My MB Alex breakdown is supported by Helix sleep. Bring is in the air and so are all of the allergens that come with it. Spring allergens means you need more sleep, but there are a ton of factors that can prevent us from getting a good night's rest. Night sweats, back pain, feeling the person next to you when they roll over a million times. We were so excited to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my Helix mattress for about five years now and I have been sleeping so much better. Jonathan and also our kids love their Helix mattresses and all of those issues, night sweats, back pain, motion transfer, those things are significantly better with a Helix mattress. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door, which is so much fun with free shipping in the US. They have a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty plus they're happy with Helix guarantee. Rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to helixleap.com slash break down for 27% off site wide. That's helixleap.com slash break breakdown for 27% off site wide. helixleap.com slash breakdown. Shhh. Shhh. Hi, I'm Miami-Ellic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. Today we're gonna share a conversation that was previously only available for the Breaker community on our substack page. It's a conversation that Jonathan and I had, which turned into a whole episode about what happens when we stop defining ourselves by what we do and start looking at who we actually are. Here's some of the stuff we tackle in this episode. We talk about the connection between our unique souls, our internal state, and our physical health, how all of those are actually connected. We also cover how to find our unique purpose by reconnecting with our soul's traits. These are inherent qualities that we have carried ever since we were children. I struggle with openness and we talk about why maintaining a state of openness is actually a biological necessity. We also talk about our unique purpose, something Jonathan is kind of an expert on, where do we box ourselves in with old stories, perceived limitations that can leave us feeling constrained and disconnected from our true potential? Also, one of the most powerful practices that keeps getting spoken about is the idea of finding awe in wonder, in hidden ways throughout your day or even your week and how that can change your mental health and even your physical health. We hope this episode gives you a sense of awe and wonder and if you want to hear these conversations before we even air them anywhere else,

please make sure to join our substack community. That's my and Bialyx breakdown on substack. You can go to biolicbreakdown.substack.com. Please join us over there. We hope you enjoy this incredible episode and we hope to see you over on substack. Break it down. If you have to describe yourself as who you are at your core, that is not related to the things that you do for a living.

What would it be?

How do we define ourselves? How do we actually find out who we are in a way that is not, hey, I do X for a living? It's not that I am an accountant. So I'll give you an example. My father, who is an accountant, yes. I would not say that he is an accountant. He may say that he is an accountant, but actually what I think he is is a man who loved systems and organization. He loves to find the best way to do something. That's actually who he is at the core. And no matter what he would have done for a living, he would have brought that aspect up himself to that job. Okay, so think about all the things you've ever done in your life that you've been good at, that you've enjoyed, or that you felt drawn to. What is the thing that is uniquely you, even if you're an identical twin, what's the thing that is uniquely you about all of those things? It's actually, it's a great question when framed that way. I will say that my experience, when I got to direct a movie for the first time, which I did a few years ago, I felt like pretty much every single aspect of all the things about me were contained in one place.

And that's not to say that, oh God put me on this planet to be a director, but I'm very personicity. I'm very particular. I'm very tuned into details, and I'm deeply emotionally wired. So for me, storytelling and crafting a visual image that conveyed an emotional concept in a way that required specificity, list making, task, or an essay, and being able to manage the personalities around that, I was like, yeah, that feels like the skillset, right, that I was supposed to have. So what was, what's me about it? My friend, Emu, who actually helped me start the YouTube channel that we all use on No and Love, he said, I find beauty in the mundane. And he feels that that's something I do when I'm a human, when I'm a mom, when I'm a writer, when I'm a creator. he felt that that's like my superpower. I mean, I guess you can use it in a lot of different ways. You know, I use it interpersonally. When I see people picking up trash on the street, when I see, you know, I wanna connect with those people, right? I wanna have an experience of connection in a situation that otherwise might be mundane. They're always his purpose. always is beauty. beauty. Maybe that's what I'm, that's the me, right? I would actually even connect that to your scientific pursuits, which is helping people understand things, brings a beauty into something that may feel inaccessible. It may not even just be the mundane that you create and find beauty and you find beauty in ways of the intricacy of our biology, the way in which our psychology is constructed, our spiritual lives. You by unpacking it and looking at it in a certain way, you find a beauty in it and an awe and a wonder. I actually say spending time with you is partly so amazing because you have a sense of awe and excitement about things that other people don't. What's the you Jonathan that is throughout everything you do besides being adorable and clever? Well I've been like that ever since I was young my grandmother told me. Is that right? Yeah, my grandmother was very loving and was a very loving force in my life. I had a conversation recently with a very old friend. I played hockey with him when I was six years old. I was playing competitive hockey at a young age. And I went to fourth grade together. And she said to to me he's like the one of the great things about hanging out with you you're always looking to get into a little mischief you're always looking to push the edges in the boundaries. You are constantly experimenting and like when I hung out with you I never knew what might happen. You're an adventurer. That's really the question you're asking. 10,000 years ago, who were you?

If you place yourself 10,000 years ago, what purpose did you serve in the function of common humanity? So you're an adventurer. I had a great, either a great grandfather or a great great grandfather who left Poland at 10 years old and made his way to the UK, smuggled himself onto a passenger ship and came to Canada. There is an element of trying to explain things that are somewhat unexplainable. That is part, like as a very young age, I can remember feeling like this overwhelming sense of curiosity and imagination

and trying to translate that into a way that people could understand and share. Okay, so if I'm going to link those things because I really like this game, you are very resourceful, you're very resourceful, you're very scrappy, and I would hold that those that ability to make meaning out of meaningless things to find explanation in inexplicable things, to me that's the same skill that allows one to leave the village there from and freaking get it together to survive and get yourself on a boat to live. Like, is that the same, you know, Cohen skill set, right? I'm going to add one piece to this and then I'm going to land this plane back to Simon Sinek and to everyone listening. Right now you're circling newer, as we say. The other thing that I think is related to this is always believing that there is something else that's available outside of the current constraints. Same story, that same story. When I was in Toronto, we were building a media team and the office literally had no space for us. And that didn't make sense to me. Like we had a... So you said, let's go into another portal of consciousness and there's rooms for everyone. Correct. Because here's the thing, it was an open office and everyone was getting super annoyed because editing is sometimes a collaborative experience and there were, and like you need to like have multiple people listening and there's a video that's online. It's so funny. It's like the girlfriend of an editor or the boyfriend of an editor

Where you hear them dragging the marker over and over. It's like hello

Hello, hello because they're trying to get the cut just right and so if you've never edited a video

It's a wildly annoying activity to anyone else who's listening to you and we have a whole team of editors and on a floor of other people

Literally what God is saying as God is watching us unfolding. Like this is not a show that I'm enjoying. Or he's loving it, we don't know. We needed a space, we needed a room. There were no rooms. No one would give us a room. What did I do? I found a room that literally had wall to wall junk in its storage. And I started going through piece by piece saying, this could be given away. This is all, this doesn't need to be here. And I turned a room that was previously condemned with junk into our office and we've learned. And that's the metaphor for what Jonathan did for my life. He said, this is a room full of stuff that needs to be given away, resorted or redistributed. And underneath there's a beautiful office just waiting to be utilized. If you pull back, you're still describing who Jonathan is. You're still describing someone who sees, this is, there is no no. There is no no. There's almost never. There's always a, this could be something else. And I'll be like, you see this closet full of crap? I will just sit in the corner with the crap on top of me and I'll make it work. I will put a skylight in, I will rearrange it. You can make it beautiful. You can sleep. You know, your sub-stack page is called practical spirituality. I think it could be called creative survival. We talk about this notion of the soul. That we are all in viewed with specific characteristics that are uniquely us. And part of our challenge in this world is that we are not connected to those aspects of ourselves and we don't use those aspects to help us navigate a life that is truly ours. More so than ever before we are looking from the outside to try and answer the question, who am I? What What should I be What should I do? And how do I make my way in this world? And what Simon suggests is, in fact, you have to answer that question by going backwards in your life to find the things that you work uniquely good at that sparked a sense of excitement in you that uncover these inherent characteristics that are purely you and use those to help bring yourself to life and there are so many different ways that you can bring those to life for you. You could have been a closet organizer, you could direct movies. There are so many ways that making beauty out of the mundane exists and they're all uniquely you. Simonsynic also talked about, you know, a kind of openness that only optimism allows, only optimism allows. And I wanted to mention, you know, especially for those of you who are new, we don't typically talk really about politics. And I've literally stopped kind of posting about politics for the most part in the last period of time, just for a lot of mental health reasons, which I think a lot of you can probably relate to. But especially, and this is not a political conversation, this is not a partisan thing, especially in the times that we're living in, where there is at the least confusion, maybe some skepticism about where we're going, what we're doing, what are places in the world, no matter where we live, because I know there's people here from all over the world, but the notion of optimism in this case means no matter what, no matter what, we have to hold a place where there is hope. Peace is the only thing that can last forever, right? So when people ask me how I feel about name a situation in the world right now where it feels critical, where our hearts are breaking, where there is suffering, where there is injustice, where we need to speak up. It's happening all over the world. I have to hold that space. This is a place where I really resonated with what Simon Sinek said. I have to hold that place where no matter how negative you are, no matter how cynical you are, no matter how much you hate this leader, or that leader, or this person, there has to be a space for that hope that at some point we can keep working towards reconciliation, peace, love, more rights, more opening, more acceptance. I agree with him. We have to do that. My MBA class breakdown is supported by optimizers. You know, I struggled to get good quality sleep and I just assumed it was stress. But as I learned during Perry paramanopause and menopause, your hormones shift in a way that affect your magnesium levels. And low magnesium, it makes everything harder, not just sleep, focus, mood, your tolerance for stress. That's why I have added magnesium breakthrough by by optimizers to my nightly routine. It's a blend of seven different forms of magnesium designed to support relaxation and overall sleep quality. Try it, see if you wake up more rest and refreshed. You've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Bi optimizers offers a 365 day. No questions asked. Money back guarantee. Magnesium breakthrough is a huge breakthrough to improve hormonal balance, to help with focus, decrease brain fog, improve sleep hygiene overall. Bi optimizers makes it very easy. Jonathan, what do they get when they go to bi optimizers.com slash breaker and use the code breaker? You get 15% off your entire order and a free bottle of mass times by optimizers best selling digestive enzyme. That'll be added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code. That's a $20 product free on top of your discount already.

This is a limited time offer and while supplies last, you can't get it on Amazon, you can't get it in stores. This offer exists in one place. Our link, our code, that's it. So maybe you were already thinking about it, this is the sign, go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker, use the code breaker, grab it before it's gone. make 2026 the year, you finally start sleeping again.

Mine be Alex Raydown is supported by by optimizers.

I struggled to get good quality sleep and I just thought like, oh, it's stress. But I learned during paramanopause and menopause, your hormones shift and it affects your magnesium levels. Low magnesium makes everything harder, not just sleep, but focus, mood, stress tolerance. That's why we added magnesium breakthrough by bi optimizers to our nightly routine. It's a blend of seven different forms of magnesium designed to support relaxation and overall sleep quality. Try it, see if you wake up more rest and refreshed. You've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Bi optimizers offers a 365 day, no questions asked money back guarantee. Magnesium breakthrough is a fantastic way to improve that hormonal imbalance that especially happens with magnesium. And then you have better focus, you have better sleep hygiene in general. Bi optimizers makes it so easy. Here's what you get when you go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker and use the code breaker. 15% off your entire order and a free bottle of mass signs. That's by optimizers. Best selling digestive enzyme added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code. That's a $20 product free on top of your discount. This is a limited time offer while supplies last. You cannot get this on Amazon. You can't get it in stores. The offer exists in one place. Our link, our code. That's it. So if you were already thinking about trying it, this is the sign. Go to bioptimizers.com slash breaker, use the code breaker, grab it before it's gone. Make 2026 the year you finally start sleeping again. Talk to us a little bit about the neuro science of what happens when we reroute away from the catastrophe, away from focusing on the negative, and recognize and hold the belief that, so I mean, amazingly articulates that there is light at the end of the tunnel. We just have to ask how much bad has to happen before we get there. Well, right. I mean, Ken always know the answer to that question. You know, this is like a little bit of a, as the kids say, this is like a little bit of a trigger warning for those of you who like me, tend towards the cynical, tend towards the pessimistic. Feel like we're in a hole or that we personally are experiencing something that's putting us in a hole. So like short story long, it does matter the state that you allow your nervous system to be in in order to determine how much, you know, optimism and healing can happen. You said something like it's important the state of your nervous system. Like what does that mean practically to people? It's what we've spoken to people like Bruce Lipton here. We've even spoken to people like Joe D'Spenza. We've talked about the work of Tony Robbins. We've also spoken to people who are healers, mystics, channelers. What is that? What all of these people have in common, right? Whether they're a doctor, a physician, a specialist, a healer, is that when you place yourself in a mental state of optimism, of openness, of any of those positive emotions, right? And we're speaking somewhat subjectively, but those kinds of emotions, there is physiology that science now has caught up with that for thousands of years, mystics, yogis, healers have talked about.

And what happens is there is a resonance in your body that produces the state that many new age people would call manifesting. What does it mean to visualize? Why are people telling you to do positive affirmations? Guess what people, it's all the same. It's all the same. When you put your nervous system in a state of more calm, more relaxation, more vagal toning when you're told to exhale through your mouth in a yoga class to kind of get that heat out? That's the same kind of breathing that any doctor trained in nervous system regulation will encourage you to do. One of the most documented things we can do to promote healing, a stronger immune system, and better outcomes for many challenges is all of this stuff. And guess what? If you want the scientific term for it, it is its Vegas nerve regulation, its sympathetic nervous system regulation. All of those things create cellular possibilities, immune possibilities, and literally a happier, more open state in your body with which you then can change your life. I mean, that's just the truth. When you're looking at something, for example, and guy in the comments mentioned something that like, isn't the news right now? Extremely distressing. And saying that you are optimistic does not mean that you like or accept any particular behavior or action We can be terrified and outraged however what it means is that you don't go into a cycle of breaking down and spiraling into Society is fundamentally bad the world is fundamentally ending. There there's like yeah you can see how one thought Wiggly spirals and those That type of spiraling with a negative bias Has a physiological impact Correct every part of our body even being shown to suppress and repress the immune systems ability to fight disease. And we talked about this in our episode with Gabur Mate, which I highly recommend. His book, The Myth of Normal, which kind of is opus of all of his research he's done on trauma, on addiction, on ADHD. And what he talks about is that the body places itself in different states, depending on the thoughts and the behaviors that you're exhibiting. We talk about autoimmune conditions. So many women are having autoimmune diagnoses. So many women, especially in hormonal shifts in life, are experiencing autoimmune challenges. What Gabri Mante talks about is that people who tend to do a lot for other people often get sick more. People who are naturally inclined to shove down their feelings and their needs in service of other people, insert women for most of human history here. Those people tend to have a profile which it's true, given the environment, given the social pressures, given all the chemicals that we're putting in our body, like those things are also accurate. That combination and that conglomeration of complexity is something that we can see play out with immune function. We can see it play out with autoimmune diagnoses, even with things like multiple sclerosis, we can see it in cancer. I mean, it's shocking. And also when I say it's true, I don't mean because I said it. I'm saying science is finally catching up to what so many of us either intuitively knew or if we come from an Eastern tradition or an alternative health perspective, we also have been taught and now. This is potentially actually one of the most important conversations we are going to have about how to program yourself to interact with the world for your well-being. Michael Singer explains, and sort of Simon, that you do not have to like what's going on. You don't have to look at the person who has done something horrific and say, I accept or I believe that that's okay. What you can do is hold the possibility that that is not the end state, that it doesn't have to continue, that there's another way of being that us, as humanity can get to. Forgiving someone, not holding rage and resentment in your heart for even something that was done to you that is wrong, the more that we cling to that, the more that we hold onto it, it continues to punish us and not the other person. So the notion of acceptance, right? Being an acceptance of what is does not mean you like it, does not mean you approve of it, does not mean like, oh, now I have to interact with this person all the time. The notion of being able to say, something happened to me or I was hurt, and I do not want to hold that negativity anymore, and there's many, many skilled practitioners who can help you work through that and move through that. That does not mean that you are happy about that it happened or that you hold love in your heart. Someone said you know the notion of Jesus, right? Like that sense of forgiveness and redemption is possible. It does not mean though that you like it or that you necessarily approve or support that. Each one of our thoughts start to read us into more thoughts than create this impact. So when I'm with someone and I dislike what they're doing, I have to catch myself very quickly to not go down that spiral. How could they do this? Why would they do this? They're a bad because as I get into that narrative, it's a very fast tangled that that the mind is amazing at creating, which will then have that physiological impact on me. So how do we do that? We create the pause. We notice those things. We create the pause and we say, what else might be true to give them mind, the opportunity to build something else? Okay. Also, I don't want people to presume that like Jonathan and I are giving you the answer in this live. The answer is a process. The answer is a conversation that you are having with yourself, the universe, and guess what? Something greater than you. I don't care if it's gravity, I don't care if it's a tree. It could really be whatever you'd like if you want to call it God. Congratulations, great, whatever. The notion that that is a process you engage in is the answer. You know, someone's like, how do I get rid of it? Many different ways. If you've got an addiction, seek the root of that addiction. If you want to figure out why you're doing something, stop doing it. If you find that you are leaning on, name the things we use to fill the God-shaped hole. Alcohol, drugs, porn, sex, codependency, fantasy, and intrigue. Stopping. Yeah, well then. Digital distraction of all kinds. Digital distraction, cognitive distraction. I've found that like me thinking hard about things is its own distraction from like feeling what's happening in my body. All of those things you get to figure out, like what is your thing? And then how, how did the universe place you here for you to get the support you need? And that's why literally, Jonathan and I started this podcast is because for everything that ails us, there are people who are experts. There are people who have told us what works for them and what doesn't. There are books. There are therapies. Depends on your thing. So if someone were to come to me and say, I cannot control what happens when I drink alcohol and I don't know if I'm going to have one drink or 65 drinks or I don't know where I wake up sometimes or how I got there and I don't like it, there are ways to address the disease of alcoholism, right? There are ways to address that. are there's fear's fear, resentment, anger, built up there. But for someone else, it's gonna be a different path. This is like the job of the simulation that we're gonna figure out what ails you. What are you trying to put in that God-shaped hole? Get to the other side of it. There's something waiting. And it may not be enlightenment. and it may not be feeling the energy in your hands as Jonathan can train us to do on his page But it can be different than what you're in and I do believe there is some hope my Simon Sinek hope that it can be better even incrementally This conversation is better than I imagined. I'm really very excited by this. The connection point here for me is that Simon is very much of this world and yet he talks about the unique expression of each of our souls and how we can do better in the real world by having that connection and knowing who we are in a very deep level which which mirrors the spiritualists. I really appreciate going in this very beautiful circle. We circled Newark, but we landed the plane. I think we went to multiple airports today. We circled Newark and many other airports. In a lot of connecting flights. Are the books behind Mayam ones that she has completed reading? You know what Caroline Chavez? All of these books are people that we've had on the podcast. We have them color blocked because that's a very important thing for me. I am a very fast reader. I'm a disproportionately fast reader and compiler of information. Jonathan calls me the robot. I would say I've read most of these books, Valorate, Valorate, Producer Valories here. I think I've read most of these books. I'm going to give a consideration for the end of this live. Thank you everyone for being here, especially if you're new. We do these every week. Consider becoming a paid subscriber. We have an amazing team that helps us pull off all this content. there is a lot that goes in to getting this stuff out and organizing it. And also we along with these lives we release exclusive content that is here only here and not available anywhere else. So please consider it if you're able to. I did want to mention this deserves a shout out. Kristen said, read the book of life based on your rec. So good.

Deep cut, Peter Kingsley.

If anybody wants to read the book of life and lose your mind, also wanted to say, especially for people who are new here, there are different things you can get on our page. We do a founder zoom. If you'd like to become a founding member of our community, which is a commitment to support the business that creates all of the things that we do here,

please join, become a founder.

We do special founder zooms, which is like this,

but much smaller. And it's just me and Jonathan on a Zoom with the founders. And we take personal questions and it's a really fun community. So if you want more of this and you want even like a smaller, more intimate community, please consider becoming one of our founders and our company really appreciates all the support we get from Substacks.

So anyway, oh, do I have a recommended book list?

Don't get me started, Bethany, maybe for another time.

...