Super Soul Special: Deepak Chopra: Meditation 101
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I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.

Deepak Chopra says he's meditated every day for the past 40 years. He began this spiritual practice while a student in medical school to relieve stress and kick his pack-a-day smoking habit. The effects of meditation on Deepak's life were so profound, it became a cornerstone of his teachings. Well, you're the only person I know who's as busy and busier than I. You're a hard guy to get in this chair.

My body is busy, I'm not. I love that. I stay home, my body travels. Really? Yeah. When we met in India, one of the things that you said, there's not been a day when you haven't meditated. In 40 years. 40 years. Wow. Not a day. Not a day. This is a great opportunity for us to demystify meditation. So we're going to do Meditation 101. Let's start with the basics. How do you define meditation?

Meditation is defined in the following way. It's a progressive quietening of the mind till it reaches the source of the mind, which in spiritual traditions is called the soul or the spirit. Got it. So it takes you to your source. Okay. Why should someone do it?

There are lots of people listening to us right now saying, "I thought about it, but I don't know." Okay. The first reason they should do it is the most effective way to manage stress. And when you have stress, you don't sleep well, you're not good in your relationships, and there are biological effects. Your blood pressure goes up, heart rate speeds up, you get arrhythmias, the immune system gets compromised.

There are tons of data on why stress is the number one epidemic of our civilization. Right. So first reason, stress. Management, and you'll improve your physical health. You'll improve your mental health. You'll improve your emotional well-being. Life is going to get better if you meditate. Yeah. But here's the real reason. Once you do all that, once you've

I haven't had stress forever now, so I don't need to meditate for stress, right? Yes. So what does that do? It opens the door to your spirit, the field of infinite possibilities. It opens the door of your soul so you lose the fear of death.

IT OPENS THE DOOR TO CREATIVITY. WE CALL GOD THE CREATOR BECAUSE WE'RE CONNECTED WITH THE SOURCE OF CREATION. AND IT ACTUALLY OPENS UP WHAT ARE CALLED PLATONIC QUALITIES OR DIVINE TRUTHS OR ATTITUDES. KINDNESS, LOVE, COMPASSION, JOY, EQUINIMITY, PROFOUND PEACE, WHAT IN SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS THEY SAY THE PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING. ALL UNDERSTANDING. WOW. SO YOU START FROM THE PHYSICAL, MOVE TO THE MENTAL, AND THEN

Open the door and that is why when we first sat down here because you've meditated for 40 years You're all over the world literally and you also I mean I remember when we first came Into I landed in India with one of the first things you did was to get a massage Work out meditate take care of yourself. Yes. There are very few things you need to do to take care of your physical well-being and

Good sleep, really important, because now we know that sleep is when our soul actually refreshes our body. Exercise, even if it's half an hour of brisk walking. Food that is high in what they call phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are chemicals from the energy of the sun. So anything that has the colours of the rainbow or the six tastes of life, sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent, astringent. Trying to maintain ideal weight.

and being emotionally free. That means no resentments, no grievances, no hostility, no guilt. I know the last time we were sitting here, I asked you, who do you need to forgive? And you said no one. You're already forgiven. Well, to live in a life where you have not one single person to forgive means you're doing okay. I'm doing okay. Doing okay. Now, what's interesting is I think a lot of people misunderstand meditation. When I first started my school in South Africa, the first

the first thing I wanted was for the girls to be taught

got a lot of pushback from parents who didn't understand it, who thought it was, you know, about levitating or that I was trying to bring in some kind of voodoo or whatever to the girls because they misunderstood it. They thought it was going to conflict with their religious beliefs. Will you speak to that? Yeah. Well, meditation is, first of all, part of every spiritual tradition, okay? When you still your mind, be still and...

and know that I am God. So it's part of every tradition in the world. In Christianity they have something called Centering Prayer which is used by Benedictine monks and that's very similar to the Mantra of Meditation. Very similar.

There are breathing meditations in every tradition. There are body awareness meditations in every tradition. And there are variations of mantra meditation. It has nothing to do with belief or ideology or doctrine. It's a simple mental technique.

to go to the source of thought. Recently we've been teaching it to inner city kids in Queens and in the Bronx along with a program that we have called the Urban Yogi and these kids love it. They're practicing hip hop, yoga and meditation. I think that kids respond so strongly to it because they remember

that they already remember that there is something deeper. No struggling to learn. All you have to do is rule. They come in trailing that. So how is meditation different from prayer? Prayer is you're speaking to God and meditation is allowing the spirit to speak to you.

but it speaks in silence and it then manifests as intuition, inspiration. You know the word inspiration means to be in spirit, enthusiasm, on theos, to be in touch with God. So prayer is

Going that way and meditation is coming back this you know Eckhart Tolle and also you all of you wisdom teachers speak a lot about being in present moment is being in present moment a Form of its own meditation. That's a mindfulness and the best have the same effect. Yes, absolutely if you if you live mindfully if you live mindfully and

And then you'll make conscious choices and that'll change your life. So the best way to be in the present moment is to be aware that you're not in the moment. As soon as you're aware that you're not in the moment, you're in the moment. Be aware that you're not in the moment as soon as you're not aware you are. Yeah. You're in the moment. Yeah. So what do you expect will happen to people who've never meditated before who are now going to come in and join us in a 21-day meditation? It depends.

It seems that if you do one thing every day for 21 days, it starts to form a habit. And if you do it, of course, 66 days, it says it creates a groove in your brain that is automatic.

But 21 days starts to create something in the brain. It's called long-term potentiation, which means you rewire your brain. You start to make the shift. You can make the shift, yeah. We have a saying in neuroscience, neurons that fire together wire together. So every time you meditate, you're rewiring your brain networks. They're like little cable channels, literally. Little cable channels. That's it in your brain. Love that. Connect the neurons.

Okay, so what do we need to begin to do that? When I was interviewing Curtis Jackson at 50 Cent recently, he said you gave him a mantra. I did. Do you have to have a mantra to do it? No, you don't. But in his case, I gave him a very specific mantra. First of all, let me tell you what a mantra is. Okay, it has two roots. Man, which means mind. Man is the Hindi word for mind. It's also the origin of the word man or woman. Mm-hmm.

human and "tra" means instrument. So mantra is an instrument of the mind that goes beyond the mind. It takes you like taking a cab. Okay, when I take a cab to go somewhere, when I get there I don't need the cab anymore. So mantra is a vehicle to take you to the source of thought. That was really good. The cab worked. That worked for me right there. So the most basic mantra in all traditions is "I am". You know, when Moses asked God,

What's your name? God replies, I am that I am. Jesus says before Abraham was, I am. I am. We say amen, aham, om. Om. These are all very fundamental sounds.

that are mantras. So if nothing else, you can close your eyes and just repeat "I am" mentally and it will quieten your mind. It will quieten your mind. So you're using the mantra like a cab to get to the destination, then you don't need it anymore once you get to the destination. Now here's something else. We talked about intention. There are mantras that code intention. So there are mantras that you use

that have a code in there for abundance or focused intention. Because the code is a certain kind of word or sound? Yeah, it's a vibration. And how does meditation create abundance? The specific abundance meditation opens you up to what we call abundance consciousness. So let's say you're feeling gratitude. Yes. That opens your mind.

heart and your spirit to the source of abundance, which is actually the source of abundance is the universe itself. So if you open yourself to abundance consciousness, then you create neural networks, literally connections between neurons that make you notice abundance, that make you feel grateful, that make you open

your consciousness to opportunity where other people see, you know, a problem, you might see an opportunity. So what is good luck? It's opportunity meeting preparedness. Yes, yes. So what we're really doing is rewiring the brain in this meditation

to open ourselves to this state of being where we live in abundance consciousness, not scarcity consciousness. Because if you're scared and you're living in scarcity consciousness, then that will be the self-fulfilling prophecy. But I thought that the whole purpose of meditation is to sort of, is to clear them, is for the mind to stop.

And so you're just in the space, you're just in the God space, right? That you're not in a space of, you know, wanting anything or creating anything, that you're just in the God space. I thought that's what it was. That is true. But now let me explain to you what you do in these meditations is that you introduce the intention, then you let it go. And then you use meditation to transcend, to get into the God space.

And then you let the universe handle the details and it handles the details through insight, intuition, inspiration, creativity, gratitude, choice making. These are the byproducts of introducing. So here's the formula. Intention, transcendence, detachment. Let the universe handle the details. The universe, the source of the universe is the source of you.

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And what's going to happen to me, you, all of us, joining in this force of a 21-day abundance meditation challenge? You will create a consciousness that will change the way you think, the way you

Feel the way you behave the way you socially interact your personal relationships all in the direction of Abundance consciousness that is what it's going to happen to us at the end. You're actually why your brain? Okay, one of our Facebook friends Liz Kay wants to know is there a better time of the day to do it? I

Ideally speaking, in the morning because you had a restful night, hopefully. And when you do meditation, then it actually energizes you. If you're tired, then it'll put you to sleep.

Okay, because that's what you need. So early in the morning and then late in the afternoon, about 4 or 5 o'clock, but definitely before your evening meal. Yeah, we have a little tone that goes around the building here. 9 o'clock we do it, 5 o'clock we do it. There you are. That's perfect. How much time do you do it? Do you set aside? Well, again, this is for me. It's not for the world because...

I have a different life. I meditate two hours in the morning. Good God! Really? Two hours from four to six. Well, that is not happening here. You meditate from four to six? Yeah. I do it. I'm not saying everybody should. Well, we're not. You can meditate 15 to 20 minutes twice a day and that's enough. And that's enough? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Does it matter what space you're in to do it? No, you can be in an airplane, you can be in a taxi cab as long as you're not driving. You can be anywhere. Just like you can think a thought anywhere, you can meditate. You can meditate anywhere. Sharon M. on Facebook has a list of quick questions that I know many of other people have too. She wants to know, sitting versus lying down? Preferably sitting because when you're lying down, you're likely to fall asleep. Om or silence? Silence.

Om is better. I am, om, so hum. You know, so is the sound of the breath. So when you inhale you say so, when you exhale you say hum. So, so on the in-breath, hum on the out-breath. That's a fantastic mantra. So, in the beginning, mentally. Yes, not out loud. Okay. Soft music or sounds of nature or nothing?

Sounds of nature, soft music are frequently used as additional aids and we do that in some of our meditations. You'll see that in our 21 day challenge, but also sounds of nature. Deep breathing, focused on the breath or not? You can observe the breath, but you don't manipulate the breath. The breath by itself will get slower.

and deeper, and at a certain point when you transcend, it'll stop. We come into this life with a breath, and we leave this life with a breath, because we come with a thought, then we go back to the source of thought. Very deep, Mr. Deepak. Deep... Deep Pak. Okay, that was a deep Pak moment. Okay, I love this one. Silence the thoughts or visualize your dreams.

When you're meditating, do you silence it? Are we trying to silence the thoughts? See, trying to silence the thought is the thought. Okay? So don't try to silence the thought. But otherwise, if you don't do that, then the thoughts will just yackety-yack. Yeah, but you see, if you leave them alone, they start to say to themselves, nobody's noticing me. Okay? So you don't try to get out

Of the thought because that is a thought by itself. But isn't in that moment sometimes it's good to notice that there they are, all those thoughts yakety yakking across your mind and who is the observer? Because isn't that the space? That's an analysis. The awareness of a thought is not a thought. It cannot be, right? Right, right. So just be aware of it. That's all.

Don't try to. We'll teach this. This is part of our teaching. This is part of the 21 day. Okay. Okay. But there was another question there. Yes. Or visualize your dreams. If you want to visualize your dreams, do it before meditation, not during meditation, because then you're activating the mind. In meditation, you want a quiet mind, not a turbulent mind. And even a positive mind can be a turbulent mind.

Even the dreamy mind can do it too. I learned to do that. Get the dreams out of the way. Because when I first go to silence myself, then here come up all the thoughts. So I just let them come. Yeah. Let them come. Watch them. Watch them. Like clouds floating across the sky. And then...

when the mind has had its say. Yeah. Chitichak, Chitichak. There you go. There you go. Do you immediately just go into it, though? I do. I would say after 40 years, yeah, you can just go. I can stay in that place anytime. You can. I'm there now. Well, no, stay with me. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm witnessing the whole thing. You're witnessing the whole thing. Yeah, both of us.

Do you have to do those weird finger positions? This is what Sherinam also wants to know. Because we've seen, you know, people doing this or doing that. Very interesting questions, by the way. Yes, Sherinam, very good. These finger positions are mudras, okay? Okay. Hand movements. You don't have to do them, but there's something very interesting that happens. So, for example, if I have my hands like this,

my breathing will be diaphragmatic. If I have my hands like this, it will be chest. Like what? This diaphragmatic, this chest. If I make a fist, it will all be here. That's why people who are angry, they make fists and they don't breathe properly. They are all breathing from the upper chest. Those are advanced meditations. There are lots of these mudras that accelerate

what we call mind-body coordination. We're not teaching them right now, but maybe one day we will. Should your legs be crossed or out straight? The most important thing is you should be comfortable.

So if you're crossing your legs and it's bothering you, you're not going to be able to meditate. Be comfortable. That's the only rule. What form of meditation do you practice? I practice mantra meditation. I practice what I call sutra meditation, which we're going to teach in tension. I practice meditating on the body, on the breath, on mental space, on relationships, and actually meditation.

also meditate on the universe and its origins. Of course you do. Tell me, how do you think the world is doing right now? There are two things that are happening in the world. Yeah. One is there's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of turbulence, war, racism, ethnocentrism.

terrorism, global warming, radical poverty, social injustice. So if you want to look at that, you would shudder. Yeah, I was going to say, that's enough not to get out of bed and meditate. But then there's something else happening. And it's happening right now. You see, because what we are seeing now is that through this interaction, we are changing the conversation.

and we're using social networks, literally social networks, and you have to ask them, "What are these social networks?" They're the extensions of our mind. They're the extensions of our brain. -Like right now. -Right now. People are in 120 different countries. We are rewiring the global brain, literally, through cyberspace.

You can't see these cable channels, but they are. They're going through this air and they're also going through cable channels. They're bouncing off the satellites. But if you understand that what we call our mind is actually embodied, it's in our body, and relational, it's through relationship, process that is regulating the energy and information,

in the world. This definition, by the way, comes from a UCLA psychotherapist, Dan Siegel, who says the mind is regulating energy and information in the ecosystem that we call the planet. And so with what we're doing and the cyberspace and the social networks,

we're rewiring the brain for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthy, happy world. That's what we're all doing right now. Right now. Here on Super Soul Sunday, all of us who are in community around the world at the same time, listening to you, having this conversation, that's what we're doing. Yes, and you know, the data shows, this research, I'm not making this up. Okay. The best way to get rid of your enemy is to increase their capacity for happiness.

and well-being. So if we can do that across the world, we'll make the old ways of solving conflicts obsolete. So you've written, I've lost count of how many books you've written. You've been in this business, this work of trying to lift people's consciousness to get them to see their lives differently for quite some time now. What is it you most now feel the urgency to say

to people to have them know for sure i say that we are at a crossroads it's our choice right this moment mahatma gani said

You have to be the change you want to see in the world. So one of the other things... Hasn't it always been so, though? I mean, is it any different than it was during the transcendental time? Is it any different than it was during... Yes, it is. If they had the technology, they wouldn't... You know, Oprah has the technology. They didn't have the technology. Yeah, we can definitely reach more people. The capacity to reach people, to reach tipping point, to reach critical mass was never there as it is today.

So that's the big difference. Even Jesus spoke within 30 miles of where he lived. But today, if something works, if it works, if it's hokey, then forget it. But if it really works, you can change the world because of this ability to communicate across the planet. Flystone became an icon. A Hulu original from Questlove.

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How has technology and this ability to communicate across the planet changed the way you operated in your spiritual manifestation of the word?

See, I would often say I'll make two people happy today by giving them a little attention, affection, appreciation. Then they make two other people happy and they make two other people happy. Now I just put a hashtag, be happy, make happy. And soon you have an epidemic. A million Twitter followers. Yes, you do. A pandemic of happy people all across the world. So technology is certainly helping.

When you, are you though in your lifetime amazed at our ability to span the bridge of our otherness with each other? I mean in this, I mean in the past 10 years, in the past five years, our ability to touch. We are creating a new identity for ourselves.

which is beyond our racial identity, beyond our national identity, beyond our ethnic identity, beyond our religious identity. We're becoming global citizens and this is a great time because as we expand our identity, we'll feel more for each other, which is really the true gist of spirituality. When I came to the United States in 1970, I'd never seen a TV in my life.

and then fax machines and cell phones and internet, and now you can email and do meditations. I mean, this is all happened in the last few decades. - And do you feel like, we've had part of this conversation before, do you feel like we are getting better

as a species? Yes, we are. Because we're becoming more aware and I think it's the next stage of our human evolution. You know, there are only two uses we can put our imagination to. One is anxiety, which is a form of imagination. The other is creativity. And we have to choose this.

in order to transform the world. And I am seeing spontaneous evolution of what I call self-organizing dynamic networks of karmically connected souls.

So you have to say that again Deepak. Self-organizing, dynamic networks. These are social networks of karmically connected souls. People who have the same soul values or same values and they're organizing themselves by themselves.

And this is going to change. Oh, that's what this is. That's what this community is. Right now. Someone actually said this on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. It's how wonderful it is to watch Super Soul Sunday. I feel like I'm in a community of like minds. That's it. They're karmically connected souls. Yeah, exactly what you just said. So tell us, now you've written two books. How do you write these books so quickly? You wrote God, you wrote God, A Story of Revelation, and now The Superbrain. Where...

When do you find time to write? I'm on a plane a lot of the time. I'm also compulsive about downloading anything that comes to me. Uh-huh. Because I have the only anxiety I have in my life right now, and I'm sorry to, embarrassed to admit it, that if it stops coming to me, then I'll have to stop. So might as well write as fast as I can while it's coming. So, you and all of your...

Business know your body's business business found the time to co-write another book Called super brain with a Harvard neurologist first of all, how did so are you always hanging out with neurologist? I was at Ted Med Yes, which is the Ted medicine medical aspect of Ted? Yes, and we met in the men's room and I said yeah, I said to him he's a neuroscientist he's discovered over a hundred genes and

This book started in the men's room at TED? Yes. Okay. So I said to him, "Rudy, do you realize that our genes are coding our karma?" And he looked at me as if I was totally weird. And then afterwards he came out and said, "Let's talk." And I discovered that actually... This is what you discuss in the men's room. Yeah. That's how it is. And we ended up doing this book because the basic thesis of this book is you're not your brain.

You are the user of your brain and the user of the brain is your consciousness, your spirit.

And if you learn to use the brain correctly, you can rewire. You know, this is what they call a handy model of the brain, you know, other scientists. So this part is my reptilian brain. This part is my emotional brain. This part is my creative cortical brain. We can actually influence all these parts of our brain to create a healthier life for us and change longevity, creativity, and find our own spirit. And that's what the book is about. It's about unleashing the power. Yeah.

It has a section called the enlightened brain. Enlightened brain. Is this the kind of thing that makes you giddy? I love it. I love it. It makes me ecstatic. You know, just to talk to Rudy makes me ecstatic. Yeah. Because we both kind of, you know, we're kind of asking ourselves, can we ever understand the mind of God? That was a favorite quote of ours from Einstein. Yes. I want to know how God thinks. Everything else is a detail.

That's from Einstein. I think now we have the technology to kind of not ever figure it out, but get pretty close.

Okay. One of the myths you debunk is that the brain's hardwiring can't be changed. How do we then begin to train our brains if we're predisposed to certain ways of thinking? Well, we are starting right now with our 21-day challenge. With our 21 days, that's part of what I would try to do. We're changing the hardwiring of the brain. And, you know, certain parts of the brain get activated that were never activated before. So we're going to reshape our brain. You say we can reshape our brain by personal growth. The actual structure of the brain. Good God.

I do mean. And that through your mind and through your consciousness and through your spirit. If you choose to grow,

You are really what, evolving or guiding your own evolution? Yeah, this is our next phase of our evolution. That we are consciously, you know, when they talk about Darwinian evolution, it was random, natural selection. Human evolution from now on can be conscious evolution. What are you most proud of in all of your work? Oh, my grandchildren. Okay.

other than your grandchildren, what are you most proud of in all of this work? In all of this work, what I'm proud of is bringing science into spirituality. Because, you know, traditionally people say faith and reason. Well, it's silly. Why can't you have both? You know, if I say, do you have faith in gravity? You'd say, well, that's a ridiculous question, right?

So you shouldn't have faith in spirits. You should have experience. You should have knowledge. You should be able to say that it works and now we can do all those things. But science is God.

Science is how God thinks, yes. That's really good. God is a mathematician, a physicist, a biologist, all at the same time. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And so you've been trying to get the world to see that, to know that. Yes, for 30 years I've been doing, and finally it's happening.

Recently, Deepak Chopra spent a year traveling the world and allowing his son, Gotham, to film him every step of the way. The documentary, "Decoding Deepak," is an intimate portrait of Deepak's spiritual work as well as a revealing look at his complex relationship with his son.

In decoding Deepak, first of all, you had to cooperate with Gotham to do that. What else could I do? What else could you do? You do what your kids want to do. Yeah. He says that you have now, now that you're older, you get more anxious about getting the message out. I do. If there's anything about me that's restless, it's about saying, you know, let's wake up and change the world. We can all do it together.

At what stage do you think you are in your own spiritual growth? Do you have an ultimate goal? Of course everyone has an ultimate goal. I think I'm pretty close. Do you ever have spiritual struggles? There's never doubt for you? No. I have to be honest. I want you to be honest. So would you say that you're sort of now at guru status?

I don't like the word Guru because people kind of have all kinds of images of Gurus. I feel I have the status where I can live my truth

that I have no anxiety about what people think or say about me, whether it's good or bad. That's why I let Gautam do the movie. Because there's a public Deepak, there's a private Deepak, there's a Deepak to his family and then there's the real Deepak. And so it's all right to show all those aspects, which is Gautam did very skillfully. There's a lot of skillful editing, so he shows me on the BlackBerry all the time, which I'm not.

But that's fine. Oh, that's the skillful editing. That's the part I most believed. Well, again, tweeting good messages, Facebooking good messages, nothing...

ordinary are you feeling somewhat rewarded now first of all the fact that we can have a sunday morning conversation like this that people join us from all over the world in multiple countries that that the word literally is spreading it is i'm yes i feel very fulfilled that you know we

can meditate in a lab at Harvard Medical School. And people not laugh or, better yet, you not get thrown out for doing it. No, they want to join. Want to join. Do you always feel, Deepak, like you're constantly growing into the fullest expression of yourself? Do you always feel like there's more, there's more, there's more? So do you ever feel like, okay, enough, I'll go sit on the beach? No. No? No.

You let your body sit on a beach sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Actually, you know, when we last met, I'd been to a Buddhist monastery. Yes, and shaved your head and spent all that time. Two weeks ago, before I went to China, actually, I went to a place in California and I spent a week in silence.

So that's my reward, you know, when I can go and spend an entire week in total silence and then I come back totally refreshed. Your wife must be the most... She went with me this time. I was going to say, she must be the most extraordinary person. She went. We both went to a slum and both had the most amazing time.

So you both went to spend a week in silence. Yes. We take long walks, go by the beach, never say a word. But you know, without a word we were communicating, without even gestures, we just knew what was happening in the other. And do you do that for yourself often? I do it twice a year at least, sometimes more often.

When I was preparing to go to India, you asked me a question that I later said took me three days to answer because I knew you didn't want, you know, a standard answer. Who are you? Well, I've thought about it all my life and I've realized that I'm a spark of the divine and so is everyone else. That we limit ourselves by defining ourselves. That if you go beyond the labels and definitions...

All that's left is infinite possibility, infinite creativity, infinite intelligence. And we are that till we squeeze ourselves into an identity which is the volume of a body in the span of our lifetime. We are way beyond. Thank you. Thank you, Oprah. Thank you very much.

I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening. Let's say your small business has a problem. Like maybe...

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