The 7 Levels of Human Behavior: Jim Marshall on Leadership, Growth & Understanding People

Jim Marshall presents Septemics, a system mapping human behavior onto 35 scales with seven hierarchical levels each. He argues sustainable development requires moving through these levels one step at a time, and demonstrates the framework by analyzing historical figures like Hitler and Pol Pot. Marshall spent 25 years developing the system, which applies to everything from training regimens to dating decisions.
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People are mixed—some are nice, some are not; it's not all good or all bad.
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Hi, Corwin. Good to see you.
Oh man, I appreciate you coming out, Jim. Appreciate you coming out. So, gentlemen, let me ask you, man, What exactly is this program that you have and how did it originate?
Okay, well, the first thing I should tell you is that I am the discoverer of hitherto unknown natural phenomena which greatly aid in the understanding of people, from which I developed a revolutionary practical philosophic system called Septemics and published it in the book Septemics: Hierarchies of Human Phenomena. Septemics is a philosophical science based on the fact that many phenomena related to human beings occur in a sequence of 7 levels. Literally, the word Septemics means of or pertaining to 7. Septemics comprises a collection of scales, each of which breaks down various human phenomena into a hierarchy of 7 steps. There are 35 such scales, each of which is unique, and together they span the spectrum of human experience. By which I mean any problem, dilemma, difficulty, situation that any person has regarding people can successfully be analyzed by one or more of these scales, usually more than one.
Mm, man, that's deep there, uh, Jim, man. That's deep. I don't even know what to say after that. So let me ask you, man, Can you explain one of the hierarchies in simple terms?
Well, first of all, there are 35 different scales. Each is unique, so the content of the scales varies tremendously. That is why they span the spectrum of human experience, because each one is unique. When you add them all up, many people have told me this, the whole span of human endeavor has been covered in this. Which is why it's universally applicable, which makes it very useful. Every person is at some level on every scale. It's not a question of whether or not this applies. It's a question of whether or not you're going to take advantage of it.
Hmm.
So, for example, there's a scale of basic purposes. Every human has one of seven basic purposes. When you find your basic purpose, it's a life-changing moment. You know what you're about and your whole life comes into focus. The other 6 levels you throw out, you say, "That's not for me, that's for other people." And this works on yourself and on other people too. So you could find somebody else's basic purpose and then you really understand that person because the basic purpose is what the person is trying to do all the time. But that's only one of 35 scales. What I'd like to do is tell you how this helps people in a general way, because your viewers are going to want to know that. I wrote this book to help people. I've had a lifetime of helping people. Each of these 35 scales provides the user with an infallible way of determining the salutariness or beneficialness of any group, individual, or activity. If the group, individual, or activity moves persons or groups up these scales, it's beneficial or positive. If it moves them down, it's detrimental or negative. So I am giving you a yardstick by which to measure human affairs, which is an entirely new thing. More importantly, just finding out what level you or another person is at on any scale is by itself inherently enlightening and beneficial. Because every time you correctly spot either yourself or another on any one of these scales, you have an insight. So let's say you spot that your mother is at level 2 on the scale of motivation. You say, "Oh, now I understand why she does X, Y, and Z. This explains it." So finally, once you know the actual level of a person, You can improve that person by moving them up one level at a time. I have solved the gradient problem that has bedeviled mankind for 6,000 years. And let me tell you what I mean by that. Almost everyone has problems, difficulties, situations, dilemmas, and they don't know how to resolve them. 99% of the time, it's because the person does not know the gradient. In other words, he does not know what steps to take to get where he wants to go. These 35 scales are the gradients. I'm giving you the gradients. I'm telling you, if you're at level 6, your next step up is level 5. There's no avoiding that. So if you're at level 6 and you try to get to level 5, You will get there because it's the next level up. But if you try to get to level 1, 2, 3, or 4, you will fail because it's too steep a gradient. Every good coach, facilitator, therapist in the world understands that human development must be done on a gradient. That's why crash diets and crash exercise programs don't work, because it's not a gradient.. So let me give you an example. I've worked as a personal trainer. So if a guy comes to me and says, Jim, 100 pounds overweight, can you help me with this? I'll say, sure. So I'm working with the guy now, right? I have to figure out what's going to work for this guy. I would not simply give him a 100-pound barbell and say, lift this, or tell him to go out and run 5 miles. That's malpractice. That is counterproductive. First, I would talk to him and try to figure out what he might be able to do. So I'm going to guess, I'm going to say, okay, this guy looks to me like he can curl 15 pounds. So I give him the 15-pound barbell. I say, let's see how many of these you can do, right? So he starts doing them. He says, this is easy, I can do this all day. I say, fine, stop. Let's try 20. So now I give him 20 and he says, oh yeah, I can feel this is a little harder. So how many do you think you can do? So I might be able to do 13 of these. Okay, fine. I want you to do 13, 3 sets on each arm every day. And at the end of the week, we'll talk again. And then at the end of the week, I would say to him, how did you do? If he says to me, this has gotten quite easy, I can do more than 13, I'd say, great, let's go to 15. If he said to me, this is tough, I'm sore and everything. It's okay. Just keep doing it. See, it's finding the gradient. So what happens with people is they're in situations and they don't know the gradient. They don't know how to solve the problem. And these scales are the gradients. So this is like 35 roadmaps for success in life.
Hmm.
What I'd like to do now is tell you the names of the 35 scales. So then you know exactly what subject matter is addressed in the book.
I'm listening, Jim.
Hey, so of the 35 scales, 24 of them are individual scales, meaning they play with an individual, and 11 of them are group scales. These are the individual scales: the Scale of Basic Purposes, the Scale of Personal Influence, the Scale of Choice, the Scale of Permeation, the Scale of Thought, the scale of identity— The Scale of Evaluation; The Scale of Motivation; The Scale of Control; The Scale of Stopping; The Scale of Scholarship; The Scale Literacy; The Skill of Human Ability; The Scale Memory; The Scale Spiritual Identity; The Scale Mental Deletion; The Scale Aberration; The Scale Physical Fitness; The Scale Justification; The Scale Belief; The Scale Equanimity; the scale of attack, the scale of conflict, and the scale of reaction. And these are the group scales: the scale of relationships, the scale of life spheres, the scale of government, the scale of civilization, the scale of survival, scale of management, the scale of exchange, the scale of communication, the scale of allegiance, the scale of sexuality, and the scale of politics. Now, any one of these skills by itself could dramatically help the person. And let me give you an example. I mentioned the skill of motivation. One of the most important things to know about a person is the person's motivation. Why is this person doing this? That's how the police solve crimes.
Mm-hmm.
They look for someone with a motive. So you could ask yourself, what's my wife's motivation to it? What's my brother's motivation toward me? What is my uncle's motivation toward me? What's my boss's motivation toward me, etc.? And you could do this for everybody you know or everybody you have ever known. If you know these people well, this is not going to be hard. You know your girlfriend or your wife, right? So you look at the scale, oh, I can see her motivation is this. When you spot it, you'll have a realization. You'll say, that explains why she says this and this and this. See, you just had a little insight. But you have to realize that every time you use this, you're going to have an insight. So by doing this with everybody you know, you're going to have all these insights about people where you're understanding their motivations, which really helps you understand the person. See, they're not going to be a mystery to you anymore. In this regard. So now you could take that same scale and reverse the vector and say, what is my motivation toward Fred? What is my motivation toward Joe? What is my motivation toward Mary? What is my motivation toward Anne? And you could use it that way for every person you know or have ever known. Now, by the time you finish this exercise on both flows, you will have had 300, 400, 500, 600 insights. So your mind is going to be much clearer because the whole subject of motivation for everybody in your life has been resolved now because you have all these insights about them and you will know why they are doing what they are doing, which is what motivation is.
Mm-hmm.
You see? So let's say you're dating some woman for 3 years. And you're thinking about getting married. Wouldn't it be reasonable to ask, why does this woman want to marry me? Here's another sensible question. Yeah, I'm not saying to ask her. I'm saying open the book. There are only 7 choices. See, I did the heavy lifting by getting it down to 7 and knowing that they're correct. So you know the person after 3 years, you look, you say, oh, I can see Her motive to marry me is, one, she loves me. That's the highest motive of all. Motivation number one, love. Let's set the date. Maybe that doesn't happen. Maybe you look at it and you say, you know, now that I think about this, I think she wants to marry me because I drive a Maserati. I have a 60-foot yacht. I fly my own Learjet. I live in a $15 million condo and I have $10 million in the bank. See, that's a different motivation. That's level 4, money. I'm not saying it's good or it's bad. I'm saying that's what it is. Now what you do with it, that's up to you. You might say, okay, this is not the first woman that wanted to marry me for my money, but this woman is smart, funny, easy to get along with, congenial. We have a lot of fun together, so I'm going to marry her anyway. And you might live happily ever after. But realize, as you're living happily ever after, you're knowing what her motivation is. See, it gives you some insight. But maybe that doesn't happen. Maybe you say, wait a minute, I don't want to marry somebody who wants to marry me for my money. I want to marry someone who loves me for myself. That's a common reaction. So looking at it that way, you might break up with her. Now, you might think in that second case that you'd be upset about that, and you would be wrong. You will not be upset. You'll be relieved. You'll say, thank goodness I figured this out now. I dodged a bullet. See, now the next time you go looking for a wife, you have a better idea. You have a little more insight. See, Maybe you don't even tell her that you drive a Maserati. You see? So this is just one scale. I'm giving you a way to use it. It's very user-friendly. This is not hard to do.
I like that, man. That's a lot. So let me ask you, Jim, let me just ask you one question, man. With all this research and breaking it down into different groups, how long did it actually take you to write this book, man?
Well, let me answer this. The story really begins when I was accepted into engineering school at the age of 16. Now, of course, I thought at the time, like all the other engineering students, that I was going to be engineering physical things like airfoils or motors or gears or electrons. But by the time I had my bachelor's degree, it was clear to me that I wanted to engineer the human psyche. Because it's the area of greatest unknown, of greatest mystery, and more importantly, it is the area in which we as a race are failing miserably. 95% of the problems in industrialized society are because people don't understand people. Don't understand the wife, don't understand the husband, don't understand the next-door neighbor, don't understand the boss. See, if you understand the person, then you can get along with them because you have some insight into them. See, you know what's going on. So to make a long story short, I had a long career as a human development engineer, working one-on-one with hundreds of clients of every description, bringing them to higher levels of enlightenment, responsibility, ethics, ability, and so forth. Now, all of my clients improved as a result of our interaction, but I started to notice incidentally that I could predict the outcome of the session. I would know how the session was going to end up. I never told that to anyone, but I made notes. And as the decades rolled by, I came to realize that the client would be at a specific level on a specific scale that I had previously observed and recorded. And as a result of that interaction we had, he would go up to the next higher level and he would have realization. See, like the guy comes in, he can't get along with his wife, right? And 20 minutes into the session, he says, ah, now I see why I can't get along with my wife. She's just like my mother, or whatever it is, right?
Mm-hmm.
The guy's very happy about that because he understands her better now. He's got a grip on it, see? So by 1995, I had been doing this for decades. I had simply observed and recorded about 32 scales of varying lengths, varying between 3 and 7 lengths. And around that same time, one day I was pondering a difficult client. And I realized that that client was at a level on a scale that I had not previously observed. I had a 6-level scale that by then I absolutely knew from decades of use was correct. But I realized, ah, there's a 7th level. That's the deal with this client. There's another level I hadn't previously seen and she's on that level. So as soon as I saw what the level was, I knew where to insert it. That was not the question. And when I inserted it, that 6-level scale at that moment went from being a line, which is what a scale is, to a plane, meaning a whole body of data. Or to put it another way, all of these data jumped out at me. And I now had this whole page of interlocking, intersecting Data. It was fundamentally mathematical. Now, having taken 26 semesters of math, having loved every minute of it, I think in math. When it appears, I see it. I saw it. There's math here. And that means whatever the hell this is, there has to be a natural law. Because anything that has math embedded in it is natural law. Like, for example, the Fibonacci sequence. So I then thought, I wonder how many of these other scales that I have are actually 7-level scales that had not been developed all the way, because I wasn't developing anything. I was just helping my clients and making notes. So knowing what I was looking for, I carefully studied all of these other scales, and eventually they all went to 7 levels. And they all manifested mathematically. So now, in a matter of months, I had 32 7-level scales, all of which had mathematics embedded in them. And having gone to school for 28 years, I said to myself, this looks like a new subject to me. I never saw anything like this before. And then I thought, you know, this could really help people because if I could get this out in a book, so people could have it and use it, I could go from helping people by the hundreds, which is what I had been doing as a human development engineer, to helping them by the millions because they have this data. So I'm going to have to write a book. The first draft was finished in December of '95, and I immediately sent it out to colleagues of mine, all of whom had graduate degrees in a variety of subjects. And they all loved it. They had different responses, but distinctly positive responses. And that told me this is exactly what I think it is, a new subject that people get because it's natural law. I then spent the next 25 years of my life working on this book.
Hmm.
And let me tell you why. First, I had to discover the phenomenon. A subatomic phenomenon. And I pretty much already explained to you how that was done, mostly in the sessions. But you have to realize, when I would go out into the real world, I'd go to the bank or the supermarket, I'd see exactly the same thing that I saw in the session. These people didn't know who I was. They didn't even know what I was paying attention to them. But there it was, see? So this was all over the place. So then After I had the phenomena, then I had to use it to craft a workable philosophical system. Now, as an engineer, like all other engineers, I'm only interested in results and facts. To engineering, beliefs and opinions are irrelevant. Because in engineering, you cannot say, whoops. You don't want to say that. You can't have the plane fall out of the sky or the bridge fall into the river. You know? No. Or the cell phone not work. It's gotta work.
Yeah.
That's what engineers get paid for. It's gotta work. So I had to craft a system that would work for everybody all the time. Feeling uncertain by life's challenges? At InTouch.org, you'll discover encouragement that lasts with powerful sermons from In Touch Ministries Dr. Charles Stanley, daily devotionals, and resources designed to strengthen your faith. You'll find hope and wisdom for every season of your life.
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Music style. Now, the most time-consuming aspect of this was expressing this in a way that would make sense to the average reader because my intention from the beginning was to help people. You know, for them to look at this and say, oh yeah, I see this, I can use this. See, selecting the exact right word was a lot of work. This is an 86,000-word book, and I had to literally go word by word. How are people going to interpret this word? Is this the right word, or should I say it that way? That's very time-consuming. So, so I know I succeeded at that because some version of this book has existed now for almost 30 years. And I've been watching people get it. People get this. They get it right away. So some guy will like open the book, right? Doesn't know anything. And he looks at this and says, scale of control. Scale of control, huh? What's this? And I'll say, yeah, okay. I see how there's a scale of control. There's 7 levels of control and they're in a hierarchy. See, it gets it right away. And the reason it gets it right away is it's natural phenomena. So anytime you're studying something that's natural, it's intuitive. In other words, it's not counterintuitive. So for example, if you look at the Pythagorean theorem, most people see the Pythagorean theorem first in the 12th or 13th or 14th. They say, oh, I see. In a right triangle, a squared plus b squared equals c squared. I see how this works. And you've got it. And then it's just working with it to use it in ways that are convenient for you. Or the periodic table of elements, right? You look at it when you're young, when you first see, oh, this makes sense. Hydrogen is 1, helium is 2, lithium is 3. And it goes down horizontally and vertically and everything cross-references. It's very workable, which is why the periodic table is in use throughout the world for every science textbook and every science classroom. And every scientist has one because it works.
Mm-hmm.
Several people have said to me, what book is your book like? And I have to say to them, I don't think there's ever been a book like this before. But each of these 35 scales is expressed in what you could call a table or a spreadsheet. So you open to Chapter 1, it says, "Scale of Basic Purposes," and it's expressed there in a spreadsheet that's very similar to the periodic table of elements. And each of these 35 scales has that. That's the first thing you get when you open the chapter. There's the scale. In this table. So remember, I read to you a few minutes ago the names of the 35 scales.
Mm-hmm.
Well, each of those scales has a corresponding periodic table. So there's a periodic table for basic purposes, there's a periodic table for the scale of choice, there's a periodic table for thought, there's a periodic table for stopping. So in other words, I have reduced this to its mathematical essence. And having worked on this most of my life, I know these scales are correct. Now, you could quibble with what word I used. That's a reasonable question because writing is an art, right? There's always a question about how am I going to describe this? And many of these things, I called it something and later on said, no, a better way to explain it is this. See?, and I changed it. So again, that took many years of working on it and getting feedback. You know, this book was rewritten half a dozen times.
I bet.
Because remember I told you in '95 I sent out the first transcript, I got feedback, and then I completely rewrote it. And then I sent it out to students and colleagues and clients and friends. And I got more feedback. All right. And I got ideas and I wrote it again. So every time I rewrote it, it got clearer and clearer and clearer. So the result of this is people get this. I guarantee just from what I know about you today, you would look at this book and this would make sense to you. I mean, obviously you have to read it. It's not going to— you're not going to get it if you don't read it. Yeah, but it's not like, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there that's double-degooked, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, because it's not natural law. So this is very user-friendly and it's really helpful. Now let me explain, give you an analogy about sort of how to think about this. Let's say You find out that I'm into gardening and you invite me to your home to see your garden. I don't even know if you have a garden, but if you do, you might say, Jim, come and see my garden. It's okay. So I show up at CJ's house and I walk in there and say, oh, CJ has hydrangeas, tulips, chrysanthemums, roses, forget-me-nots, begonias. Okay. Now the reason I can do that is I know a lot about flowers. I've been gardening since I was a boy. So if you bring some 5-year-old girl into your garden, right, she's going to see and smell exactly what I saw and smell, right? But all she can say is, "These are pretty and they smell nice." That's all she knows.
Yeah.
Right? Because she's a 5-year-old girl. She doesn't know a chrysanthemum from a begonia. Mm-hmm. Well, let me tell you, here's the key. Most adults are like that little girl as regards people. They don't know what they're looking at, right? So a guy meets a girl in a bar, right? He says, well, she's pretty and she smells nice. That's all he knows. See, like the little girl. But if he had this data, he could say, Oh, her basic purpose is this. Her spiritual identity is this. Her level of literacy is this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he could, in the first hour he knows her, he could have several realizations that are telling him, does he want to pursue this or does he not? So let me tell you a true story. I'm a single guy. 6 months ago, I met this gorgeous blonde. She looked like a movie star, right? And we were very interested in one another. So now we're going through the usual preliminaries, right? What do you like to do on the weekends? What kind of music do you like to listen to? What kind of movies do you like to go to? You know, all that stuff. What kind of restaurants do you like? You know, in the early parts you have these little discussions, right? So we had at least half a dozen discussions like that. So we're having one of these discussions and I realized, ah, she's low on the scale. Okay. So we had another discussion and it was, ah, she's low on this scale. Okay. And we had another discussion. I realized she's low on this scale. And then I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, what am I getting myself into here? Because what you want is someone to be at or near the top of the scale, you know. So like, for example, Abraham Lincoln was at level 2 on the scale of basic purposes, very high level, okay? And if you study him, it's perfectly clear. It's not subtle if you study the man. So I I said to myself, wait a minute, this woman is going to be a lot of trouble to me. So I said to her politely, pass. She was shocked.
You know why?
I was probably the first guy who did that to her. We didn't have a fight or anything like that. I just could see, because I know this material, that this was going to be a train wreck.
Mm-hmm.
So the fact that she looked like Lana Turner or whomever didn't help me.
See?
So that saved me a lot of time and a lot of trouble and a lot of aggravation, didn't it?
Yeah.
Because most guys don't know them superiorly would have jumped right in. And then 6 months later, had a big breakup, fighting and everything. And I'm You know, sometimes I can walk for months and months and months, you know, not a good thing. So for me, I understand people so well now. I don't have that. I can meet a person, I can say, oh, this is an upscale person. This person is high in this skill, high in this skill, high in it. That's somebody I want to have around me. Or the opposite. Sometimes I meet somebody who's low on a certain skill. Whoa. Because let me tell you. The dregs of society are at or near the bottom of these 35 scales. Mm-hmm. And the book is perfectly obvious. I explain it clearly. Adolf Hitler was at level 7 on the scale of basic purposes. His basic purpose was to destroy. This is not obvious, but once you understand it, he makes a lot of sense. You know, I'm a serious student of military science. So when I was studying World War II, obviously he was the, the, uh, head of state for Germany, and he made these choices that were just ridiculous, that nobody who studied military science would make those choices. And every time he did, it was a train wreck. His generals kept telling him, don't do that. In fact, his second in command Hermann Göring said, if we go to war with the Russians, we will lose. That's exactly what happened. He had a non-aggression pact signed with the Russians so that he would not have to fight a two-front war. Well, that makes some sense, right?
Mm-hmm.
And he went against it and attacked them anyway. And the Russians just came at them. The Russians lost 20 million people. But they rolled over the Germans, right? Wow. Terrible, terrible story. But when I realized, oh, he's destructive— he wasn't just destructive to the Allies, that would make sense. He was destructive to Germany. He was destructive to the Wehrmacht. He was destructive to anybody he didn't like. See, like Pol Pot. If you study Pol Pot in Cambodia, Same thing, level 7. He was a destructive person. He did crazy things. He killed thousands of innocent people. So that's what you get when somebody like that's in charge.
Mm-hmm.
So if you know this and you can spot somebody, this saves you a lot of trouble. I absolutely can guarantee you and your viewers, if you get this book and study it and learn it, it will prevent catastrophes, dilemmas, bankruptcies, divorces, fistfights, indictments, etc., etc., etc. Because you can look at a person and say, whoa, I'm not going to mess with this.
Mm-hmm.
See, rather than— did you notice that in the United States, more than 50% of the marriages end in divorce? Yeah, obviously they didn't understand, right? They didn't understand one another. If they had, they wouldn't have gotten married. They would have found somebody else, right?
Yeah.
So this is really, really useful material, and I was careful to craft these scales so that they wrap around the reader. It's not hard to get. So the way you experience this book Even though the scales are based on mathematical data, there's not a lot of math in the book. I wrote it in such a way that it's almost like you have a lens and you hold up this lens to your girlfriend. Ah, now I can see who Mary is, see? Or you hold it up to yourself in the mirror. Now I see myself better. That's what this is about. It's helping you to understand people. Faster, easier, quicker. So you don't have to go through the painful stuff that most of us have gone through. No, look, when I was a kid, this material didn't exist. So I made the same stupid mistakes that everybody else makes. I got involved with people I should never have been involved with.
Yeah.
A lot of regretting it. Now, for me, that cannot happen, does not happen, will not happen. Because people tell you their levels. Trust me on this. They tell you. It comes right out of their mouths.
I tell you what, Jeff, I wish I had this book. Like you say, 25 years it took you to write it. I wish I had it 20-something years ago. I could avoid a whole lot of trouble in my life. Hey, man, I really appreciate you, man, breaking this thing down, man. So that's a lot, man. I hope people go out and get your book, man. Matter of fact, where can we find your book at?
Well, I want to say it's available in hardbound, softbound, and ebook, and it's available wherever books are sold. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes Noble. If you just type the word Septemics into a search engine, you'll get hundreds of responses, including all the people selling the book. It's not hard to find this book. Just, you know, you need the word Septemics, S-E-P-E-T-E-M-I-C-S. Amazon. No, there it is.
Where can we follow you on social media?
Well, I would invite your viewers to my website, which is Septemics.com, where you can see what many readers have said about it, what many journalists have written about it, what the reviews are. You can read sections of the book itself. And if you want, you can listen to a prerecorded introduction to septemics that explains it to a new person in 15 minutes.
So Jim, man, like I say, I appreciate you dropping all these nuggets on us, man. Like I said, I wish I had this book 25 years ago. I'm listening to you. I really do. Could avoid a whole lot of stuff. I got a game that I play, man, before I let you go. It's called Quick Fire Round. I'm going to ask you 5 questions and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.
Okay.
All right, first question. One word that describes— what's that, systemics?
Septemics.
Septemics.
One word that describes septemics? Useful.
Useful. Yeah, sounds useful. 25 years of writing, man, 25 years of research, definitely useful. Most misunderstood aspect of human behavior.
The fact that most people who do not correctly understand the meanings of most of the words that they use— in some cases they simply don't know the meanings, but in much worse cases they think they know what it is and it's not that, it's something else. This is really widespread and most people don't know about it.
Yeah, I do. I know I misused stuff a lot of time. A lot of times you'd be thinking, you know, like simple words, I'd be like, let me go look this up, you know what I'm saying, to see what it really means. You might thought that it meant something, but it means something totally different than what your perceived thought, you know. So let me ask you, man, book that changed your life?
Book that changed my life? The Aeneid by Virgil. The idiot? Aeneid. A-E-N-E-I-D.
Okay.
It was written 2,000 years ago by, uh, Gaius Virgilius Maro, who was a friend of Caesar Augustus.
Hmm, long time, man. You thought 25 years was long, huh? 2,000 years, that's a long time, man.
People been reading it ever since.
Morning ritual or habit you swear by?
Meditation.
Meditation. A belief about people that's changed over the years?
Huh, it's changed over the years. Jesus, a lot of them. I think that there are some people who are just nice people and some people who are not.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, a lot of people are mixed up on that. They think everybody's bad, which is wrong, and everybody's good, which is wrong. And it doesn't work that way.
Yeah, it don't work that way.
You gotta figure out, is this guy a nice guy or is this guy not a nice guy? And it's, it's not obvious, but being able to sort of separate that is like two groups of humanity, you know?
So I agree with you, you gotta see for yourself. So let me ask you one more question, man, last one. What motivates you to keep teaching this system?
Your success is my reward.
I like that one, that's a good one.
That's my motivation.
Your success is my reward, man. Thank you, Jim, for coming on, man, tuning in to the CJ Moneyway Show. I really appreciate you and everything that you brought to the table today. Huge thanks to Jim for taking us into this deep science of Septemics, a system that must change, that might just change how we understand ourselves and each other. Be sure to check out Jim's book Septemics at septemics.com and follow him for more thought-provoking words. Until next time, Build brick by brick and stay money way. Hey, this has been your boy Money Way with Jim Marshall, who have wrote a book that took 25 years and over 325 interviews. This one is 326 plus. I call— I'm pretty sure you probably have more since this last update. So hey, this your boy Money Way. We outta here. Peace. You've been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Woo! Where real stories, real lessons, yeah, and real perspective come together. Remember, move with patience, move with purpose. That is the mindset of a Panther. Until next time, keep building your legacy brick by brick. By brick by brick.
Music style. Feeling uncertain by life's challenges? At intouch.org, you'll discover encouragement that lasts with powerful sermons from In Touch Ministries' Dr. Charles Stanley, daily devotionals, and resources designed to strengthen your faith. You'll find hope and wisdom for every season of your life. Don't wait, visit intouch.org today and let God's Word inspire your journey. That's InTouch.org.
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