Karuna: [00:00:05] Hi, I’m Karuna. I’m the founder and executive director of Mind Oasis, and my guest with me today is a very generous man and I’m excited because I just met him. His name is Sander Cohen and he is the founder of a wonderful shop called Dharma Shop that you can find online. Sander, where in the world are you?
Sander: [00:00:23] Hi and welcome. It’s great to meet you as well. I am in Michigan, just outside of Detroit, and we are warehoused in Farmington Hills, Michigan. So we shipped from there and have all our products there.
Karuna: [00:00:38] Awesome. Sander, tell us a little bit about your life. Just in general, how the heck did you end up in Michigan and how the heck did you end up importing beautiful goods from Nepal?
Sander: [00:00:49] I was born and raised in Dearborn. I was adopted actually. My son is adopted as well, and I grew up here my whole life. I took a couple of brief stints away from Michigan and lived in Florida. I was a recovering alcoholic. I drank from 15 to 30, and when I quit drinking, I started having massive, massive panic attacks. And I went to a therapist. He wanted to give me drugs. I didn’t want them. So he sent me a very, very thoughtful person in 1994, sent me to a meditation group, and I started doing breathing techniques to deal with my anxiety rather than medication. And that is what started me discovering mindfulness, discovering Buddhism, discovering everything. And that led me to eventually thinking about starting a business in that direction as well.
Karuna: [00:01:50] Awesome. So I’ve been to Nepal once and I have another trip planned for 2023. There is a 23,000 foot mountain that I’m training to climb.
Sander: [00:02:03] Wow.
Karuna: [00:02:03] Can you tell us a little bit about your journey to Nepal and your heart must live there? In some ways.
Sander: [00:02:11] It does now. Yeah, it really does. And it’s been really hard not to be able to get back there for the past couple of years. You know, my family went to Nepal before I did. My sister is a wanderer and just loves to go everywhere. So before she had a child, she was always somewhere else and she literally backpacked across India by herself. And then she met my dad there and they went to Nepal. And when they brought back stories from Nepal, I was just so excited about it. And I started hanging out with a friend of mine who also didn’t drink, and that was really important for me. And he sold a lot of Buddhist goods, so he started wholesaling Buddhist goods to me and I was selling them on eBay because I was broke. It was 1999. I was coaching volleyball and volleyball pays terrible, so I was just trying to make a few bucks and I had a few Buddhist things some mala beads, khata scarf, and they sold really well on eBay. So I started reaching out to people in Nepal and I literally sent money to Nepal, ordering things to people I had never met. And no one ever cheated me. No one ever did me wrong. I mean, Nepal is the kind of place where no one’s going to take advantage of you in that way. You you might get the wrong product, but you’re going to get a product. So finally, in 2007, I was financially secure enough to go to Nepal and start buying there directly. And unfortunately it was in the middle of a civil war and I was really unprepared for that. I’d never been to a third world country before and day one was a beautiful tour.
Sander: [00:04:06] We had the most incredible time, saw everything. Day two, they started burning tires in every on every street. They didn’t let anyone drive. And I was trapped in my hotel for almost two weeks. Yeah. So I had some. Some, honest to God, PTSD from that. I mean, I was stuck in that room. And the next year after being evacuated by the UN, by the way, which was pretty crazy, the next year I went back and I just I’m a lean into your fears kind of person. And I went back and I had a panic attack in the middle of the night and came home the next day. I flew 48 hours and then 48 hours back to be there for 10 hours. At this point, my ex-wife said, I will go with you next time. And she was I was very grateful that she did that. We went to Thailand and then to Nepal. And finally with someone there with some support and understanding the place a little bit better. You know, when you come from the US and you hear honking horns and all of those things as anger in Nepal, it wasn’t anger. It was, Hey, I’m here. Don’t hit me, you know? And it took me a long time to get rid of all of those preconceptions. And by my fourth or fifth trip to Nepal, it started to feel incredibly different. And it’s now been 12, 13 trips. And the last time I was there, I rented a motorcycle and rode around something I’ve never in a million years would have thought I would do in Nepal. I’m almost more comfortable there than I am anywhere else.
Karuna: [00:05:50] So for the listeners who couldn’t see my face, my jaw just dropped. One, I ride a motorcycle here in the United States, two, If you haven’t been to Kathmandu or on the road out of Kathmandu to Pokhara, it’s just this wild conglomeration of everybody trying to squeeze together in one direction and then other people squeezing together in the other direction, and then throw in a few cattle and throw in a bunch of motorcycles that are dodging in and out. And it’s just this. It’s chaos, but there’s logic behind it and it’s just amazing to watch. So one of the things that I realized during those travels on the road was that everybody keeps moving and there’s something to this. And it there’s something to the stream, like nobody stops. So in the United States, right, we stop and then we go and then we stop and then we go. And so when there’s merging that’s why merging takes forever in the United States is because people stop and then let people in. But in Kathmandu, nobody stops. People just keep moving and they go through these like places where they have one centimeter between themselves and the car and the motorcycle. Right. So, Sandra, I just have to ask, what is it like to be a Westerner who rents a motorcycle and drives around Kathmandu?
Sander: [00:07:21] Luckily, I have a I do ride a motorcycle here as well. I have a big, big, heavy BMW. And there I had I rented a Royal Enfield pretty similar size and so cool. That’s so beautiful. I actually enjoyed riding in the city and the madness and the chaos more than I did in the hills. It was lovely to go out into the mountains, but the only accident I had was when I got out into the town, stopped for a Coke and didn’t realize that the little puddle next to me was a foot deep and dropped the bike by a puddle and literally everybody from around came running to help me up, wash me off, fix the bike, take care of everything. The mirror broke off. They put on a new one for ten bucks. It was like the whole thing was insane. Like, that’s Nepal. They all are like, Oh my gosh, let’s help this person. And there’s no better feeling than that. Like you being taken care of by everybody around you. And you don’t feel alone when you’re in the middle of a country on the other side of the world, in a town you can’t pronounce, you don’t know what it is, where you are. That’s why I really fell in love with Nepal, because the happiness quotient there and the let’s all help each other out quotient there. It’s completely different from anywhere I’ve ever been.
Karuna: [00:08:51] I have to agree. So when I was there, it would have been in 2019. It was actually right before the pandemic started and.
Sander: [00:08:58] I was there in 2019 as well. Yeah.
Karuna: [00:09:00] Yeah. And so interestingly, we flew back through China and my husband got very ill just a few weeks later. We’re convinced he’s the one who brought COVID into the country. We joke about it. But but but the thing that really struck me was the friendliness. And and then and I’d love for you to talk about this a little bit, because you are a practicing Buddhist, as I understand. And so one of the things that really struck me as a practicing Buddhist is that, you know, in the mornings you hear people chanting and you see the malas moving and you see the smoke rising of the incense. And you can feel that there is a spiritual essence to the people of that country. And then, you know, you come to America. And my experience of America, for the most part, is that, you know, we kind of worship the dollar and getting to work in the mornings. So I’d love to just hear you talk a little bit about that happy quotient or just what you’ve observed around that. There’s this essence to me that you can really feel in the air.
Sander: [00:10:05] There really is. I think Westerners, they drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive for what they want. And once they get there, they go, Oh, gosh, I got here. I mean, I definitely experience that. The there’s nothing left. I’ve achieved most of what I wanted to and now my life is empty. And when you see people who have very little, they have barely enough to eat, but they’re constantly in prayer. They’re constantly in mindful thought about their practice, about what’s just surrounding them at all times. You can’t go anywhere in Nepal without seeing a statue of a God or a stupa or something religious that brings you back as a reminder of there is some other thing besides my own me. Like I’m not as important as everything else out there. So there’s this incredible feeling when you see someone who’s counting mantras all day long and also doing their work and also doing whatever they’re doing. They’ve always got a mala in their hand, they’re always counting. And then when you go to a place like Boudhanath Stupa, which is the Great Stupa, which it said, even seeing a picture of it can give you a good karma. Walking around that stupa being there, it doesn’t matter what religion you are, it just gets you. Yeah, it’s just so powerful. The power of people doing the core of walking around, Boudhanath Stupa counting with mantras with their malas and everything. With these huge smiles on their faces. You know, this is their life, their practice all combined into one. And I think we have a very hard time doing that as Westerners. We work and then we play and then we meditate and then we practice something. It’s all mixed together. And I think that’s why the happiness quotient seems to be so much more prevalent. You see so many people smiling everywhere in this country where poverty is a huge problem.
Karuna: [00:12:15] Gosh, what I love about what you just said is that essentially we compartmentalize.
Sander: [00:12:21] Right.
Karuna: [00:12:21] Even as householders. So householders is just a way of looking at dharma practitioners who haven’t taken monks or nuns vows, right. We’re out in the world, we have families, we have children, we have partners, we have fuck ups and everything in between. Right? But that is what it is. I had never put my finger on it before that that they too these you know, the people in Nepal, too, are many of them are householders. But the counting the mantras and having the malas and looking just at the beautiful stupas. I’ll share with you a quick story I don’t think I’ve ever shared before on my podcast… Around the Monkey Stupa. So we had arrived and I was very excited because Lama Tsultrim Allione, who is not my teacher, but I love reading her work, you know, she talked about her big realizations happening at the Monkey Stupa. She lived close by and so that was where she would go and she would do her walking meditation around the stupa. So I thought, well, hell, I think this is a great idea. Let’s walk to the stupa, get kind of a feel for Kathmandu from where we were staying, we were staying at the Kathmandu guesthouse. So we’re walking towards the stupa. Hi, kitty. And we make it through a really busy road and kind of all the things that Kathmandu is very different from where I live. I live in the mountains, quiet here. So we make it through. And as we’re going up the stairs, there are monkeys. And I don’t know how I missed this memo, that there would be monkeys and that they would be very friendly and interested. And I realized as I’m walking up the steps that I actually don’t like monkeys all of a sudden.
Karuna: [00:14:07] And I didn’t know that. But I was increasingly like, you talk about having a panic attack. I was having increased anxiety as we go up. And then I remembered that my friend the night before had told me, Karuna, put nothing in your hands, you’ll be fine. The monkeys just are interested in food. So I was like, okay, don’t put anything in your hands. No food. But I’m really kind of, you know, the anxiety is growing. So I start circumambulate and I forget everything because it’s this really magnificent place. And I’m just noticing all of the different little altars and all of the vendors and all of the richness and the incense. And I see that there are women and they’re giving offering plates that have rice and incense and flowers. And I thought, oh, my God, I want to make an offering for my mom who passed away when I was 25. So this is what’s going on in my brain. I’m thinking offering plate. I’m not thinking of rice as food. I’m thinking of it as an offering plate. So I asked my husband to give me a couple of bucks. I go over, I get the offering plate. I’m so excited. I’m walking towards the stupa to make my offering. And all of a sudden, this young monkey. Flys up, leaps onto my legs, grabs the offering plate. I scream. I mean, screamed like a total Western nut. And and then my husband. So the monkey goes away. I have the rice is all over the beautiful like I don’t know what it’s called, but sort of like the red and the orange. Like what you might smudge on your third eye.
Sander: [00:15:47] Yeah…
Karuna: [00:15:48] All over me, all over everything. And I’ve screamed and all of the locals are staring at me. And I was mortified. And so my husband’s like, Do you want to walk back home? And I said, Hell, no, please give me a taxi cab. And we got in the taxi cab and I cried all the way home because of the monkey who was really sweet.
Sander: [00:16:11] The monkeys are tough there. They’re actually not that nice. They can be pretty, pretty rough. And yeah, I keep clear of the monkeys when I’m there. They’re fun to watch, but from a distance.
Karuna: [00:16:24] Yeah, like you couldn’t pay me to go back to the monkey stupa at all.
Sander: [00:16:28] Yeah.
Karuna: [00:16:28] So tell us a little bit about your company. So you told us kind of how it got started, your company has been very generous to Mind Oasis. You’ve made really lovely donations. I was looking you have lovely blogs up, so stories around Nepal. And I would guess that you have some pretty awesome stories from your artisans themselves. Can you just share a little bit?
Sander: [00:16:52] Yeah. It’s been so many years of… It was so crazy to go from just getting things in boxes and not meeting any of the people to actually seeing the people who make all the products, meeting them, realizing that fair trade practices are very tricky in Nepal. People will go and get fair trade certification and then immediately stop doing anything fair trade. So at the beginning I was always buying from fair trade companies and I realized we had to make our own. So over the last 20 years or so, we just keep finding companies that have fair trade practices. We keep enforcing them, keep pushing them in that direction. But the company is more than that. It started for me to make enough money to survive and buy some food and have a life. But very quickly, I fell in love with Nepal and I think everyone at Dharma Shop would say the same thing. The artists that we’ve met, the people that we’ve been able to work with for 22 years, I mean, our prayer flag maker we’ve been working with since day one and I get probably 50 texts a day from her about her day to day business and how they’re printing the prayer flags. And it’s incredible to have these long, long, long, long standing relationships with people and.
Sander: [00:18:17] You know, Dharma Shop is a little different in the way that we really act as a family. We believe that even here in Michigan, like we have a small staff, but we all work together at all times. We all can do anyone’s role. We can all help each other out. We don’t do anything by ourselves, so we do the same thing in Nepal. We’ve got someone in Nepal who can put a small team together, go out and do some shopping. If we’re not there, make sure the quality is right. And for us, the biggest thing has been we want to provide good material for practitioners and we also want to introduce Buddhism and spirituality to people in a whole new way and show people that you can have prayer flag hanging in a beautiful house in the corner of a nice window. And it can bring you peace. It can bring you an incredible amount of joy. I think people really struggle with that for a long time, seeing these really esoteric, interesting items, but not in a home setting. And now that people realize, wow, I can have a Buddha statue on my desk and it can remind me of my practice. It can remind me of of peacefulness. That’s really changed things a lot and that’s come from our staff.
Sander: [00:19:34] You know, I am so proud to walk into the house of one of our artists and know that we’re supporting them and they’re living in this place in Nepal. They have access to food, they have access to everything because of Dharma Shop, because what we’ve done, all of us at Dharma Shop express that every time we see that. But even in the United States going into the house of one of the people who work for us, it’s incredibly gratifying to know that absolutely all of us are benefiting from Dharma Shop, and it’s not a couple of owners making millions of dollars and everyone else getting pennies during the coronavirus. No one was getting any orders in Nepal, so we placed all of our orders and they said, we can’t start in these four months and we paid them for it anyway. We’re like, We’ve been doing business forever. We trust you. And it really changed how things worked in Nepal. People realized we were there for them and we were there to support them. And I think it took another step up where people realized, We’re all in this together and we’re here to support you through this time, because obviously everyone in Nepal, they’re used to selling to tourists and there hasn’t been a tourist there in two years.
Karuna: [00:20:48] DharmaShop.com buy big buy often if you want to help support this beautiful dream. And really what this is an echo of is bodhisattva activity, right where we go and move beyond our own selves and we help others. I love it. Sander, thank you so much. Do you have any specific story or person that you’d like to tell us about? You told us a little bit about the gal who makes your prayer flags. I’m super curious about the nunnery incense that you carry. I love it, one of my favorites. Tell us a little bit about how you work with nunneries.
Sander: [00:21:28] The first time that I went to the nunnery, so it’s on a ton of mountain and the nunnery is about halfway up the mountain and the monastery is at the top. And weirdly, it’s one of these situations where the nunnery is better funded than the monastery. So the monastery is incredible for the monks. But the nuns have been building this prayer hall, this gompa for probably the whole time I’ve been going to Nepal since 2007, and the earthquake did some damage to it. Unfortunately, the two earthquakes did some damage to it, but they’re just about finished with it and… Part of the nuns practice on a day to day basis. They had this beautiful tower. It’s like towers over the entire nunnery where they can see the entire property. And there are dogs everywhere and there’s animals and goats and all the animals that they’ve just adopted to protect from someone else eating them. And in the morning, they make the mix of the incense they’re making that day, and they run it through this machine that makes these long lines. They cut the sticks by hand, and it’s just part of their practice. You can hear them muttering Om Mani Padme Hum under their breath at all times and they’re laughing and happy. And it’s the weather. They’re so gorgeous. Every time I’m there, all the windows are open and they’re just having the most incredible time. And it’s just part of their practice. It’s a happiness practice. They love doing it and they were doing it long before we did.
Sander: [00:23:06] We didn’t start this. So the first time we met them, they were like, Well, you have to buy 500 boxes. And at that time it was like, Oh gosh, I don’t know if we can afford 500 boxes now. Most of their incense they sell to us. We’re at that point where we sell so much incense and incense is such a big part of what we do. And that story of supporting the nunnery and I mean, they I can’t even begin to imagine how much support we’ve given to them over the years. And they’ve been so supportive to us and so kind to us in every time they come up with a new variety or a new flavor, they suggest things. They ask us for advice. It’s amazing. And it’s just one of the most peaceful places in the world. I go to the gompa there and sit in the prayer room and you can’t help but just be incredibly powerfully moved. They brought in painters from Bhutan to do all the walls of this prayer hall, which is I can’t even explain the size of it. It’s just outlandishly oversized with a statue that’s probably 50 feet high at the end of it. It’s one of the most beautiful holes I’ve ever seen in my life. So I go there every time I’m in Nepal to see them making incense to meet with the Ani there, and also just to experience that that peace and that joy. It’s incredible.
Karuna: [00:24:35] Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that story. Dharma Shop does such a great job, you know, in your emails telling people about like supporting the nunnery through the incense and all of that, but you really just brought it to life and how lovely to be able to not only support the nunnery, but then to have the burning of those blessings in your own home. That is so beautiful. Thank you.
Sander: [00:25:02] And it’s so nice knowing when you’re burning incense. Like, for me at least I’ve met the people who made them like. And to know that you’re burning incense that was hand-cut, that was handmade, hand mixed, you don’t get that much in today it’s culture and pretty much everything we sell is the same thing. I could give the same story about singing bowls, how they’re made completely and totally by hand, using methods they’ve been using for 1000 years. So it’s incredible to watch people using these same exact tools the same way they’ve always been used. Of course, there’s some modernization going on, but most of the stuff that we that we sell it’s made the exact same way it’s always been made.
Karuna: [00:25:49] That’s awesome. Sandra, what does your practice look like? What’s your daily practice look like?
Sander: [00:25:55] It’s been changing as I’ve been getting back a little bit to normal life. And that’s been a real question in my mind because I got to the point of meditating 3 to 5 hours a day because I just had endless time. I would wake up in the morning, check in with work and have nothing to do, basically. So I really dug into meditation practice. I was really hurt after a divorce and really needed to dig into myself and start discovering. And it took two years of meditating that much to realize that my inner voice wasn’t me. And. That was the the thing that I’ve taken out of these two years that has just blown my mind so much. And I’ve read about it and I’ve done studies on it, done so many things about it and. When it actually happened, when I actually caught myself thinking things and realizing that weight, the person catching myself thinking negative things or positive things or anything. That’s the actual person who I was and. That was something that. You have to experience. You can’t read about it. You can’t go to a trillion teachings. You can’t go to a million retreats. You have to have that moment where you’re like, Oh, gosh, that’s a really powerful message and a powerful thing to discover that you are the one watching everything that’s going on. And my practice every day now is I meditate in the morning when I wake up for about 2 hours, going to work for a few hours.
Sander: [00:27:41] And during work when I get a little overwhelmed because it’s a little overwhelming being out and about, I’ll go into my office and meditate for 10 minutes. I meditate on planes every flight. I meditate the entire time. If I’m in an Uber, which I haven’t been in a lot of the last couple of years, I’m meditating in the back of the Uber. I’ll put on headsets and meditate. So I try and take every chance I get to focus on my breath, to focus on the present, to put myself in the now, because I am definitely one of those people with a monkey mind who will just go in every direction. Negative, positive, whatever. Fantasizing about the future of the past and. The president isn’t great for all of us right now, so it’s hard to really dig into the present, but. When you can find that that peace and that calm of the present moment and everything else fades away and melts away. It doesn’t always happen in meditation. But I kind of liken it to running. I’ve been a runner for a long time and probably one out of 100 times I go running, I’ll get that runner’s high where I feel so great, but I always feel good after running. And it’s the same with meditation. It’s not always easy, but I always feel better afterwards.
Karuna: [00:29:02] Yeah, I’m a runner too. And actually the last two days I haven’t run. I was feeling a little burned out. I went for a six and a half miler and I came home and instead of feeling that not even runner’s high, I don’t get that very often these days, but like just a runner’s good.
Sander: [00:29:18] Right.
Karuna: [00:29:18] I didn’t feel that I came home and I was kind of like, okay, well, that was kind of a drudge. So the last two days I’ve mixed it up and I’ve gone hiking instead. And it really this morning I got up at five and got out there, so I got to catch the sunrise and it was just so nice to sort of break up the routine a little bit.
Sander: [00:29:36] Yeah. And here in Michigan, we’re finally getting the occasional sunny day and temperatures over 50. And in Michigan, temperatures get over 50. You see convertibles and t shirts and shorts. I mean, that’s that’s how crazy it is here. But yeah, it’s a really dreary day out today and that’s been sort of the hardest part of this, of getting through the virus that these lonely days where you’re just dealing with nothing but bad weather and cold weather and misery, and that’s when dropping into meditation is incredibly powerful. And it’s not to avoid things. You know, I get my work done and I make sure I handle all the things I do. I’m a dad. I’ve got to take care of my son when he’s here. But having the opportunity and knowing that life isn’t that difficult. I don’t have to spend every second working. I don’t have to spend every second dreaming of the future or ruminating on the past. I can be here right now, and that’s become really the most important part of my life.
Karuna: [00:30:45] I love it. So my last question, Sander, is what I ask all of my guests, and that’s what’s your truth?
Sander: [00:30:55] Well, you’ve got to have a tough question for the end.
Karuna: [00:31:03] It’s like in a marathon, how they always put a hill at the end.
Sander: [00:31:08] Yeah, that’s a really, really good point. Yeah, I did. I did a podcast with Michael Gervais, who’s a mindfulness coach for huge teams, like for NFL teams and NBA teams. And he did that to me, too. He asked me a question at the end and I was like, Oh, I don’t know if I can answer this question. My truth is that it’s. It’s better to. You know what I think is really interesting and I just said that I felt like I was avoiding sometimes. And it’s always the hard part about meditation when you feel like you’re avoiding your responsibilities. My truth is when I’m really meditating and when I’m really just paying attention to the present. I feel. For the entire world. I feel the sense of compassion and depth of connection with the entire world and that interconnectedness I only feel in the depth of meditation. So for me, my truth is I may be an introvert. I may be more of an extrovert after all of this because I really want to get out of the house more. But. I connect with people in a million different ways, but meditation has allowed me to connect with the entire universe, to really feel like I’m I’m part of this entire world and ecosystem. And that truth has hit me pretty hard these past couple of years as we’ve been so isolated and so insular. There are people who are making products from my store halfway around the world that are part of my life. They’re part of me. And that’s an incredible feeling to know that there are people all over the world who are impacted by what we do, but just by being kind and being focused on yourself and being focused on self love and kindness and compassion for others, you can be part of a worldwide community just sitting in a chair.
Karuna: [00:33:25] Isn’t it amazing.
Sander: [00:33:27] It’s unreal. It really is.
Karuna: [00:33:32] A strong meditation practice to me is just like the key. It opens a door and I think it’s a different door for everyone but the door. The portal is, to me, just so important and rewarding, even though sometimes meditation is really hard. I’ve guided hundreds of thousands of people in meditation and you know, I know that it’s hard. It takes a long time to get a practice that feels steady and stable, and you have to go through a lot to get there. But it’s the reward is, to me, just so worth it. And and I love that the portal is the same. But the boat, the world, your mandala is your mandala, right? And your view and through your experience, which is really individualistic and connecting at the same time, like what you said.
Sander: [00:34:22] Absolutely. Yeah. It’s incredibly difficult to get past that feeling of selfishness, to realize that it’s not a selfish act to care about yourself and to be compassionate to the world. It’s it’s an act of love.
Karuna: [00:34:36] Yeah, we have two people on Mind Oasis, that are offering a self compassion course coming up. And I went to their kind of mini precursor to see what it was all about. And it was interesting for them to ask about the voice that I use towards myself. And even though my name means compassion, which is a reminder for me to be more compassionate this direction, it was interesting to notice the voice that I use, and it wasn’t very nice that I was like, Wow, I really, you know, I’m hard type-A. I mean, I’m hard on myself, right?
Sander: [00:35:10] Me too. Yeah.
Karuna: [00:35:11] It was really like, you know, and both of them talked about how that’s what brought them to teach self compassion is because they realize that, oh, I’m not, I’m not particularly nice to myself and I need to work on my own heart so that I can go out and be helpful for others. And it was really inspiring.
Sander: [00:35:29] And it’s a huge part of my practice right now because that, you know, I learned very recently that I had sort of a covert narcissist for a mother and needed to take that negative self-talk that was built into me. And it’s there. I mean, it’s there all the time. And there are times that I just have to look in the mirror and say, I love myself. Like it’s just so important because, yeah, negative self-talk will destroy you and we all have some amount of it and we just have to identify it and know that it’s not real.
Karuna: [00:36:05] Sander Cohen, it was so nice to have this time with you. Thank you so much for being my guest. Sander is the owner and founder of Dharma Shop. You can find Dharma Shop at DharmaShop.com. Thank you so much for being my guest today.
Sander: [00:36:22] Thank you. I really, really appreciate the invite. And it was fantastic. I really enjoyed it.
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