Multiply Your Success with Dr. Tom DuFore

265. Experience Life, Not Its Menu—Dr. Ravi Iyer

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Have you found yourself constantly distracted? Or your mind is racing from one idea to the next?Our guest today is Dr. Ravi Iyer, and he shares with us why this happens and how to help understand it. He talks about how each of us is a meaning making machine trying to make sense of the world around us. 

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Dr. Ravi Iyer, MD, TEDx speaker, author, coach, and President of Reston Towncenter Toastmasters Club, is a renowned expert in personal and professional transformation. As CEO of IR FocalPoint, Iyer Clinic, and ActivPower Inc., he helps high-achieving individuals, including C-suite executives, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and athletes, unlock their full potential through mastery of inner silence. His acclaimed programs, such as “Art of Living Leadership” and “Cognitive Alignment Workshop,” empower clients to break free from limiting patterns, achieve clarity, and cultivate purpose-driven lives. Specializing in 2 of 2 rapid mindset shifts, Dr. Iyer guides individuals from a consumer mindset to a creator’s perspective, enabling decisive action and freedom from mental clutter. As a podcast guest, Dr. Iyer delivers actionable insights on mental clarity, work-life balance, and aligning life with core values, inspiring listeners to embrace change and achieve deeper fulfillment and success. 

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Tom DuFore:

Welcome to the Multiply your Success podcast, where, each week, we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, tom Dufour, ceo of Big Sky Franchise Team, and as we open today, I'm wondering if you have ever found yourself being distracted or maybe you're constantly distracted or have you found yourself where your mind is racing from one idea to the next and the next? Well, our guest today is Dr Ravi Iyer, and he shares with us why this happens and how to help understand it. He talks about how each of us is a meaning-making machine trying to make sense of the world around us. Now, dr Iyer is a medical doctor, a TEDx speaker, he's an author, a coach, he's the president of his Toastmasters Club and is a renowned expert in personal and professional transformation. As CEO of Iyer, focal Point, iyer Clinic and Active Power Inc. He helps high-achieving individuals, including C-suite executives, entrepreneurs, celebrities and athletes, unlock their full potential through mastery of inner silence. His acclaimed programs, such as Art of Living, leadership and Cognitive Alignment Workshop, empower clients to break free from their limiting patterns, achieve clarity and cultivate purpose-driven lives. Specializing in two rapid mindset shifts, dr Iyer guides individuals from a consumer mindset to a creator's perspective.

Tom DuFore:

You're going to love this interview. This one is so full of just profound, deep statements and deep thinking. You might even want to listen to this one again. So let's go ahead and jump right into my interview with Dr Ravi Iyer. Thank you so much for being here, and one of the things that I was really interested in learning about and having you share with me and with our audience here is just this idea about how eliminating mental clutter can unlock greater clarity and focus and really productivity, especially for high achievers, and I think especially in high achievers they think well, I've achieved so much, I've figured out a way to work with that, but there's still that mental chatter and so on.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

So I'd love for you to maybe just start there for us this ability to isolate yourself from the mental chatter is a capacity that exists for everyone. Like anything else, it's a muscle that needs to be exercised and if you don't exercise it it diminishes in its power and it atrophies, but it never disappears. It just means that if you have not done the work, then at some point, when you begin to do the work, initially you will find it hard going and then eventually you'll get better and better at it and more easy. But if you analyze the way you and I live our lives, we have five sense organs eyes, ears, nose, tongue, taste buds, skin, the sense of touch that allow us to interact with our environment. So our environment literally contacts these five senses and gives input in terms of stimulation to our five senses, gives input in terms of stimulation to our five senses. Photons strike our eye, give us color and light. Molecules fall upon our tongue, give us taste. A molecule drifts up our nose, gives us a smell of a flower, wind molecules or air molecules strike our eardrums, giving us sound. Other molecules strike our skin, giving us touch. Now, out of these, sensory stimulation. This sensory stimulation is our real experience. But coupled with that experience is a meaning-making machine that we all are and we make meanings out of stimulation that strike us. For example, you see something red and a meaning pops up Apple. You smell a flower and a meaning pops up Nice or not? So there is a meaning that pops up. The meaning is separate from the experience. The experience has no meaning. It is you who give the meaning, and this is the reason why the same experience is handled differently by different people by different people. So one person will get stressed out by a certain set of experiences because of the meanings he gives it. Another person does not get stressed out from the same set of experience because of the meanings they give.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

Now, the meaning-making machine that we are has a very simple principle the meaning-making machine has only one purpose and its purpose is survival. The meaning-making machine exists and makes meanings so that it can put a certain value on our experience, and it makes a value and decides whether this value is favorable or unfavorable to you. So the purpose of the meaning-making machine is to constantly position yourself into situations that are favorable for you and to constantly avoid situations that are unfavorable to you. So, for example, a thorn pricks your skin and there is a stimulation, but that stimulation is experienced by your meaning-making machine as unpleasant and the reaction is I move my finger away. But the next time you see a pointy object you will move the finger away before it touches you. And then your reaction is now determined by the meaning you made by your previous encounter with that pointy object. So your response today is determined by your past experience. So like this I just took one example.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

But imagine layer upon layer upon layer of complexity in our meaning-making machine that form the prison walls of our life, such that life shows up to us only within the filter of our meaning-making machine. Now, some people are fortunate. They grew up in an environment where the meanings they made were a little more expansive, a little more less restrictive and more opportunistic, and therefore they have lives full of opportunity, pleasure. And other people grew up in situations where their past created meanings that were restrictive, that were defining, that were fearful, that were limiting in their definitions and therefore the rest of their life. Their future shows up as limiting and definite and defining themselves. But regardless whether it is the first person who has a more expansive meaning-making machine or another person who has a more restrictive meaning-making machine, they are both functioning within a prison wall. The only difference is this guy's courtyard is only so big and that guy's courtyard is huge, and the time this guy the time the successful guy is spending in the courtyard is more. The time that this unsuccessful person is spending in the courtyard of his life is less, and therefore they experience, but both of them are limited by their meanings. So when you deal with very successful people, they initially enjoy the vast freedom of their courtyard until they bump up and say, hey, wait a minute, I don't care how big my courtyard is, there's still a boundary wall and this boundary wall prevents me from really expanding and experiencing life. And they don't know that the boundary wall and this boundary wall prevents me from really expanding and experiencing life. And they don't know that the boundary wall was their own meaning-making machine. And I show them that meaning-making machine is not who they are. It is like.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

I'll give you an example. This lesson was taught to me at the age of 22. And the person who taught me this lesson was a monk in a monastery. I visited that monastery and this monk and he asked me a simple question. He said did you have a bowel movement today? And I said yeah, I did. I got up this morning. I had a good bowel movement. He said yeah. I said okay, when you had that bowel movement, after you had that bowel movement, did you really spend time inspecting and playing with your excreta? I said no and I was wondering where the conversation was going.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

And he said your digestive system takes in food and it converts that food into useful products for your body, and one of the products that converts it is excreta. And the excreta has a purpose. The purpose is to get out of your body, just like the blood that your digestive system makes has a purpose, that is, to circulate in your body. Like that, he said, your brain takes in your stimulus from your five senses and converts it into hopes and dreams and plans and fears and wishes and all the meanings of your life. He said they are just like excreta.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

You are not.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

He said you are not the excreta that your body makes.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

You are not the meaning that your body makes.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

You are the capacity to perceive life.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

Once you understand that you are the pure awareness of life, the capacity to actually be available to these senses, then you decide which meaning wants to come up.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

You recognize that the body will throw up meanings, but once you shift your identity from being the meaning-making machine to being the receiver of the products of the meaning-making machine. Then as a receiver, you can choose to receive or not receive. You know everybody goes around and says, oh, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cannot hit you know, that kind of thing Does that really shift you? It doesn't help you, no matter how much you say, because you believe that those words are the meanings that you are, until you actually shift your position, your identity, into the space where these meanings pop up, where you see these meanings, like the excreta that comes out, like the byproducts of your digestive system that comes out, and some of the byproducts are useful, some of them are not. Some of them are fragrant and some of them are not fragrant. You can pick and choose, which applies to the position of your life at this moment, because then you see yourself as the user of the meanings, not as the victim of your meanings.

Tom DuFore:

That is very profound in how you explain that. That is very profound in how you explain that To that point and as you've described that, what are some common patterns or things that you see in business leaders, successful individuals or just maybe people in general that you see where they are taking in this information and maybe they're not recognizing what you said, where they get to choose right, they can choose if they recognize that. So what are some common limiting patterns that you see there?

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

So the essence of ability to recognize is the ability to make a distinction. When there is no distinction, there can be no recognition. All right, that's important. So the problem that people have is they don't have distinctions, they don't know. I'll give you an example In the Kalahari Desert there is the Kalahari bush pygmy. Now, the Kalahari bush pygmy can know from a dimple in the sand a little bit of slight depression in the sand. He can know what kind of creature created that, he can know its size, its age, he can know what it was pursuing and he can know a whole lot of information from just a dimple. For me, that is nothing. For me it is just sand, because I don't have the distinction of that, because I don't have the distinction of that.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

So when people live their life in the meaning-making machine, imagine if you were to go to a restaurant and you sit down and instead of eating the meal, you eat the menu that describes the meal. The meaning-making machine is the menu of life. The meal of life is actually being present to experience. Now I'll give you a five-year-old child walks out into the lawn and he finds a stick. The five-year-old child does not have a meaning for the stick. So that stick now can be so many different things. It can be a sword, it can be a spear, it can be a Robin Hood staff, it can be a bow, it can be a spear, it can be a Robin Hood staff, it can be a bow, it can be an arrow, it can be so many different things. And for a fire old that stick is a source of wonder because of all the possibilities that the stick exists. Then somewhere along the way that fire old decides that the stick is a sword and from that point onwards every stick in that fire old's life can only be a sword. So the problem is, by the time you are become an adult, you no longer you've forgotten how it is to experience. You live your life by the definitions of your meaning-making machine and there is very little joy there, just like there is very little taste in eating the menu. There's no flavor there.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

What people do to experience to actually break themselves out of their prison of their meaning-making machine is they try to shake things up.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

They go on a vacation, go to some place where they've never been before, where the old meanings don't make sense anymore, and suddenly they feel expansive, they feel experienced, and they mistake that they think that that freedom, that joy, that excitement that they experience can only be had by going on a vacation to Bora Bora or Timbuktu, or go on a hike to Everest Base Camp or Kilimanjaro, or do themselves up with a drug, that they are able to actually break out of their meaning-making machines and actually go back into experience, when they could have that by simply sitting in the backyard, because it's fundamentally experience.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

Right, you can have that sitting in a chair, but if you realize that it is you who are the awareness that experiences, in whose awareness, in the space of your awareness, the meaning-making machine pops up meanings, hurricane winds of your meaning and you can pick and choose which meaning you want to give as the direction of your this minute or this instant or this hour or this day or this year, you can choose the direction of your life. That's number one. Number two the reason why people don't know this is because they never practiced experience. And when they do experience life, they experience it by accident, not by intention. And because it is accidental experience, their ability to get it again and again is also accidental again and again is also accidental.

Tom DuFore:

How might someone go from this accident to being more intentional about finding this purpose or fulfillment?

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

really, it sounds like so when you want to go and build let's say you wanted to build your biceps and you build your lats and build a six-pack abdomen. What do you do? You go to a gym. You go to a gym, you sit down at a machine and you work those group of muscles. You do a lat pull or you do a bicep curl or you do abdominal crunches or something like that. Right, but each is a specific set of exercises and there is equipment, there is place, location and there's a commitment of time and energy. Equipment there is place, location and there's a commitment of time and energy Like that to develop the ability to stand apart from the meaning-making machine. You need to set time and you need to participate and do some exercises that get you into focusing upon experience. You can do it by some people.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

The Japanese do the focus of a tea ceremony. That is actually an experiential ceremony where the meaning-making machine is shut off and you are experiencing the elegance and the art form of making a cup of tea and serving it in a very precise way and your entire attention is focused on rubbing it. Everything is attention. A person goes into a yoga position and goes breath-watching. It's all experience. It is all exercises in experiential awareness, dissociating yourself from the space of your meaning-making machine and going back and more into its experience. And you can do this at any time. You can do this driving your car. Drive your car and pay attention to everything on the road instead of the chatter in your mind about where you're going. Find out if you can go into a Zen zone while driving your car.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

When you're picking up a book, read the letters in a way where you actually experience the ink on the paper. See, people don't do those things. When you're writing let us say you write your name on a piece of paper experience the curl of your finger, the way the ink flows, the curve of the letters, the flourish and the end and the next, until you fill a page of beautifully formed letters where the entire exercise, you have been totally attentive to the flow of letters rather than some chatter. You can pay attention and when you stand before somebody and you are paying attention, there's something magical happens. You gain control in that person's attention and your ability to pay attention shuts off that person's meaning-making machine and that person experiences expansion in your presence. Imagine as a CEO you're talking to somebody, you're talking to a board member and you are giving so much attention that that person feels empowered because you shut off his meaning-making machine that was imprisoning him by the force of your attention. And that's what happens when your muscle is sufficiently powerful.

Tom DuFore:

How can someone find out more about what you're doing? Get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to?

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

do that. Just come to my website, wwwdriyercom. You can get me there If you punch in my name. I'm a public trigger done three TEDx talks Next week. There's going to be a Wikipedia page on me, I guess, so you can find me.

Tom DuFore:

Great Well, and we'll make sure we include that in the show notes so people connect to you here. Dr Iyer, this is a great time in the show we make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question is have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

Yeah, many years ago, 1970, 75 or 76, I nearly failed in university. I couldn't get into medical school because of my grades, and I finally built myself up from that point. So that was a pretty intense point in my life where I was pretty beaten down by judgment of, by the conversations and meanings that were there. I was barely 18 or 19. I was 18 years old. That was exactly when I discovered that I am not the meaning making machine but the awareness in which the meanings pop up, and that these meanings that were defining the course of my life were only a temporary opinion and they have only as much power as I make them persist. And I just took a 100% shift from there and from that point onwards I didn't look back.

Tom DuFore:

Fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing that. And how about a make a highlight or two that you can share?

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

The biggest highlight was actually that pivotal point because that transformed everything. But from there my career took off from that point. From there I went to All India Institute, the best medical school in the country, got my doctoral degree, went to Harvard. So it's been a series of highlights. From there, the biggest highlight in my life was meeting the woman I ended up marrying. That pretty much gave me for the first time in my life a sheltered space where I could. I could stand and actually sally forth from my wife became my my fort, my space, and every success emerged out of that.

Tom DuFore:

Thank you for sharing. Well, and how about a multiplier? The name of the show is Multiply your Success. Have you used a multiplier to grow yourself, personally or professionally, all the time?

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

So I have multiple companies and they all feed in on the same common principle and they work off each other. But even most recently, my TEDx talk that I gave in October, but even most recently my TEDx talk that I gave in October it went viral. Right now it's having over 2.2 million views in less than four months. And the multiplier in that case was I wrote a book about my journey to the TED stage and the book drove the talk and the talk drove the book, drove the talk and the talk drove the book. So they bounced back and forth in a very synergistic virtuous cycle that completely exploded its performance. And that's just one example.

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

My life is full of multipliers. I multiply all the time. I always use something connected. So human connection is the biggest multiplier. When you are able to make something that you do become an empowering feature in somebody else's life, that person will automatically take what you do and amplify it. So contributing to other people's life is the biggest multiplier, because when you contribute it doesn't go off into the ether and get wasted, because that contribution, that person who gets contributed, wants more of it. So they will take your contribution and expand and deliver it out.

Tom DuFore:

And the final question, dr Iyer, that we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?

Dr. Ravi Iyer:

Success means to me the ability to empower the maximum number of people in the span of my life that I can possibly get. That is my definition of success. I believe that no one needs to spend even one second in a wasted conversation or a wasted meaning that deprives them of the possibilities of their life. Create the space wherein everyone who comes in contact with me can experience an expansion in the possibilities that are available to them.

Tom DuFore:

Dr Iyer, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when he talked about the meaning-making machine has one purpose and that's survival. I thought that was a great recognition and that leads to takeaway number two. And takeaway number two is when he said the essence to recognize is the ability to make a distinction, and if there's no distinction, there is no recognition. I thought that was a great little takeaway, just to start thinking about what he's trying to say and communicate, about recognizing as an example that you are and I am and we are these meaning-making machines that he describes. Which then leads to takeaway number three, which is when he gave that great analogy about sitting at a restaurant and imagine eating the menu at a restaurant instead of eating the meal, and he said the meaning-making machine in all of us is like eating the menu. So he said the meaning-making machine is the menu of life, the meaning of life is actually being present to experience. And so, to tie it back to his analogy, I think it's taking a look at saying well, the meaning making machine in all of us would be the like eating the menu lack of flavor not very enjoyable versus the being present to experience would be actually reading the menu, placing an order and eating the meal and being present in that moment. And now it's time for today's win-win.

Tom DuFore:

So today's win-win came from when he seemed to summarize all of these pieces together and how you can apply this not only for yourself, but how you can help create an environment for someone else to eliminate this distraction. And he said your ability to pay attention shuts off the other person's meaning making machine, which allows you to connect with that person by paying attention. I thought that was fantastic. So when you give someone your undivided attention, especially in today's world where it's so easy we all have access to our cell phones and computers and distractions and people needing things from you, especially as the leader and entrepreneur of your business it's easy to get distracted. But when you can be focused and intentional in that moment with that other person, you shut down their meaning-making machine, which allows them to connect and for you to connect with them, and that cuts out the noise and distraction that other person has and creates a safe environment, which means that a person is going to internalize and instinctively want more of that. Which I thought was great.

Tom DuFore:

He gave a great example of this where he said the biggest highlight of his life was meeting the woman he ended up marrying and she gave him that sheltered space, and so I think this is an example of that attention that he's talking about. His wife has provided him the safe fort as he described it, and every success that he has had has emerged out of that. So I just thought that was a great great summary here and what Dr Iyer shared about what his wife has been able to mean to him. It just reminds me, as the time of this recording, brian Wilson, the main founder and lead songwriter for the Beach Boys, passed away, and one of my favorite songs of all time is God Only Knows. And boy. It's just a great summary to think about how that might apply to what Dr Iyer was talking about with his wife.

Tom DuFore:

And maybe it applies to you. God only knows what I'd be without you, and who might that be for you in your life and who might you be that for in someone else's life who might be thinking that about you Might be a good way to ponder and think about. And so that's our episode today. Folks, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review and remember if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level. Please connect with us at BigSkyFranchiseTeamcom. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.

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