Srini Pillay

With me is a gentleman's become a dear friend because we share so many of the same interests around the brain and performance and living a great lifestyle. And his name is Srinivasanpila. He's an assistant clinical professor at Harvard. He's one of the leading, what I call neuropsychiatrists, meaning he really understands the imaging infrastructure of the brain and how the brain works. And he worked before he was clinical professor at Harvard with the McClellan Hospital in the outpatient division, where they really worked with people with anxiety disorders and fear. And he's an author. He's just an incredible human being. And he works day to day with very serious and very successful individuals, executives at major corporations, to really help them shatter their own financial glass ceiling and really build their incomes and their companies to the next level. So he is of the most experienced individuals in the world on teaching us about the financial glass ceiling. And so why don't you help me welcome Srinivasanpila. He's here in studio with me, obviously.

Hi, John, buddy, how are you? I'm great, thanks. How you doing? Hi, everyone.

Unbelievable. All right, so by the way, if you want to follow what we're doing, you're going to have your manual and the agenda is down below on the screen that you're looking at. But we also sent this to you in a couple different formats. So, Srini, let's get into the financial glass ceiling. And so how do people get a financial glass ceiling? And why does everybody have one? You can talk to me, you can talk to them, say hi, wave to them.

Sure. Well, firstly, I'm really happy that everyone's here today for a number of different reasons. I think, as you alluded to. For me, one of my passions is really talking about this information related to the brain and how you can change your psychology and knowing that there are people there who are genuinely interested in making a change in their lives, knowing that every person who's attending this webinar today is actually thinking to themselves, what lies in my future? Do I really believe these guys? Do they really have something? Does this really impact people? One of the things I love about what we're going to be doing today is sharing some of these academic perspectives, talking to people who've actually used these methods practically to change their lives and to face their own ceilings. So from my perspective, I think the first thing I'd want to say to you and to everyone out there is that there's not just one financial glass ceiling in your life. What I would say Is that certainly for myself, I think I've shattered several glass ceilings. And there's still more to come. I think for every person out there. If you're at a place where you're making $40,000 a year and you want to make $60,000, that's one kind of glass ceiling. If you're making $100,000 and you want to make $500,000, and that's another kind of glass ceiling. And this goes on and on and on. So I think of this really more as a life. It's a lifelong process. And I think what this entire series does is actually gets people started. So let's first look at the notion of a glass ceiling. Like, you know, why is it a glass ceiling? You know, why is it not just a ceiling? Well, the first thing is that it's a glass ceiling because you can't see it. And so one of the things that we do with the brain science is help people understand why is it that if you're at a point where you are either hitting this glass ceiling, what is going on inside your brain that you cannot actually see this? Is there something that's going on that's making you either not look at the ceiling, or is there something that's going on that's making you look through the ceiling and look somewhere else and still feel like you can't get ahead?

Does everybody have a glass ceiling? From what you can tell in the research and working with clients, absolutely.

And the reason I think that is that I think when people talk about the ceiling, I think one of the things they're thinking about is the ceiling outside of themselves. But the truth is, the real ceiling is inside yourself. And so this limit that you reach, this place where you say, no matter what I do, no matter how I'm thinking about it, I just can't get past this point. That's actually a limit of how your brain is functioning. And one of the things that we want to take a look at today is, is to say, what are the limits that occur inside of you that make it really difficult for you to break through that glass ceiling? And if this limit is in your brain, what can you do about it?

So let me ask you a question. Somebody who's earning, whether it's 5,000 a year, 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, 500,000, or 5 million, they're all earning that because of what's happening in here or what's not happening in their brains?

Absolutely.

Okay.

You know, I think one of the things. And there are people who will say, well, you know, not everything's in the brain. And they're right, not everything's in the brain, but the brain is involved in pretty much everything.

Right.

I agree with you. So if we know how to turn on those switches and turn off those switches in the brain, if we know how to access what the relevant circuits are, we're actually getting to understand what the neural infrastructure is, the brain structures that are forming the ceiling. We can actually understand that more clearly. And once we understand that, we can intervene and get to those hopes and dreams that I think everyone who's attending this particular day is thinking about.

And so, from a perspective of neuroscience, does our childhood, does our background, our environment, our experiences formulate some of what causes the glass ceiling?

Very much so. In fact, three of the main things that. That we think about when we think about the glass ceiling, I think of all things as having a biological component, a psychological component, and a social component. And, you know, a lot of people.

Will say, biological, psychological, and social.

And social. And so a lot of people will say, well, you know, it's just my genetics. You know, I'm just built that way. I'm not someone who knows how to manage fear. And what I would say to every person out there is that, yes, you may have a genetic vulnerability, but genes do not account for. For all of the way you behave. You can learn, you can retrain the brain, you can help the brain operate in a completely different way. And what we're going to be touching upon briefly today are these three things.

Awesome.

The first thing is context. Cages.

So like a cage cage, Right.

Well, essentially, what a lot of people do is they're actually. They build little jails for themselves. And these jails are the kinds of words that we heard in the video before this. You know, I'm not worth it. I can't do it. I'm not someone who can make a million dollars. I can't really make, you know, $5 billion. So they put themselves in this cage, and then they trap themselves, and then they try to do things, but the overarching feeling about themselves is that they believe that they're incapable. And I always say to people, if you're in a jail cell, you can dress it up with Armani furniture, but you're still not gonna leave that cell. The reality is.

So it's kind of like being in prison, but you don't even know that you're in the prison.

That's right.