00:00:00 - Sheri Miter
If you are as fascinated about the way the mind works and mind body connection and just showing up in the world as your best self, as I am, you are going to love this conversation today. My guest, Matan Cohen-Citron-Citron SITraN, is somebody who has taken his life and his love of mindfulness and movement and combine the two to do what he does today. And I'll just read you his bio here and he says people who know Matan professionally and personally would agree that his name is synonymous with dedication, playfulness, creativity, compassion and honesty. Over the past 20 years and in over 20,000 sessions, Matan has employed and taught many modalities, including hypnosis, therapeutic movement, yoga, Pilates, meditation, breath qigong, and wellness and transformation coaching. And we just had such an interesting conversation and I personally loved it. I love talking about the way our mind works and he just brought some new perspectives on things that I personally never thought about. And I hope that you enjoy this conversation as well. And hopefully it leaves you thinking a new thought as well. If it does, let me know. Send me a message and let me know. What did you get out of this conversation today? Enjoy. Welcome to the discovering your Calling podcast. I'm your host, Sheri Miter. I'm here to help you unleash your strengths and get clarity on your calling. I believe when you find your purpose in life, fulfillment, joy and success will follow. If you're ready, pop in those earbuds, hit that follow button, and join me on this journey toward discovering your calling. Welcome back, friends, to the Discovering your Calling podcast. This is your host, Sheri Miter. And today I am here with Matan Cohen-Citron-Citron citron. And I know it's like I'm always so worried I'm going to butcher people's names, so correct me if I did, but Matan, I am really interested to hear your story and have this conversation today. So thank you for taking time to be on the Discovering Your Calling podcast.
00:02:34 - Matan Cohen-Citron
My pleasure. Thank you.
00:02:35 - Sheri Miter
Great. And we just met, so this is all going to be new, not just to our listeners, but to me as well, which I love, that I love hearing the stories just unfold naturally right in front of me. So share with me and with the listeners a little bit about what you do today and what makes you feel alive about it and makes it your true calling.
00:03:00 - Matan Cohen-Citron
So what I'm doing today, the way I see myself, I'm a creator. I come to the studio every morning, five days a week, and I either play with myself and create some online education and programs like that. And I also work with clients, one on one clients either around movement or mind. That if it's mind is more coaching and hypnotherapy and if it's around movement, I focus on therapeutic movement, longevity, and I work with some professional athletes. So my work is very wide, very not boring, very creative. And every day is a different day.
00:03:41 - Sheri Miter
Yeah, because you practice in a lot of different methodologies, I guess you would call it. I don't know what the right word would be there. What are all of them that you use in your practice?
00:03:53 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I use so many different modalities that I'm in that field for 20 plus years. So I guess the common thing is that I practice them. I took them and turned it to be myself. I've been practicing yoga for many years, and primarily yoga. And then I kind of went out to learn Pilates, to learn chikong, other meditation, energy work, hypnosis. I also do fitness. Nothing wrong with good fitness. It's an element of what I do. It's not mainly what I do. I usually do it for myself. So that's really what got me into it. Like daily practice of trial and error to see what's actually working for me in my life.
00:04:38 - Sheri Miter
I like that. And I love I'm so big on trial and error. Like figuring out you don't know what you love or what you don't love unless you get into it.
00:04:48 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Exactly. And you give it a fair try.
00:04:50 - Sheri Miter
Exactly, yes. So let's talk about your journey to get here because I know you have a unique story of what got you here. So take us back to wherever that starting point was that you knew what you were doing then you couldn't keep doing.
00:05:08 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I guess there were a few points like this in my life, not only once, because also with what I'm doing right now, there are many things, like, for example, teaching yoga classes. I don't really do it. I do it every few months or something like that. But it's something that is happy, something that happened, that served me for a very long time until it did not serve me. So I can look back and the days I worked in finance and said, no way, I want to do that. I want to wake up for that in the morning. This was one big shift that I realized that and I just quit it without any backup plan. Like my backup plan was to think about a business or something like that. But I ended up being a stay at home dad with my first child. So that was kind of like one moment quitting finance. There were many moments before that I had to let go of things that did not serve me and many moments after that. I feel that part of being an entrepreneur and following your call, you constantly have to let go of what's not serving you. So these days it's a little bit easier for me to let go of certain things.
00:06:26 - Sheri Miter
So when you were in finance, what were you doing then?
00:06:29 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I was doing like portfolio management and trading and the more exciting stuff of it, I would say this way, but it did not fill my cup. That's basically it.
00:06:42 - Sheri Miter
And how did you know? It was like, time for you to make that change and get out of that.
00:06:48 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Just not being depression, just not being happy, waking up in the morning to do what I was doing. I was not feeling good. And back then, all I was thinking, that's the only thing I can do. And then you take a break from I took a break for myself and my own thinking for a while and said, maybe there are other ways that I can earn money, give value to the world, give value for myself, do something different with my time.
00:07:19 - Sheri Miter
And I think I'd like to go back to one of the things you just said that you didn't know there was something else.
00:07:25 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yes.
00:07:25 - Sheri Miter
And I feel like that's what keeps so many people stuck. And they stay in a job that's not serving them anymore, like you said, or maybe causing that burnout, maybe causing them to just not be happy with it. But they stay there because it's all they know.
00:07:42 - Matan Cohen-Citron
It serves them. It's like as a hypnotist, I follow words, but you say it doesn't serve them. It serves them. It gives them exactly what they're familiar with. It might not feel good for them. They're paying a huge price. Okay. A lot of people in that situation are not aware of the price that they're paying, but they are paying a huge price of not being happy in the morning or at night.
00:08:08 - Sheri Miter
Right.
00:08:08 - Matan Cohen-Citron
So people know when they're not happy. Now it's safe and familiar for us to say to stay in those places because we're familiar with that, as simple as that. That's what we're getting out of it.
00:08:22 - Sheri Miter
Right. And I see what you're saying. Yeah, that it's serving them because it's keeping them in that safety. Maybe it's serving them in well, it provides a good paycheck or it provides the benefits. It provides something even if it's not.
00:08:35 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Serving them with benefits and money and all of it. It's just familiar. For example, if you're in a job that you're not happy and you're miserable, now you have an identity. Being there serve your identity as a victim, as whatever identity a person takes on himself. So that serves. Now, if we want to shift that, we have to take down those shackles that holding us. And in yoga, we call it uncomfortability. Like, we have to hold that resistance that we have and to learn how to move with true while having that resistance.
00:09:20 - Sheri Miter
Right. What gave you the courage to do that?
00:09:23 - Matan Cohen-Citron
To finally say, enough different things along the way. But right now it's non negotiable. I made an agreement with myself that I will do whatever I need to do in order to live the life that I want. So everything that comes on the way, yeah, I have the resistance, but then I will go and I will conquer it eventually. I don't know if conquer is the right word, but I will face it and will take the action. I might fail or whatever will happen, but I will go in that direction of pursuing my dreams. Because it's either I operate from love and fear. There is no in between and I'm afraid from many different things. It's not about trying to not be afraid, but I move with the fear.
00:10:08 - Sheri Miter
So where did you learn that?
00:10:10 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Where did I learn that?
00:10:11 - Sheri Miter
Or was that how you were raised or were you just ingrained with that? How did you learn to get to that place of being okay with that? Moving through the fear?
00:10:20 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yeah, I think when I was younger it's a great question because I think when I was younger, I was thinking that I was doing that, but I was basically shaming my fears away. Like, for example, when I was 18, I joined the Israeli military and that was pretty fearful. Basically you sign a paper that you're willing to die for your country. It's kind of like, I will never do that in my life right now at this moment. I will just move to a different place. I won't do it again. So when I was younger, I did it from a place of pushing it, thinking that being strong, being a man, whatever definition I grew up with, was to just do it and ignore it. Now I feel it. I feel the fear. I give like that fear come from safety. I know it came from kind of a young age, young voice in me that I listen to, I honor, I hug, and I just understand that this is human's mind. This is the juice that I have. So where did I have it? 20 plus years of yoga. This is exactly what you practice when you practice yoga to observe your mind, how it moves towards attraction, of going and eating an ice cream or having a drink or will really going to make you happy right now. Leave everything you do or not to move away resistance. So I'm a little bit familiar with that after 20 years, even though I still have the same tendencies.
00:12:05 - Sheri Miter
Yeah. And I love this thought process around it because I've never really heard anybody we talk a lot about fear, and fear holds people back from stepping out of their comfort zone and stepping into something new. And we talk about what's the acronym for fear false Evidence Appearing Real. And it almost comes from this fighting the fear and conquering it. And what I'm hearing you saying is almost like this is just my mind, the way it's comprehending this, of almost befriending the fear and let's move through this. Let's move along together. It's going to be there. We can't get rid of fear.
00:12:45 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yes. And what comes to mind, to what you're saying, there are many elements to it. You can look at stress and fear in many different ways. So I like the more physiological approach to fear because our thinking is very limited. Like, think about where you are right now. You're 100% sure of your beliefs, you will die for them. 2 hours later, you will have a different thinking, different belief. You will die for them. So our thinking is very limited, especially when it comes to fear. So that's why I prefer to work through the body because the body also holds tension. And I think another element of fear is the unconscious mind, is the beliefs that we have around. Like, fears are a result of a belief that we have to that I have to protect myself from somebody, from myself, that we live in a hostile world. If we change that belief that you're not here to be attacked or get murdered or anything like that, it's like you can thrive here. So I think that the work is gradual, working through the body and then the same way in yoga that we get to the deeper layers of our mind. Think the deeper layers of belief is a belief that we are safe and we are here actually to have fun and be happy and fulfilled and have joy and getting the most out of this life.
00:14:27 - Sheri Miter
Right. To move away from the caveman days of the fear that everything's that we have to be on alert all the time, that way of living, yes.
00:14:39 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I'm not sure that the caveman days were like that. I'm sure they met a tiger every two months or so, but then their level of alertness went down. I think one of the reasons that stress is such a big problem is that we are on alert all the time. So in terms of time, we haven't not so much time passed from a biology point of view from the cavemen, but what we're experiencing on a mental, like how much stimulation we have over the past hundred years. That's crazy. It's like we need at least, I don't know, a million years of adaptation that we can deal with all of this social media and advertisement and TV and messages and subliminal messages and all of that, that our physiology can regulate ourselves through that.
00:15:38 - Sheri Miter
Yeah, there's so much stimulus coming at us. And I know before we hit record, you and I were talking about the peace we get from either being on the water next to the water and just relaxing with that. But what advice would you give to somebody that's like, oh, they're listening to this and maybe they're sensing that, like, oh, that's me, I'm fearful of everything, or I am so stressed out. What's the first step? What's that look like? What advice do you give them?
00:16:07 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Give space for that.
00:16:08 - Sheri Miter
What do you mean by that? Expand on that, please.
00:16:12 - Matan Cohen-Citron
The tendency that we have, and you said it in a way I don't know where were you going with that? But we have that underlying message that fear is not okay, that you have to fix your fear, that you have to change your fear. Now I like to do it when I work one on one hypnosis and regression, usually I go, okay, so a person has that story that right now is, whatever, 30 years old, 50, 70 years old, and now he has those fears. At this moment in time, the person usually expects himself to be brave with the fear, to be strong, not to feel fear, to not feel disappointed that they feel fear. Like, how come I got to be 60 years old and I still have anxiety and I'm afraid to go on a date or whatever. Instead of just acknowledging that now just change the number from 60 to six. Instead of being a 60 year old, now you are 60 years old experiencing fear. It's okay when you're 60 years old to feel fear. For most of us, what I find through work is that 95% of anxiety is something that at one point we were trying to block fear because we made that unconscious decision that fear is not okay. If fear is okay, just a feeling. Like what happens if every time you feel joy and love you're going to try to fix it and be realistic. Don't allow yourself to feel love, to feel joy, to feel satisfaction. It's an emotion. It has to run once. It's run like, yeah, I get afraid all the time. And sometimes like today I'm going to climb so I'm going to feel more feel fear than usual. But I'm not shaming that fear. It's a healthy body function, fear, it's supposed to keep us safe.
00:18:18 - Sheri Miter
I love that mentality of that it's healthy, it's here for us. And I so agree with that, that it's just an emotion. It's just an emotion and not to make it this bigger thing than it needs to be, for sure. And a lot of times the fear is all up in our head anyway. What we're afraid of never becomes a reality. Now sometimes, like when you're climbing, yes, there are fears you need to be aware of. You don't want to make silly mistakes.
00:18:53 - Matan Cohen-Citron
There is a difference between being fearful and being cautious. We want to be cautious in life. We don't want to jump from a bridge or to do something that will cost us and the people around us a heavy price. We want to be cautious with life. I don't remember, but in Chinese medicine it's two different meridians, like fear and cautious. You want that for you, it's a healthy thing to protect ourselves. Nothing wrong with that, right? Yes, it's a natural. We have that drive to survive. It's a very strong drive in our nervous system and we have the drive to connect. Sometimes they go together, sometimes they go in opposition. It really depends on the person. So I think all of this is very natural and I think that it's very hard to people to tap into this emotion and tap into their body. In general, their body, where all these emotions are being held, is not a safe place for a lot of people for different reasons. Some of them are collective. They're not even ours. So I think to have a body practice, I think it's super important to learn how to tone into your own body to your own energy, and even to clean that energy just for 510 minutes a day. I think it has a tremendous difference for people. They're turning from being an on all the time and being reactive all the time to just being more observed.
00:20:40 - Sheri Miter
What does that practice look like for somebody that maybe is new to any of the practices you do? What does that look like for and maybe even I would love to hear Matan what your transition to get from, oh, you know what? Maybe I'm going to start yoga. What made you start it to now? Get to where you have so much in depth knowledge, and I can hear your passion for what you do come through. That's how we know it's a calling. When you can talk about this and have that passion and knowledge come out.
00:21:19 - Matan Cohen-Citron
My definition will be the right medicine for the right time. Okay? So for me, I knew when I was 20, I knew that I'm going to give a try to yoga. However, it took me two years of practice until I found my first teacher. So it's not like, here, I'm going to the gym, I'm going to start yoga three times a week, I'm going to call myself a yogi. And that's the external definition that I give myself. So it doesn't matter if it's yoga. There are so many styles of yoga. If it's meditation, again, there are so many styles of meditation. Might be walking quietly. It might be drinking your tea in the morning quietly, might be sitting and observing your breath. It might be swimming. It might be so many things. What the practice? I think the goal of it is to shift ourselves from our thinking into our feeling, to shift from the active part of the nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system where we can slow down. So it should give us an access to press that pause button that we all have inside. That's what I look when I work with people and I try to help them to find their own. And there is a reason that I don't say, take six breaths to your belly, which is the one technique that I love, because I think it's very individual. And person have to find their own thing, their own thing that works for them. So when I look back at 20 years of daily practice, I had over hundreds different practices over time, different styles of yoga, meditation, chikong, breath work I think it's all just adding to us. Like we have a big toolbox of things to do because there are things on the quiet side of stress that are helpful for us. Like meditating. There are things that on the more active side, like going and exercising, that it's really helping us as well.
00:23:40 - Sheri Miter
Yeah. And again, because this is newer, I do a lot of these things, but I think it's a newer way to look at it as yoga and everything of using it as that mindfulness, using it as that more quiet versus active, working out.
00:24:01 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yeah.
00:24:01 - Sheri Miter
And I feel like, listening to you, I realize that a lot of us have almost a disconnect between the two.
00:24:08 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yeah, there might be a disconnect, but I think I look at it as a skill. Our nervous system, a healthy nervous system knows how to shift from one occasion to the next. So, yes, you want to be able to wake up and be relaxed and reflective and listen to the birds and all of that, but you also want to be in a live music concert that is exciting and get excited and go up with your nervous system and stay regulated while going up. Same thing is for exercise. How can you exercise and at the same time maintain the energy in you not to release all of that energy out like people can do in yoga or qigong? That it's about cultivating the inner energy, how you do it while exercising and exercising can mean many different things to different people. But trying to cultivate energy instead of just releasing and dropping all of this energy out.
00:25:14 - Sheri Miter
Yeah, and like I said, this again is just the Sheri Miter Co version of what I'm hearing now. I'm taking this in and I'm sure every listener is going to hear it, take what they need differently. But it's making so much sense to me because I talk a lot about that so many times. We don't quiet ourselves from our busyness all the time to really hear our own intuition, to hear what we really want, to really listen for our gut to tell us and lead us to our next step in our career path usually, is what I'm talking about. And I can see this in myself. I've done this, I've been guilty of it. And family members and friends that they take on an exercise program, whether it's going to the gym and doing weights, whether it's running, but it's more purely for the physical fitness of it. And they're not getting this whole mind body connection that you are talking about. They're missing that piece of it, but they think, Well, I'm going to the gym, so I'm doing this healthy thing. Yes, you're talking about like, let's take that to this whole different level that connects it all together. Am I right on.
00:26:34 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I think it's a balance. The bottom line is to create a balance, to be able to work hard, which is very primal when you think about our biology. To work hard is we've done it for thousands of years feels fantastic. And also the other side. So it's basically just creating a balance. So one of the things I like to say to my clients is like, I'm here to work on your weaknesses. I'm not here to work on your strength and make you feel good. You do it by yourself anyway. I'm here sometimes to point out what's the weakness that we have and how we are kind of finding our own creative way to be curious and to start shedding light into that area. That before is a weakness, is scary and all of it and how we are kind of remapping that area in life and we can turn it into light instead of being that dark thing that we are not interested in stepping in because then we keep avoiding if something's showing up in our life and we're avoiding it over and over again. We're creating a mistrust with ourselves and a mistrust with our body. So it doesn't work to try to ignore the body, not with food and not with emotion.
00:27:58 - Sheri Miter
Yeah, and that's what I'm thinking. Like in my head, I'm just realizing sometimes we're like in that pounding, almost that pounding thing of, well, I'm working out, so I got to be destressing, I got to be doing this. But if you're missing this element of the mindfulness and the element of, wait, do we have to work that hard? Maybe there's this other element here that we're missing altogether.
00:28:21 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yeah, I think when we work really hard, we're really in our head. We're not really in our body so much. It's like literally it's an out of body experience. We're just in our head with the music and I'm talking about the gym mentality. We pay so much attention to what other people are doing and we can't really tone in and feel what we're doing.
00:28:46 - Sheri Miter
And there's definitely a time for both. Like I'm saying, don't go to the gym at all. I'm not giving you permission not to go work out. That's not what we're talking about. But getting more in tune with the whole connection there.
00:29:00 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yes, there is the all body part, the all embodied part that unfortunately we don't have so much language to describe it. But we're at the point that let's call it a positive body tone, it's for a person. You can develop it by slow practices, by walking slowly, practicing chikong, yoga, feldenkrais. Somatic all of these slow practices, meditation so that body tone and that sense of body, of being more in our body right now in science, we are able to connect it to health. And the other side, like people who experience traumas and stress and stuff like that, they have less body tone. They're not so much in their body, which makes sense because it's a defense mechanism that we have when we experience trauma to disassociate from our body. But later on in life it's related to eating in disorder mental disorders and all of this bad behavior that we're having. And that's why I think it's very important wherever the person is in life, to add more and more body time into their life. So the body becomes something that is safer. So even if the person doesn't know right now what it's to sit for ten minutes and just enjoy listening to the birds, maybe after ten years of practice is something that becomes natural to enjoy being present.
00:30:35 - Sheri Miter
And that's what I was just going to ask you. For somebody that maybe this is all new to them and they're thinking, okay, I need to incorporate something. What would you suggest would be a couple of places to start?
00:30:48 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I would start with maybe five minutes of quiet. It can be while driving. It can be while walking, it can be while sitting outside. I'm a big fan of being outdoors because there are many things that our body do naturally when we outdoors, such as paying attention to the environment, scanning, smelling, seeing all of these things with our eyes. So five minutes. And I think a big part of it is to start small. And if we're not starting small, we usually going to fail in that and not continue. It has to be fun. I'll tell you a story. Like a few months ago, I found myself really busy. I was super busy at work. I had many things to do. So when I got into my car, I have a short drive home, 20 minutes. I just kept listening, kept the stimulation, kept the phone calls and stuff. Then I said, it's a little bit too much. I come home and my head is too busy to be home. I'm not enjoying my life at home. So I said, I will stop working before I get into the car. And then I was listening. I created all 20 minutes of silence, and it was too much because my mind went crazy with that silence. And then I said, all right, let's do it just from that junction, five minutes from home. I will just do it for five minutes. And after doing for a few days, I turned it to be seven minutes, ten minutes. And then I basically got myself into a place that it was actually a pleasure for me to enjoy the silence. It wasn't a fight anymore. So I think we live in a culture that people might listen to it and they say, wow, I want to be a meditator. I want to be a yogi, I want to go to the gym. It's not about having the desire to do all of things is great. I wish I could take care of myself all day long sometimes. I personally love it, but it's about the love and it's about the quiet. I think we're in a very interesting period in time right now with wellness and with yoga and with fitness and all of that. However, we have. To start ourselves, to start asking ourselves more, what's our objective? Because right now we have, yeah, do this, do this, do this, do this. But what is the objective? You have lower back pain. Let's fix the lower back pain. Let's take care of this first. You have stress. So we live in a world of methods, yoga, Pilates, gym, all of this stuff. However, my expertise, instead of doing seven different things, finding what's going to bring the juice into the individual and just focus on that. Because a lot of time we're creating another necessity. So all of a sudden, the person wants to feel good. He started going to the gym seven days a week. But what about family? What do you go to the gym when you're awake, usually? And that's not your time with family. So I think the next step that will come in that wellness world is like, how to really make it work for individuals and not that prescription, sleep, diet, movement, exercise, state of mind.
00:34:27 - Sheri Miter
Yeah, such great advice on so many levels. There one of just starting in the smaller steps so important, especially because we are in such a world of being addicted to our phones and always on our phones and listening to something, or the TV is on or scrolling on social media. There's so much stuff coming at us all the time. And I'm like, you, I can sense now myself like, oh, I got to stop it all. But then when you stop it all, then that's uncomfortable too. So I love the idea of just starting with that five minutes. And maybe if you go for a walk, maybe not turn, because I find myself too of like, okay, if I'm going to go for a walk, well, I want to maximize my time, so I'm going to listen to a podcast or I'm going to listen to a training. And I've started to realize, like, wait a minute, I'm missing that mindfulness connection there because something's coming at me. Yes, that entire walk, which I thought always was a good thing, maximizing my time. But the more I realized it's like, no, I need time to just think and process and create. And I'm so much better when I come back from that walk.
00:35:45 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yeah, and that's basically the title of your podcast. If you're so much in a mode of maximizing times, and don't get me wrong, I have a lot of moments like that in my week. If we're in that mode, we're operating from a different state of mind that we're not that creative. So if you, whatever, a line worker in Amazon, I don't know if there is that thing if it's not, you know, but if you have to be creative and to think and to connect to your intuition and to do all of that, there is a price. Your brain is not going to function as well if you're on all the time.
00:36:31 - Sheri Miter
Right. That's why I think that love of the water and love of sailing, that's one of the reasons I fell in love with sailing, is that peacefulness and when that engine goes off and the sails and there's no noise, my husband loves to have the music on all the time. It's like sometimes it's like, no, no music. Like nothing, just let's just be yeah. And sometimes you just have to just let it be and take in whatever you hear. And it's amazing. You said this earlier, when you do that, you start to hear and see things that have been there all along, outside and inside of us. But we need that to create that space, to take it all in.
00:37:18 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I like to call it inner body experience.
00:37:22 - Sheri Miter
I like that. Inner body experience, yes.
00:37:25 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I think we live in a society that we all want, like an outer body experience. I'm like, what about an inner body experience that will just be present and just enjoy to be with each other, but also to be with ourselves. I'm fascinating by my it's weird for me, people. I'm fascinated by my own body. Such an amazing machine that, wow, I have so many years to keep studying. It fascinating. And once we're paying attention to it, to all of these cues that it gives us, it's like it's a compass. It's more effective than just being connected to our critical thinking. That is very limited.
00:38:13 - Sheri Miter
Right. And I love that you're saying that about fascinating with your body, and I love that approach to it and just fascinated with, too, of keeping that running the most efficient for a long time. Out very in tune with that.
00:38:30 - Matan Cohen-Citron
And I think it's a balance for a long time because you do want to think for the future, but the future is also a concept in the present moment in our brain. So I think a lot of my work is movement, longevity around. How will you move in your sixty s, seventy s and eighty s? That I think it's important to think. But nobody promises you that you're going to live tomorrow or anything like that. For me, it's very present. It's more about this week, next week, this day. That what I have in mind. So how to create balance between the two.
00:39:10 - Sheri Miter
Right. And I love that approach because that's kind of the parallel there. That's what I coach people to do with their lives, with their jobs, with their career, with their new business of be happy today. Yeah, we're not promised tomorrow, so we can't wait until tomorrow. Of that traditional. I always say that traditional mindset of you go to college, you get a job, doesn't matter if you like it or not, you got to stay there for 2030 years, get the retirement, then you can go off and enjoy your life. And that work mode doesn't work for most people. But I love that because you're saying that same thing with the mind body connection doesn't work. We can't put that off for the future. Do it for today. That you can live in this moment right now to find that joy right now?
00:40:02 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Yeah. It's A, delusion of the future anyway. It's not guaranteed. And B, it's like when you think about being happy as a skill, if right now I'm saying I'm really grinding and I'm working, that in ten years I'm going to retire, it's like, what am I actually practicing? I'm actually practicing putting stuff on hold for ten years, putting myself on hold, putting love on hold, putting my desires on hold for ten years. And I don't think that everybody's in a place in life that they can go for it. But if your desire is birds, watch birds on YouTube for five minutes a day. Keep that flame going. It's not that you're either going 120% for it or you die. There is a middle in that, right?
00:41:00 - Sheri Miter
And again, I love that you bring the concept back. Start with something start with something that gives you joy. If it is, five minutes makes a big difference. Yeah, absolutely.
00:41:11 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I think transformation should be very practical. There are things that you can get rid of, behavior of trauma or things like that that I do all the time in hypnotherapy. There are things that we have to take action, and the best way to shape our brain is by taking action. And it doesn't have to be a big action. It can be something of five minutes a day, then build it to seven. And then you do it out of a place of love, not out of a place I have to. And I think, by the way, when you talk about feeling good, following your calling is the best thing you can do.
00:41:50 - Sheri Miter
Yes.
00:41:51 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Then you spend more and more time in a state of flow, not in a state of that person wants me to do that thing. I have to do it because I want to bring income for my family. Survival is hell. It's not a fun place to perform or to live.
00:42:10 - Sheri Miter
Right, exactly. That's why I do what I do. And I know that's why you do what you do. Yeah. You want to get in that place of joy and flow and loving what you're doing today. Yes. Not every day. There's always going to be stuff, but today, for the most part, yeah. And that's why I like joy. I say joy because joy is that inside, it's not dependent to me, joy's inside. It's not dependent on outside circumstances that make us happy in that. Natan, this has been just a very insightful conversation. I love learning new things, I love having a new thought. That's always something I want the listeners to get from the Discovering Your Calling podcast, too, is just to leave with this new thought and to process it and take those five minutes and maybe take some quiet time. Take one thing you heard for the listeners, one thing you heard today to implement. But if they want more, if they want to learn more about what you do, what you offer, how to follow you, where can they connect with you?
00:43:17 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Working on my website, Matan Cohen-Citron-Citron. Matan. Matan Cohen-Citron-Citron. They can reach out, find me, connect with me. There is like, one online course there on reducing stress and shifting out of Stress and heal the nervous system. This is the first course that I put because I think that getting out of stress is so important. When we're stressed, we're thinking that we have to do all of this thing. When we unstressing ourselves, it's like it's frank. Why was I thinking that I have to do all of these things that's there as well.
00:43:58 - Sheri Miter
Yeah, great. And so needed in today's world. So needed in today's world. So thank you for doing what you do. And thank you for being a guest on the Discovering Your Calling podcast and sharing your insights on here. And we'll have the link to your website in the show notes so people can go and follow you. And I know you said you make some videos and stuff, too. Do you do things on YouTube or is it on your website or where right now?
00:44:27 - Matan Cohen-Citron
I think now, at the end of May, I think somewhere in two months, everything will start coming up on Instagram, maybe TikTok. I have my team working on it. I'll give them the time to finish it. And, yeah, I'm shifting my business online, so I'll start doing a little bit more courses and master class groups because personally, I love online education. I think it's a great way to create transformation in a person's life. I find Zoom to be super effective in many different ways. It's so much better than one on one conversations in person. I'm in conversation. Yeah. So I'm excited for that. And now part of my lifestyle, what I did in the past 13 years was raising my kids. Now they're a little bit older, so I want to shift a little bit more. So I shift my business online so I can travel and surf and sail and do all of this fun thing.
00:45:36 - Sheri Miter
Yep, that's exactly what I've been yep. Moving it all on. So glad to hear that. And hey, maybe we'll see each other out on the water on Long Island Sound. Thank you, Matan, for being on the show today.
00:45:54 - Matan Cohen-Citron
Thank you.
00:45:56 - Sheri Miter
Thank you for spending this time with me. My hope is something you heard today inspires you to take action toward discovering your calling. I just have two favors to ask of you before you go. One, if you found value and enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify and you might hear your review read on a future episode. And two, can you share this episode with three friends who will also enjoy it as much as you did. By doing these things, you will help us grow the podcast to make a bigger impact on the world. And until next week, remember you've been created to live a life of fulfillment, freedom, purpose, success and joy.
00:46:39 - Matan Cohen-Citron
You ram.