said. I was not an attorney, but I was doing attorney things. I’ve paraphrased that. That’s not exactly what you said, but essentially, you know you we allow these things to define us, and I want to tap into this really quickly, because I’ve had this conversation a couple of times in the last two weeks with people that we do as business owners, like we’ve created this thing, and we’re so invested in it that we really are defined by I am this person. I do this thing. I feel these things. Success is who I am. And then something happens. You know, we were talking before about switching a niche, or it could be that we close down that business, and in actual fact, that was the conversation as business owners. When we close down a business, we can really lose our sense of identity and really lose who we are. You said that we’re so much more than our thoughts, I’d really love you to tap into this a little bit more, because this is something that affects so many of us.

Martine Cohen 8:25

Oh, absolutely, Samantha. So in reality, it can go even further than that. And sometimes we identify so much so with the business, not just our role in the business. So that if we close down the business, for example, we are a failure, right? It becomes this sort of ever encompassing situation where, if the business is thriving, that means I, as a human being, have value, and if the business has to be shut down or downsized or expanded, or whatever it is, it’s inherently, there’s something wrong with me, like I am now a failure. My life is a failure. I’m a failure. Not that the business didn’t work out, or that it was maybe the smartest thing to do to shut it down, to start something else. I mean, if you read any biographies, are the most externally successful people in the world, and I say externally, and I’ll get back to that minute they have. It’s not even that they’ve fallen and gotten back up. This is the only way to learn how to thrive. It’s the same way as a baby looks at walk, if you do not fall down, you cannot learn how to walk. There’s nothing wrong with falling down. It’s part of the process. But again, our brain needs to say, This is good, this is bad. So business thriving matches expectations, which are maybe completely unrealistic, but it doesn’t matter. Matches expectations. Great, good. Doesn’t matter if I feel good about it. I don’t feel good about it. Success, lack of success, something unexpected that goes in a different direction. I have to shut down the business. I have to downsize it. I have to move it somewhere else where I didn’t expect. I have to get less employees, more employees, whatever it is I’m having even trouble in it. We’re very outcome oriented instead of process vested. And so what we do and who we are are very different. What we do is a reflection of what speaks to us, what qualities we have, and that’s really how we should choose what we do, based on what am I good at, and what do I need to strengthen. Because at the end of the day, we’re here to grow and we’re here to help each other and to connect. This is what we’re put on earth here to do. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, if you built a business, if you didn’t, if you’re of service in one way, in another way, it won’t matter. What matters is, did it allow you room to grow? Did it really enhance your being? Did it make you go on a higher vibration and frequency, and were you able to help others and interact with other people? Because in human form. That’s what we can do. So not identifying with what you do to the point that it becomes who you are, not identifying with your thoughts to the to the point where it becomes what you are, but just understanding that you’re a whole being. And then you go out and get to choose what you’re going to do, and you can do it based on what aligns with you, what attracts you to it that as long as it’s healthy and the opportunities that it gives you to grow so often, we’ll close a business when there is no more growth for us. It’s just like sometimes you know you have a great friend when you were younger, but you just outgrow each other. There’s nothing wrong. Nothing happens. It just kind of almost happens organically, if you allow it. The same thing we know sometimes when it’s time to close a business. We know sometimes when it’s time to pivot, but we’re so afraid, and we so much need that control, because we’ve placed so much of our identity in it that we don’t do it, and then it’s harder later, and it’s okay to hear it. It’s okay, but it’s okay to also go inside of us and take up all that courage and say, I can do this, but for this fear, what would I do? Because that sometimes lets us know the next aligned step. But for this fear, but for this thought, but for this feeling, that’s when you can start. If you’re disconnected from your inner voice, because we don’t often hear it, that’s a great way to sort of get back in touch.

Samantha Riley 12:03

I mean, that’s certainly one way, if our business hasn’t gone well, but there is a flip side, and that is, there was a certain conversation I’d had with another two friends where all three of us had sold our businesses because they were, it was the opposite. They were successful, and it was, I remember having a conversation with one of them over dinner and us, and just flippantly, just said, Oh, in my previous life, when I was successful, and he looked at me, he’s like, What? He’s like, A, you’re still in the same the same life. A, B, you are still really successful. And see it only happened, like 12 months ago, like this it, but you know, in my head, I’d come compartmentalized all these pieces, and I think that’s what we do.

Speaker 1 12:46

We very much do. It’s sort of a It’s a survival, kind of protective mechanism that the brain does to keep things separate. But in reality, it prevents us from thriving, because it’s the brain trying to get used to a whole new situation that probably it wasn’t so ready for in some way or other, when we’re success. First of all is from the inside out. It’s not from the outside in. Success is when you’re aligned and you’re doing what allows you to grow, what makes you feel fulfilled with what allows you to have connections, what makes you happy, deeply happy, you’re successful. Now after that, go do whatever you want. Some things that you do will work out the way you intended. Some things that you do will not but they’ll show you something. So none of them are successes or failures. When you sell something, it’s like retiring from a job that you love, and you’re like, Okay, now who am I? Well, I’m the exact same person I was before, but now I have this notch under my belt of like, Wow. I sold a business that made it to that point where I could sell it. Let me not measure my success with that, whether lack of or success, but let me just say I’m good at getting a business to where I need to go. My success is mine. It’s internal, but I learned how to get a business to the point where I could sell it, and then I chose to sell it, that’s accurate, but it’s not as personal in the sense of an identity forming situation. And when we allow our identity to be who we are, not more than that, then we’re not attached to the outcome of something. Because even selling a successful business can be traumatizing and can sort of be destabilizing, just like, you know, empty nest, if your kids are growing up and they’re out of the house and they’re driving and you’re like, oh, what’s my purpose? Now, you know, I was a mom. I play a mom in real life. I am me who also has this hat and that hat and all the hats, and you can replace one hat with another, and that makes life interesting. So now that you’ve sold your business, what would you like to do?

Samantha Riley 14:50

So there’s, I love, I love this, that I am not this thing. I am not an attorney, I’m not a mom, I’m not a business owner. I am someone that does these things and it means this. So as we’re either removing layers or changing layers or shifting our mindset, what are some of the mental barriers that people might not even realise that they have?

Martine Cohen 15:17

Oh, absolutely, that’s a great question. So first and foremost, the brain hates change. Status quo for the brain means safety because it means known and known means a lack of danger, therefore you probably won’t die. That’s really how our brain works. It’s very it’s very primitive. So if we understand, the more we understand the way our mind and our brain works, the more we can talk it off the ledge, so to speak. And I do that with my brain as well. Your brain can be overwhelmed. But if you say my brain is overwhelmed versus I am overwhelmed, there’s a huge difference, because you don’t lose your footing, right? So one of the the, the the sort of mental things, is that your brain will resist all change, which is why, for example, it’s so difficult to start a new habit or to break one that you’re you’re you’re desperately trying to break. I mean, if it’s just up to you, just stop doing it. We’re done, right? But their brain’s like, but you’ve been doing this for so long, and it works. Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re miserable, if you don’t like it, but it works because you’re alive, so let’s not change anything. And we want to grow, and we want to expand, and the brain is like, but I want to keep you safe. It’s like a sort of like this hovering helicopter parent, right? That says, no, no, don’t go out of the house because you might get run over. But if I don’t go to the house, I can’t live, I can’t breathe, I can’t learn, I can’t go to school, I can’t evolve. So the first thing is to understand that, and the second thing is to say, Do I agree with my brain’s fear? Do I agree with this thought? We rarely question our thoughts. And another thing that I like to tell my clients and in my talks as well, we rarely think about our thoughts like you can evaluate a friendship, evaluate a document, you can evaluate anything of vacation, whatever you want, but you don’t evaluate the quality of your thoughts and say, Well, hold on a second. I really don’t like this line of thinking. It doesn’t align with me, it doesn’t make me feel good, and it’s not productive. So this is not the way I want to see the world, and this is not the way I want to think brain. You reprogram your brain because it’s very fluid and very elastic, thankfully. And so when you give it a certain thought, it’s like your smartphone, right? If you start giving it you know a certain direction in terms of search of whatever it’s going to think. It knows what you want, and then it’s going to anticipate what you want and give it to you. The brain works the exact same way. It’s going to anticipate what you want. So a person who starts having fears about something all of a sudden, your brain is going to show you everything that could go wrong, but like everything, a person who’s comfortable in a certain area, they don’t even see what could go wrong, and if it goes wrong, they trust that they have the tools, you know, to sort of deal with it, and they’re okay with that. And we each have that in different in different sec, sec segments of our life, in different areas, we’re very comfortable in one area and we’re completely uncomfortable in another. And so if we have the skill set to be comfortable in one area, it means we also have it in the other but it’s a process. It’s a step by step, and the first thing is questioning. Questioning is non threatening to the brain, because it’s not fighting the brain. It’s not having one thought, one thought for another that sort of, like, start this kind of like, you know, boxing match in the ring. It’s rather sort of becoming curious when we ask a question, the brain’s like, oh, wait a minute. I never even thought of this. I never even thought of, well, do I agree with my thought? Many times I do that my client, well, I can’t handle it. I have like, you know, 2am I want to be asleep, and I have all this incense and chatter. Well, do you do you agree? Do you agree to have this breach of your quiet and your inner peace, like if your neighbor at two o’clock in the morning came to knock at your door? Would you be happy. No, well, this is what your thoughts are doing, right? And you’re like, it’s just when you’re lying down in bed and ready to go get into that deep, sort of almost rem and then all of a sudden, your entire day plays in your head. It’s like, really, now we don’t have to stand for it. We don’t but we don’t question it. We kind of feel that we because it’s us with us. We kind of feel that we just have to, like, we don’t have a choice, and we’re kind of stuck, and we kind of like, Fine, you know, sort of like, succumb to it, or kind of resign ourselves to it, as opposed to be like, Okay, no, no, I don’t agree with this thought. So why are you coming to me? I’m aligned with positive thinking. I’m aligned with, I want more courage. I want more of this. We need to tell our brain what we want, because it’s supposed to be our best assistant, but it’s not in charge.

Samantha Riley 19:30

Wow, I love that. Can you go into that like shifting that negative talk into that positive talk a little bit more? Because I had never even considered for a minute that at 2am, which I know very well, that I could say, no, not now, Josephine.

Speaker 1 19:51

Exactly. I’m glad that your thought process has a name. I love it. Yes, the first thing to do is and. It’s a little bit, you know, it’s not that easy to do, but it’s to create some space between the thoughts and ourselves. And just like we are not our company and we are not our job, and we are not the rules that we have in life, we are also not our thoughts. And if we understand that, we are not our thoughts and it’s our brain, sort of like unwinding or being overwhelmed from the day and letting loose and not knowing what to do, and just going all over the place and saying, I need to reel you back in. So if we approach it with curiosity and compassion, like the two Cs, so saying, like my brain must be very overwhelmed, because it is created for the way that people used to live 1000s of years ago, but it needs to be living in 2025 with waking up in the morning and already being overly saturated, because that’s the reality that we live in. We don’t have mind space. It’s not time that we don’t have. It’s mind space, and we think that it’s time, but it’s mind space. We don’t have the availability, the emotional or intellectual availability to deal with things, because we’re so overly stimulated by everything, everything seems like it’s happening in our backyard there, we have to filter way too many things, and our for our brain, it has to go through all those things because it’s afraid that if it misses out on something, you can be in danger. So it’s the protector. So there are way too many things for it to do, and we need to help our brain manage life in 2025 we’re fine, but our brain is not and our brain is the generator of all those thoughts, those feelings of anxiety, of stress, that are at levels that I don’t think humanity has ever seen, no and that’s because it’s overly stimulating, and you see it in like five year old kids who suffer from anxiety. It’s like at five years old, what are you supposed to be anxious about? It’s it’s sad actually, but it’s because it’s just overly stimulated and overly bombarded by everything. So if we understand that, first of all, we can have rituals that help quieten our mind and not to worry. If your mind is not quiet, expect it. Your mind is overly saturated. So what can you do to help your mind be your best assistant, rather than thinking you are your mind, or like I thought, I am my brain. My brain is me, and that’s it. It’s to say it, you know, it’s like, you know, I don’t know if you’re punched in the arm and it’s throbbing, it’s not you that’s throbbing. It’s your arm. You’re going to put ice. You’re going to do something to help that part of your body. Let’s do something to help our brains so that it can relax, it can be quiet, because if it’s quiet and relaxes, we can do what we need to do, and it can help us along, right? So looking at it more as a partnership, rather than as the boss or who we are, we’re not our brains, and that’s something I learned when my brain was not dysfunctional, but after a while, I felt like myself again. So I was like, well, if my brain’s not working, but I’m feeling like me eventually, then what is this awareness? What is this consciousness that even knows that my brain is dysfunctional, because I would not be able to have this conversation with you? But I had a lot of inner awareness about my fears and what was going on inside of me. I just wasn’t afraid to feel my fear. We are very afraid of fear more than anything, so we’ll do anything to stay away from that. But what if we weren’t afraid of fear? We just look at it, face it, and see, do I agree with this fear? Do I agree with this thought at 2am they’re all related, and when we look at it that way, as we’re in charge, but we might have, you know, a few components along the ride that are not quite there and need our attention, right? If my brain is overwhelmed, there’s something about this world that’s overwhelming. It. Let me show it how not to be overwhelmed, because I am not overwhelmed. So you’re not your thoughts, you’re not your feelings, you’re not your fears, you’re not your layers, you’re not those limiting beliefs. You’re not too bad, you’re you now go out into the world, understanding that these things exist in the main components of you that are meant here to be along with you for the ride, like your brain, like your thoughts and your feelings. But we can reprogram that to whatever we like by just realizing that if we’re not those things and those things are being generated for us and presented for us. We need to have a dialog and question it, because once we have awareness and we understand where it’s coming from, it’s no longer there. It just it really dissolves.

Samantha Riley 24:14

You mentioned reprogramming there, and we were talking about what we have awareness of so we’re talking about the 2am problems. We know that’s there. We’re able to reprogram that. What about limiting beliefs, old patterns, these things that are playing out unconsciously, subconsciously that we’re not aware of. How can we start to reprogram those when we don’t even know that they’re playing there in the background?

Martine Cohen 24:47

Yes, so my book, no more layers. I call them layers because that came to me as they’re layers between us and us and the relationship with ourselves and the inner connection in the awareness that we have of ourselves. Because. Awareness is key to everything else. If you’re not aware of something, you can’t understand it, you can’t change it, or you can’t reframe it or rechannel it. You’re kind of stuck with it, and that’s what those limiting beliefs are, those, you know, sort of mental constructs, those identities, all of that, all of who we think we are or must be or should be, all of those things are brain created from childhood. They go so far back when we didn’t have any filters. It’s the way we understood the world at the time. It’s the way we perceived it. It’s what we were told. It’s a mixture of everything, of nature and nurture. But at the end of the day, then we have these foundational layers that are created at a very young age when we don’t know that they’re even being created. And then they have all these derivative expressions as we get older, in so many areas. So when you go back to the source and you dissolve that everything else, sort of like, you know, sort of stems out from there, and you’re all of a sudden freed from all that. And so all that, those juicy questions are, they’re all in my book, all about the layers that we have, why they’re formed, how they’re formed, what they can be, questioning ourselves through them, but the awareness is key, and most of us, without realizing it, are so afraid to go inward and see what they are, because our brain stops us from going into that inner landscape, and that is why we’re not aware of it. So every time you have a fear or a thought and you question it, you bring the subconscious part of it to a conscious level. Once it’s at a conscious level, that’s when you get to choose what you want to do with it. That’s when you look at it and say, Well, I’m I’m actually not afraid of this. I actually don’t think I’m not enough. I’m actually happy with what I’m doing. So why is this fear or of not being enough always there that’s driving me to, you know, you know, run on empty, or driving me to sort of do too many things that I don’t even want to do, but for this fear, but for this thing. So this line of questioning, and for different people, it’ll be different lines of questioning, and I offer very different lines of questioning in the book, but whatever works for you and aligns with you is where you want to start, and that’s how you slowly reprogram. And it’s really the brain doesn’t need a lot. The brain needs consistent, little sort of inputs in order to change. And then it lets go of its grid, because you give it something else to to look at and to get busy with. So first and foremost, it’s to question, because when you question, your brain wants to find the answer for you, and finding the answer actually gives you awareness. And that’s a great brain hack to get awareness without having any internal resistance. Because the truth is, we fight something we feel, you know, we have tugs of war all day long that lets you know that you want something and you have a layer holding you back. That’s the best way to know that, that there’s something in there that doesn’t belong to you and you it’s maybe time to discard it whenever you have an internal tug of war. So that’s the first sign that you have a subconscious layer that you may not be aware of, but you’re seeing a glimpse. So it’s actually a gift. We hate internal tug of wars, but look at it as a gift, because it’s, it’s an opportunity for you to get rid of something.

Samantha Riley 28:05

Now you’re talking about the book here. Book, no more layers. Can you share a little bit more about, you know, who this book’s for, why they would want to get a copy, and share a little bit about where to get that?

Martine Cohen 28:19

Yeah. So I started off explaining a little bit my story, that I was, I was an attorney. I work as one, but I was an attorney, and understanding sort of my personality and and where I came from, because I think it resonates with a lot of people, right? And a lot of entrepreneurs and corporate and professionals, you know, in high achieving individuals, and then the concussion, which really came out of nowhere for me. But was life changing? Because in that moment I had, I had two choices. I could wallow in it and really spiral down, or I can go explore. What is this about? What does this mean? Why is this here? What is this trying to show me? And I’m grateful to myself from eight years ago for having sort of chosen the latter of let me go explore. And the reason I was able to do that was because my brain wasn’t stopping me. It was there was no fear, because it was dysfunctional. So it’s what I call the brain, because literally, that’s what happened. My book is really there to meet the reader wherever they’re at. So it took a while to write because I didn’t want to write it for a specific person that’s a specific part in their journey or place in their journey. But rather, anyone, anyone who’s just starting to ask question, has a sense of discomfort, wants more, feels there’s more to life, but they don’t know how to access it. Something’s holding them back, but they would like to break free. Something makes them feel down or not fulfilled, or misaligned, or lack of clarity, any of the things, or a fear that’s doesn’t have to be paralyzing, just has to kind of be there anywhere where your your thoughts are not processed in the way that you would like, any of those things, which I think plague almost all of us. All the time, right? Yeah, absolutely, going through, first of all, a whole sort of understanding of the fact that we are born with an inherent relationship to ourselves, and it’s probably the one we neglect the most, and the one that we’re least aware of, in its depth intricacies. We’re very outwardly focused as a society, we value inward connection a lot less, even though that’s the one we need much more. So there’s a whole chapters on relationship to self, and then look at the relationship to yourself. Is that the one you would like for yourself? Do you like that one? What would you like to do about it? What would you like to do differently? Because we often criticize ourselves or self talk, but I don’t know if we would tolerate the way we speak to ourselves or think about ourselves. I mean, the way if we would with a friend, or we would just

Samantha Riley 30:47

walk away from totally, totally, you don’t

Speaker 1 30:51

think of these things. We do not have the mind space or the awareness. So for me, it was like, I think this is a birthright. I just I want to put it out there in the world, because I believe people have a right to know this and understand themselves so well that then they can choose the relationship they have with themselves. They can choose how they want to live, even before they’ve like left their doorstep, and how they want to show up to the world, then I have a section on relationship to life. Because, believe it or not, we think we have a relationship with life. So we say life gives us lemons, and life is unfair, and life is not any of these things. It’s not a living organism. It doesn’t do anything. It’s a stage upon which we’re interacting now, because we’re both in life, so we can, if one of us was out of life, well, we wouldn’t be able to interact in this way, right? Yeah. So it’s the stage. It’s really neutral, but what it is is a mirror, if you don’t see it neutral, if there’s a part of it that you you know it’s a great mirror for you to understand I’m disconnected somewhere so now I’m already outwardly focused, right? Because life is just there for you at your service, to just allow and interact and live. But that’s all and then relationship to others the first listen, because that’s the part where we help each other. We mirror each other. So there’s, you know, where the where the layers come from. So there’s a section on, you know, child, parent, from the child’s perspective, how the layers come to be, what they are, what they aren’t understanding where what your primary layer might be, because we each have a primary umbrella layer under which all the derivative layers express themselves, understanding how those expressions can come to be. So I have insights and client stories and exercises, because each person really learns and processes differently. And again, I really wanted to meet the reader where they’re at so they can choose however they want to go through their own journey. And this is just a guide and invitation to go within. So I in the third section of relationship, it’s relationship, just peer relationships. Then there’s one that’s really tricky when you’re adult, which is employer, employee. That’s very tricky, because it can trigger so many things from childhood, in terms of, you know, parent, person of authority, and in terms of, you know, telling me what to do or not. So sometimes an employer has a lot of trouble with certain employees that are adults, right? So from that perspective, we’re the same, and yet there may be so, so called childlike reactions or childlike behaviors, or an employer was like, I’m the boss, and that’s it. We’re not the boss. We’re the leader. Very big difference. Can you be the leader? So different? And before you’re the leader of somebody else, can you be the leader of you? Ultimately, self leadership. So this book is ultimately about self leadership, because before you leave your home, if you self lead, you’re going to do very well on the outside, and if you don’t go back into the relationship to self, go back into, I have a whole section on what I like to call the inner boardroom, which is where you go into your consciousness and into your subconsciousness and bring it to the conscious level, and have a board meeting around a certain feeling that you have or a thought that you don’t agree with, and hear everybody, in other words, hear all the components of you. Why is this thought coming in? Why is this fear here? What’s it trying to tell me? But at the end of the day, you choose the conclusion, rather than your brain telling you don’t do this. It’s not for you, or you must go chase this, right? They’re both coming from fear. You get to choose, and that’s when you can start hearing your inner alignment, feeling it. That’s self leadership, really understanding what motivates you, really understanding all the different intricacies and the different parts of you, because we have different parts of us. That’s where the tug of war comes from. And then after that, you bought into the world, and also reflect to the world what you who you want to be and who you are, and then it’s reflected back to you. So we’re mirrors for each other.

Samantha Riley 34:44

I love that. Where can we go to get a copy of this book?

Speaker 1 34:47

So you can go on Amazon, and for all the Australians, I’m also on Amazon Australia. because excellent.

Speaker 2 34:54

So brilliant, we’re close. We’re buds.

Speaker 1 34:59

So yeah, so you can totally find it on Amazon, and you know, there’s also my contact information there. I love to hear from the audience. I love to connect with people. And so please feel free. It’s like an open door policy, so to speak.

Samantha Riley 35:12

I love that all the links will be down below so that you can go and click through you were talking about self leading, then when you were explaining about the book. And I think that to be able to self lead one of the I’m going to use the word thing. It’s a bit of a joke for me at the moment, if I can’t think of the word, it’s like a thing. Self lead works together with accountability. But I think accountability is often framed as something that’s imposed on us. What does it truly mean to own yourself and be accountable? And how can we start practicing that today?

Speaker 1 35:50

So owning yourself means that you’re in total control, and everything that you do is your choice, and I want everybody to just integrate that for a second, because as much as we want to be in control, we don’t. We prefer to give over our power, even if that’s what the result is. But at least attribute some blame or responsibility on something or someone else, it’s so much easier. Imagine if everything that’s going on your life right now is 100% you’re doing that’s not so comfortable, because the things that you don’t like, you’d rather say, oh, it’s because this person gets on my nerves and this one triggered me and it was raining today, or I got a flat tire, that’s why I’m in a bad mood. Or, no, now we’re going to reframe that and say I’m in control of every single one of my reactions and what I like to call pro actions, in other words, how I show up to the world in every situation is entirely up to me. What I show up to is not, let’s be clear on what we control and what we cannot. But what I show up to comes to me, nothing to do with me. How I show up to it is everything to do with me. So I had a bad day because, no, I had a bad day because of me. Oh, shoot, no, I like that one so much. But what if it was true for a second? Oh, wait. But it also means I could have, I could have had a good day because not about the external circumstances. But if it’s not about the external circumstance about me, that means I have a lot more power than I’m allowing myself to use. So I relinquish power every time I say it’s because of and that’s something external. But if I say it’s because of me or thanks to me, imagine I had a bad day thanks to me, sounds very counter. It does, but if we say that, so first of all, it’s not judgmental, and it’s positive, which is helpful. And second of all, your brains, thanks to me, Well, it means I have the power. So if I have the power to have a good day, even when something bad happens, because I reframe it, because I show up to and I’m like, wow, I I survived this. I went through this. Well, I didn’t think I could. That’s empowering. It doesn’t matter what happens on the external. It matters how you show up to it and what you do with it. And that’s really the power. Because, you know, some days where, for some reason, you’re feeling so amazing that anything could go wrong, and it doesn’t matter. We all have days like that, and all of a sudden you’re like, Wow, that was a great day. Well, what happened? I don’t know, I had a flat tire, but it really worked out, and somebody came to help me. And right, we have those days. So what made it a great day? It wasn’t the flat tire, it was the our mindset. We, like some people, call it approach, attitude. But really it’s the mindset. It’s the fact that you’re so deeply connected from within that you never relinquished even an ounce of power to anything external to you. And therefore you made it work. We will usually make work. You know, the universe never sends you something you can’t handle. So we make work whatever is before us, a if we trust ourselves, if we stay connected, if we keep lines of communication open, and we don’t disconnect from ourselves, deny something, we’re very clear on how we feel, but we keep moving forward anyways, and we choose what aligns with us in that moment. Okay, what can I do here? Not expectations, just curiosity. This is an adventure. Life’s an adventure. So let’s go explore. What can I do with everything, with who I am, and with all of my tools in my toolbox? Okay, which 1am I being called to use right now? I’m not judging. I didn’t draw a conclusion. I’m in my process. Our brain is going to go quick to judgment. So that’s where you really back in Hold on a second. I don’t know what’s going on here. I’m have no judgment because I don’t know, but let me see what I could do. So there’s that openness, that curiosity, that almost like wanting to be in life and experience it fully, but then there’s an openness that remains.

Samantha Riley 39:46

I think that was a beautiful way to end life’s an adventure. Let’s go explore. And I think that’s just such a fun way to really look at life and have this experience that we’re having. Today, right now, as humans having this human experience. So Martin, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing your genius with our listeners.

Unknown Speaker 40:08

Thank you. Samantha, it was truly a pleasure.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai