Manders Mindset
Are you feeling stuck or stagnant in your life? Do you envision yourself living differently but have no idea how to start? The answer might lie in a shift in your mindset.
Hosted by Amanda Russo, The Breathing Goddess, who is a Breathwork Detox Facilitator, Transformative Mindset Coach, and Divorce Paralegal.
Amanda's journey into mindset and empowerment began by working with children in group homes and daycares. She later transitioned to family law, helping people navigate the challenging emotions of divorce. During this time, Amanda also overcame her own weight and health challenges through strength training, meditation, yoga, reiki, and plant medicine.
Amanda interviews guests from diverse backgrounds, including entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, and wellness experts, who share their incredible journeys of conquering fears and limiting beliefs to achieve remarkable success. Hear real people tell how shifting their mindsets—and often their words—has dramatically changed their lives.
Amanda also shares her personal journey, detailing how she transformed obstacles into opportunities by adopting a healthier, holistic lifestyle.
Discover practical strategies and inspiring stories that will empower you to break free from limitations and cultivate a mindset geared towards growth and positivity.
Tune in for a fun, friendly, and empowering experience that will help you become the best version of yourself.
Manders Mindset
Your Mind Is a Puzzle That Can Be Solved: The Math of Mindset with Jim Marshall | 128
Feedback on the show? Send us a message!
In this powerful episode of Manders Mindset, Manders welcomes Jim Marshall, author, human development engineer, and creator of Septemics, a revolutionary framework that decodes human behavior through 35 unique seven level scales.
After more than 50,000 hours of research, Jim discovered consistent patterns in how people think, act, and evolve. These patterns revealed a mathematical structure to human behavior, leading to the development of Septemics: a system that helps people understand themselves and others with stunning clarity. Whether it’s relationships, leadership, communication, or mindset, this framework acts like a “periodic table” for the human experience.
Jim shares how each scale offers practical tools for real life insight, like knowing whether someone’s motivation is rooted in love or money, or identifying where a student is struggling and how to help. His personal journey from being a high-performing student with polymathic curiosity to pioneering a new model of personal development makes this episode as inspiring as it is enlightening.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
🧩 What Septemics is and how it reveals the hidden patterns behind human behavior
📊 How 35 seven-level scales can help decode thoughts, actions, and relationships
🧠 The math behind mindset, and why structure leads to better self-awareness
💬 How to analyze communication, motivation, and conflict in real time
⚖️ The difference between stable and shifting traits, and how that impacts relationships
🔍 Real-life examples of using Septemics in love, education, and personal growth
✨ Why one insight can change everything, and how clarity compounds over time
Timeline Summary:
[2:00] – What is Septemics? Introducing the system of 35 behavioral scales
[6:15] – Discovering mathematical patterns in human development
[10:22] – Applying Septemics in real-world situations: relationships, school, work
[15:35] – The Scale of Motivation: decoding why people really do what they do
[22:57] – The compounding power of insights from scale to scale
[31:39] – Traits that shift fast vs. traits that stay consistent over a lifetime
[45:07] – The Scale of Evaluation and how quickly opinions form and change
[54:08] – How to use this system daily to improve mindset and relationships
[56:10] – Where to learn more and dive deeper into the Septemics model
To Connect with Amanda:
~ linktree.com/thebreathinggoddess
~ Instagram @thebreathinggoddess
Follow & Support the Podcast:
~ Instagram: @MandersMindset
~ Join the Manders Mindset Facebook Community HERE!
To Connect with Jim:
Explore Septemics: www.septemics.com
Read sample chapters, listen to the 15-minute intro audio, and explore how the system works
Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers and a variety of other people when your host, Amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective and her guest's mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to Amanda's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life.
Speaker 2:As always, I'm your host, amanda Russo, and I am here today with Jim Marshall, and Jim is a polymathic intellectual who has devoted over 50,000 hours to the study and practice of multiple dimensions of human potential and development, and we are going to delve down something that Jim developed that I had never even heard of called Septimax, and I am really excited to delve down all of that. Thanks so much for joining me. Glad to be here, so who would you say? Jim is at the core, At the core.
Speaker 4:I would say is gradually morphing into an angel.
Speaker 2:Morphing into an angel.
Speaker 4:So you haven't always been an angel. Well, you know, james Madison famously said if men were angels, no government would be necessary. But men are not angels. So you know, this has been a lifelong thing for me and I'm looking forward to becoming a professional angel in the afterlife. So that's sort of you know. I meditate every day and every day I get a little bit closer.
Speaker 2:I love that. Now can you take us down memory lane, Tell us about your upbringing, childhood, family dynamic, however deep you want to go.
Speaker 4:The first thing I should say, just to give some context to everything else I'm going to say, is that I am the discoverer of hitherto unknown natural phenomena which greatly aid in the understanding of people, from which I created a revolutionary practical philosophic system called Septemex. I'm publishing the book Septemex Hierarchies of Human Phenomena Now. That's like a framework for what I'm going to say now. So I have no memory whatsoever of a time in my life when I was not intensely interested in learning everything taught in every university. Now, of course, that's impossible, but the drive is there. That's who I am as a person. So I was a very diligent student. I started school at three and I've been engaged in education my entire life, to this very day.
Speaker 4:I can still remember the first moment when I discovered that some children didn't like school. It was a great shock to me. I was at the blackboard doing learning division, arithmetic division, with another boy and he said something that puzzled me. I said wait a minute. You mean you don't like school? He said no, I hate school. I was shocked. What a concept you mean some children don't like school. That was like a whole new idea to me and that really helped me understand the other kids better, because, you know, I went to school for 28 years and I would have gone longer. But you know, after a while life catches up with you and you have other things to do. So that's you know.
Speaker 4:I was sort of a natural polymath. I wanted to learn everything and so I was a very diligent student, and one scholarships was an honor student, et cetera, et cetera. So really, the path to Septimics began when I was 16, when I was accepted into engineering school and of course at the time I thought I was going to. It was clear to me I wanted to engineer the human psyche, because it is the area of greatest mystery and, more importantly, it is the area in which we as a race are failing miserably. Most of the problems in industrialized society are because people don't understand the wife don't understand the husband don't understand the daughter don't understand the son, et cetera, et cetera. This is a big thing. Everybody has this problem and I have solved it with Septimex because it gives you a way to understand people using natural phenomena.
Speaker 4:So I had a long career as a human development engineer, working one-on-one with hundreds of clients of every description. All of them improved as a result of our work. But I started to notice, incidentally, that I could predict the outcome of this. I didn't tell that to anyone, but I made notes and as the decades rolled by, I came to be aware that the client would be at a specific level on a specific scale that I had previously observed and written down and that, as a result of our interaction, he would go up to the next level on that scale. Now that happened thousands and thousands of times. Sometimes it would happen six or eight or ten times in the same session. Every time it happened it verified my hypothesis, because the clients knew nothing whatsoever about Septimix or what I was doing, how I was doing it, what I was recording or anything. All they knew is they came to me for help and they got it.
Speaker 4:So by 1995, I had just observed these phenomena and written them down and I realized there were these scales and by then I had 32 scales of varying lengths between 3 and 7. Now I also, in that same period, was pondering a difficult client and I realized that client was at a level on a scale that I had not previously observed, and as soon as I saw it I knew where to insert it in the sixth level scale that I had. In other words, I had the sixth level scale that I knew was correct, and then I realized ah, there's a seventh level. When I inserted it, it manifested mathematically. All these data jumped out at me without my looking for them and it went from being a line, which is what a scale is, to a plane, meaning a whole body of data. So I suddenly had all this data corresponding to this particular scale that interlocked mathematically like a Chinese puzzle.
Speaker 4:Now, having taken 26 semesters of math and having loved every minute of it, math is a very real thing to me. So when I see it, I recognize it and I said whoa, whatever the hell this is, it has to be natural law, because there's mathematics embedded in it, like, for example, the Fibonacci sequence. So then I thought I wonder how many of these other scales that I have are actually seven-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 looked at all these other scales and in a short period of time each of them developed into a seven-level scale, and when it did, it manifested mathematically. So now I had 32 seven-level scales, all of which had mathematics embedded in them, and I said this looks like a new subject to me. I never saw anything like this before.
Speaker 4:So my next thought was I could go from helping people by the hundreds which is what I had been doing as human development engineer to helping them by the millions if I put this in a book and get it out so people can have it. So I'm going to have to write a book. So the first draft was completed on December of 95, and I sent it to colleagues of mine, all of whom had graduate degrees in a variety of subjects, and they all responded very positively. They had different responses, but distinctly positive responses, and that told me this is exactly what I think it is, which is a new subject that could really help people. And I then spent the next 25 years of my life working on the book, because first I had to discover the phenomenon itself. I would see these things and I would write them down. Then I would see it again, see, and I would see this client would go from this level to this level and another client would go through the same process and this kept verifying it. So after I had the data. Then I had to take that data and use it to craft a philosophical system.
Speaker 4:So I was going from science, which is discovering new phenomena, new natural phenomena, to engineering, which is creating something that works. That took 20 years, which is creating something that works. That took 20 years. But the most time-consuming part of it was expressing this in a way that would make sense to the average reader of English, and I know I succeeded at that, because some version of this book has existed now for 29 years. People get it. I was able to express this in a way that the average reader could look at it right away and say, oh yeah, get it. This makes sense. Now let me give you some context here. Can you remember the first time you saw the periodic table of elements?
Speaker 2:Not specifically when it was.
Speaker 4:It doesn't have to be. I'm just saying the experience you had when you first looked at it. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Okay. So, like I can remember, the first time I saw it, I was, I don't know, 12 or 13. I said, oh yeah, see this, this is cool At first blush. Yeah, hydrogen is here, helium two, lithium is three, and it goes. Everything is horizontal and vertical. See, the model works.
Speaker 4:So several people have said to me what book is your book like? And I have to say in all candor, I don't think there's ever been a book like this before, at least on Earth. But each one of these scales that I mentioned is expressed in what you could call a table or a spreadsheet, and each of those tables is similar to the periodic table of elements. So there are 35 different scales and each of them has seven levels. Scales, and each of them has seven levels. And when you look at the table, it's like looking at the periodic table for the corresponding subject matter, and this is all about human phenomena. So, if I may, I'd like to tell you the names of the scales and then you'll know exactly what matter is in the book. May I do that? Yeah, so there are 35 scales. 24 of them are individual scales, meaning they play primarily to an individual. 24 of them are individual scales, meaning they apply primarily to an individual and 11 of them are group scales, meaning they apply primarily to a group. So 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 motivation, the scale of control, the scale of stopping, the scale of scholarship, the scale of literacy, the scale of human ability, the scale of memory, the scale of spiritual identity, the scale of mental deletion, the scale of aberration, the scale of physical fitness, the scale of justification, the scale of belief, the scale of equanimity, the scale of attack, the scale of conflict and the scale of justification, the scale of belief, the scale of 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 and the scale of government, the scale of civilization, the scale of survival, the scale of management, the scale of exchange, the scale of communication, the scale of exchange, the scale of communication, the scale of allegiance, the scale of sexuality and the scale of politics. Any one of these scales by itself could dramatically improve the life of the reader. And let me give you an example of how that would work.
Speaker 4:I mentioned the scale of motivation. One of the most important things to know about someone is their motivation, right? Why is this person doing this? So you could take this scale there are seven motivations and you could go through everyone in your life and find their motivation. You know like oh, what is my mother's motivation toward me? Oh, yeah, I see. What is my father's motivation toward me? What is my pastor's motivation toward me? What is my brother's motivation toward me? What is my pastor's motivation toward me? What is my brother's motivation toward me?
Speaker 4:Now, you could use this for everybody you know or have ever known, so you could wind up using this in this specific way 200, 300, 400 times. Then you could reverse the vector and say what is my motivation toward my boyfriend? What is my motivation toward my boss? What is my motivation toward my boss? What is my motivation toward my Uncle Joe? You see, it's the opposite flow, and you can again use it two or three or 400 times.
Speaker 4:So by the time Tommy would have finished this exercise, you would know your motivation toward everybody in your life and the motivation of everyone in your life toward you. So this would be a major change in your consciousness, in other words, your mind would be greatly clarified. You wouldn't be going around saying, why does he do this? It would would resolve all of that, see. So your mind would be greatly clarified and your relationship with all those people would be better Because you understand them better. Let's say, you have a mother-in-law right, and she does things that irritate you, and so you assess her on the scale. Where is she on the scale of motivation toward me, you know? Oh, I see she's a level five. That explains why she does X, y and Z. So you're having an insight. Now you understand her better so you can deal with her more successfully. So that's true for all 35 skills. So that's sort of how this works and what this is about.
Speaker 2:Okay Now. So what made you decide to develop this? You were noticing, what you were noticing in your sessions, so what made you take the step to fully develop it?
Speaker 4:Well, as I said, I had this six-level scale that by then I absolutely knew was correct Because I had been using it on a daily basis for decades and was always right. But then I discovered it had another level, see. And when I inserted that seventh level, then it manifested mathematically. I said, whoa, this has got math in it. And coming from a hard science background, I thought this is natural law. In a sense, each of these scales is like Newton's three laws of motion or the Pythagorean theorem or the laws of thermodynamics. It is part of nature, see. I just found it in the same way that Fibonacci found the Fibonacci sequence. He was a smart mathematician and he noticed that there were certain numbers that kept appearing and he couldn't figure out how these numbers fit together. But it's clear, in nature you can find, like, for example, sunflower. If you count the seeds one way, it has one Fibonacci number and if you count them the other way, it has a different Fibonacci numbers. And he knows that these creatures there are many of them, like don't know. So it's obviously something embedded, and he was able to look at these numbers and reverse, engineer the formula out of it and give it to us. So that's what we call the Fibonacci sequence. So that's basically the same thing that happened with me.
Speaker 4:I looked at this data, I said, ah, there's something here. And because of my engineering approach and because I was doing human development engineering on people in other words, it was not counseling, it was precise engineering application of known data and I got these data, these phenomena appearing. So when I saw that first scale manifest mathematically, that's when the light bulb went on over my head in 1995. This is big because I had been collecting these scales but I did not know that there was a subject here, that they were all seven level scales, that they were inherently mathematic. I was just writing down what I saw and it helped me with my clients, because a guy would come in to me and I'd say, oh, he's at this level. I wouldn't say it. He's at this level and that means as he improves, he's going to go up to the next level. And I knew what that level was and that's what would happen in the session. So, needless to say, it only made me better at what I did. So, needless to say, it only made me better at what I did. And so, furthermore, after I saw this data in the sessions, I would go out into the real world and I would see it right in front of my face. I would see the exact same phenomena in people. So I knew this was real. When I saw how big this was and that people would really get this is not obscure, people get this and would really help people, I said I'm going to put this in a book and get it out and this will help the people of Earth. And that's what's been going on now for 29 years. People look at this and say, ah, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 4:About 23 years ago I'm talking to a buddy of mine about politics and government and I was writing the book and I had already developed the scale of government. So I said wait a minute, let me show you something. He didn't even know I was writing a book. He didn't know anything about this at all. So I just opened this transcript to the scale of government. I handed it to. I did not say a word, I did not even say look at this. I just handed it to him. So he took it and in about one second he pointed, just like that. He said there, I'm right there. He found his level on that scale without me even suggesting that's what it was for. That's how easy this is to use.
Speaker 4:And I'll give you another example. A guy is reading one of these scales, right? And he gets down to, let's say, level four and he'll say wait a minute, this is my mother-in-law, this is exactly how she is. See, it's so precise that, without my ever meeting the mother-in-law, it describes her behavior with precision. He says, yeah, that explains why she does so. I don't know the mother-in-law, I probably don't even know the reader. There's people all over the world reading this book. I'm never going to meet them, but they say, oh, that explains why I did this to her, because I was at this level.
Speaker 4:So what happens is, every time you find either yourself or another person on any level, you have an insight, or you might call it a realization, right. So you say, huh, let me see my mother's like a control freak, Let me see where she is on the scale of control, right. So you look at the scale Ah, she's level five. That explains it. That's exactly what she does. It's just described right here in the book. So when that happens, the relationship with her gets better and you're a little bit smarter. So this is what you might call a fruitful source of insight, because every person is at some level on every scale. So you, amanda, are at some level on all 35 scales and that data is just sitting there waiting for you to get. So you get the book, you study it, you say, oh yeah, I'm at level three. That explains a lot. That explains why you do this and don't do that and that. So you see, you're having a realization about yourself. And then you go to the next one. Oh yeah, that's level two. That's to the top of the scale. No wonder I'm good at that, you see. So what happens is, as you use this material, you're continually having insights, and an insight is another way of saying you're getting a little smarter on things that are relevant to you.
Speaker 4:Let's say you have a guy. He doesn't understand his wife, right. So he starts to analyze her on this. Oh, she's at this level on the scale of sexuality. That explains a lot. See, he didn't know that when he walked in the room. Now he does. So he's a little smarter. Now, when he goes to analyze her on another scale, he takes that smartness with him to the next scale. So the next scale he uses is easier to use. And then he has two insights and he takes both of them to the third scale. So what happens here is, as you use this, you have insights. You're getting smarter. The smarter you get, the easier it is to use. The easier it is to use. The more you use it, and the more you use it, the smarter you get. The easier it is to use. The more you use it and the more you use it, the smarter you get.
Speaker 2:So this will have the result of just lifting you up in your life to where you understand all the people around you much better, including yourself. Can we backtrack a tad? You mentioned briefly about how you didn't understand, how other kids didn't like school. No, I'm just curious in terms of like your upbringing. Did your parents do a lot of schoolwork with you prior to going to school?
Speaker 4:My parents ignored me completely. I was the type of kid like I'm sure they told me when I was three years old before you come to the table, wash your hands. And that was it. They never had to tell me again. Every time before I went to the table I washed my hands, and I'm still doing it now. So I was like what you might call a low maintenance kid, you know, because I did whatever I was told. My father said go do that. I did it, and that actually helped me in my studies, having won scholarships and being an honor student and all that.
Speaker 4:People say, well, you must be very smart. I say no, it's just because I'm very conscientious. You know, I did every homework assignment. I was that irritating kid who not only did all the homework assignments, I would do the extra credit projects. So sometimes my grade would be over 100. My grade in physics one semester was 104. Because he would give a quiz every week and I got every answer perfect on every quiz. And then he would give bonus questions and I would get those right too. So I figured, well, he'll probably just give me 100. I don't think he's going to give me 104. So the card comes out and he gives me a 99. So I asked him my average was 104. Why did you give me a 99? He said because nobody gets 100 in my class. Dopey answer, you know, authoritarian answer. But I don't even know if their system was set up to accept a three-digit number. You know, because it was computerized. Maybe it only took three-digit numbers because that's normally what you had. So anyway, so that's just who I was as a person, you know. And not only would I study what I was supposed to study in school, but then I would study on the outside. Like.
Speaker 4:I started reading books seriously when I was 10 years old and there isn 10, because the local public library, you could not get a card until you were 10. So on my 10th birthday my sister, who was older than I, took me to the library to get a card, and I can still remember the two books that I took out. This was like a passion for me, and so you were only allowed to have the books for 21 days. So on the 21st day I was back at the library to get more books. Obviously this is before the Internet. So I would be doing all my homework and I would go and read a book.
Speaker 4:You know, a lot of kids did not like me. But the teachers liked me because I was like you know what they wanted, Everything was done on time. I would ask penetrating questions, interesting questions that the teachers liked to answer. So that was who I was when I was growing up, you know. So that was who I was when I was growing up, you know. And so I went from there into a career as a human development engineer and I brought all this education with me. So that's where I was able to help a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Now you say the teachers liked you, but the kids didn't. That's right. How was that?
Speaker 4:Well, first of all, you know, mark Twain had a famous saying. He said there's nothing more annoying than a good example, right? So I was annoying to the other kids. See, not only was I an A student, I was an altar boy for four years. I was a serious athlete, you know, from when I was 10, I was playing organized sports. I was also a pretty good musician, so, you know, and I would go to dances and meet pretty girls, and so there were a lot of reasons for people not to like me, you know. So that's human nature, you know. So I just accepted that.
Speaker 4:And I mean, I had friends when I went to prep school. It was an elite prep school. You had to take a special test to get in to the school. So that was the first time in my life that I was surrounded by people like myself, because all those other kids had to take that same test to get in that school. So I was able to find kids like me, like to read, like to learn, like serious subjects. What I did find also is that I was a polymath, meaning I was good at every subject and I learned well on every subject. So what I learned early on is I'd have different groups of friends, like I had one group of friends with whom I would attend science and math lectures.
Speaker 4:I'd had another group of friends with whom I would attend plays and poetry readings. And then I had another group of friends with whom I would attend plays and poetry readings. And then I had another group of friends with whom I would play sports and another group of friends with whom I would play music, and these groups of people hated one another. You know, like I was in the math club. I was the only guy on the football team in the math club. So I had all these skinny guys with glasses I didn't wear glasses back then. Skinny guys with glasses, you know.
Speaker 4:And here comes this muscle-bound guy into the. So they all looked at me like this must be a mistake. How did this guy get in here? I didn't care that they were not athletic, I was there to do math, I loved math. And that teacher, the guy who was the moderator of that club, he loved me. He took me under his wing. He gave me a copy of Newton's Principia to read, you know, which is like he could see who I was. You know that I would eat that up. So I just learned how to keep these groups of people separate.
Speaker 2:How old were you when you went to the prep school?
Speaker 4:Thirteen.
Speaker 2:And how long did you go to the prep school? Well, normal prep school four years.
Speaker 4:Like high school, but it's a prep school because you are there to be prepared for college. That is the whole point, from day one. You know, like a whole, everybody who graduates goes to college. It's a question of which college you know. So that's why it's called prep school. So you're not in there if you don't like to study, you don't like to learn, because it was very challenging and strict and difficult and that was fine with me. You know, I was used to following orders and doing what I was told and I went to school and I went home and did my own work, went to bed.
Speaker 4:When I was in that prep school it was like there were a thousand students and they were all like me, you know, sort of one way or another. Now, when I was in elementary school, there were always some dopey kids, in fact, even kids who were left back, in fact even kids who were left back, and so my friend was always the other kid and the other boy, because back then boys and girls did not associate. The other boy in the class who was also very smart, that was my friend and these other kids who kind of you know the kind of kids who would have fistfights dopey kids and use foul language. I didn't associate with them. You know, I would go with my intelligent friends. Our idea is we'd go to the library and get our books. Oh, what did you get? Oh, I got this. Oh, what did we get next week? So it was a select group read that next week.
Speaker 2:So it was a select group. So can you give us like an example in terms of, as you were talking, like these layers, like motivation, layer two, or it doesn't have to be that one, if you don't know, that one off the top of your head, but like one of them, because you said it would, we'd be able to put it for somebody like any random example.
Speaker 4:So let me put this into a little anecdote so you get the whole context. Let's say you have a couple that's been dating for two years. They're talking about getting married. Now wouldn't it make sense to ask why does this person want to marry me? I mean, is it not a reasonable question to ask? I'm not saying to ask the partner, but it would be a good thing to know, wouldn't it?
Speaker 4:So the guy, he knows this woman, he looks at the scale of motivation, right as we're talking about motivation, why, why? And so he looks it's got seven levels. Now maybe he concludes after he studies this that she wants to marry him because she loves him. That's level one on the scale of motivation, the highest motivation of all. So he says I see why she wants to marry me she loves me, let's set the date. Maybe that doesn't happen. Maybe after he goes through this he says, now that I think about this, I can see now the reason she wants to marry me is 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. That's a different motivation. That's level four money, money motivation. I'm not knocking it, I'm just saying it's level four. So now, after he has that realization, what he does with it is up to him. That's not for me to say. He might say you know, okay, she wants to marry me for my money, but she's really a great person and she's beautiful and she's the best woman I have found. I'm gonna marry her anyway. That could happen, but that might not happen. He might also say this woman is a gold digger. I don't want to marry a gold digger, I want to marry somebody who loves me for myself and breaks up with her. Now you might think in that latter case that he'd be upset about this, and you would be wrong. He would not, because, remember, every time you find a level, it's a positive experience, it's an insight. Ah, now I see why Betty did X, y and Z, see, so he's not going to be upset about it. He would be relieved. He would say thank you, amanda, for showing me this, because I dodged a bullet.
Speaker 4:Now, did you ever notice how many elderly, unattractive men have beautiful young wives? Right, there's lots of them. Sometimes I look at a couple. I see how could this be? This is a dumpy looking guy. It looks like he never lifted weights in his life. His hair is gray, he's overweight and he's married to this Miss Texas. You know how does that work? I'll tell you how it works. Miss Texas gets a diamond necklace, a diamond ring, a mink coat, a Corvette and a credit card. So she has everything she wants.
Speaker 4:The elderly, unattractive guy gets Miss Texas for a wife. So see, it works for them. She comes to me. She says honey, I want to go to Vegas for the week. He says, okay, it's five grand, have a good time. He doesn't care. And when she comes back on Monday he gets rewarded because he was generous. So see, for them it works. So there's no judgment in any of this. It's just seeing what's there.
Speaker 4:Now let me tell you what I mean by seeing what's there. Let's say you were to 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 look at my garden, okay. So I go into Amanda's garden and I see hydrangeas, tulips, roses, chrysanthemums, irises, peonies, forget-me-nots, et cetera, et cetera. Now the reason I can analyze it like that is I know a lot about flowers. I've been involved in gardening since I was a little boy. So I can analyze it that way and, if you want, I could assist you. I could say you know, these need a little fertilizer and these don't, these need to be in the shade, these need to be in the sun, et cetera, et cetera, because they know about flowers. Now, if you invite some five-year-old kid, for example, into that garden, he's going to see and smell exactly the same thing that I see and smell, but all he can say is these are pretty and they smell nice. That's all he knows. He doesn't know the word hydrangea or iris. He doesn't know the word hydrangea or iris.
Speaker 4:Now, most people and I mean adults are like that little kid about people. They don't know what they're looking at. And that's why more than 50% of the adults in the United States are not married and of the ones who are married, more than 50% of them get divorced. So obviously, in all those cases, they did not understand what they were getting themselves into or they could not penetrate the personality enough to see this is the girl for me, or whatever. See. And this book solves that, because it gives you 35 axes across which to evaluate a person. This is really useful.
Speaker 4:So let's say that most people have kids and most kids have trouble in school, right? So dad sees that Junior is having trouble in school. Well, this book has a scale of scholarship which tells you how to become a better scholar. So he says Junior, come over here and look at this. And he opens it up and puts it in front of the kid's face. So Junior looks at this and he says you mean, there's a scale of scholarship. The dad says yes, where are you on the scale? Now? I guarantee you Junior is going to want to know that because he's having trouble in school.
Speaker 4:So he looks at it and in a matter of seconds I mean 20, 25, 30 seconds he will find a bracket. He'll say something like oh, I can see right away. I definitely am not at one, two or three, because that's the top of the scale and I have a lot of trouble with this. So you see, he just got it down to four. So the dad says go ahead and read it and Then you can get it exactly.
Speaker 4:So he reads it, the dad can help him as a tutor. And he comes back and says well, now that I looked at this, I can see I'm on level five. That's not so great, that's near the bottom, but we're not having a lot of trouble. That explains why I have some very specific realization, because he found the right level and then dad says we can move you up to the next level and then you will be a better scholar. He says, you can. Dad says, yeah, it tells you in the book how to do that. So dad and the kid work together using this chapter and they follow the instructions that I give and the next report card. Instead of him getting c's and d's, he's getting B's and C's. And all this was done without spending any more money, without hiring a tutor, without sending him to remedial classes, without invalidating the kid, etc. This is a very positive experience. The kid just gets better at it. Positive experience, the kid just gets better at it.
Speaker 2:So this is like a perfect example of how to use this in a practical way to help somebody.
Speaker 4:Now question Could someone be on two different levels.
Speaker 2:You mean on the same scale, at the same time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, let me explain. There are general skills and specific skills. The specific skills have to have a context. So, before we talked about motivation, right, what is my motivation toward my boss? That's one context. What is my motivation toward my boss? That's one context. What is my motivation toward my father? That's a different context, see. So you might have one answer for your boss and a different answer for your dad, but it's a different context, so it's not really the same scale. You're using it on something different, but at any given point in time you can only be at one level.
Speaker 2:So, for example, the woman couldn't marry the guy for love and for money. It couldn't be both.
Speaker 4:Well, that could be part of it.
Speaker 4:That could be part of it, but there is going to be an overriding factor. In other words, generally, this is not black and white, it's shades of gray. So here's the thing If he looks at it and says, yeah, she loves me, that's the top of the scale, that's going to resonate with him. You see, that's a very positive experience. The fact that she also wants to marry him because he has money is kind of beside the point. I mean, it's true, you could say to anybody give me the reasons why you married this person and they'll have a whole list of them. Anybody, give me the reasons why you married this person and they'll have a whole list of them. But there's one basic motivation, and you can see this in a person like, for example, thomas Jefferson was at level three on the scale of basic purposes. His basic purpose was to win. What I call a winner. Okay, and if you study him which I did it's clear he won and he won and he won.
Speaker 4:Now, alexander Hamilton was at level two on that scale, leader. And if you study him, you can see, wow, he was a colonel at 22. He was Washington's right-hand man, and the goal of a leader is to conquer. He wanted to conquer the British and he helped Washington do that. Now, jefferson never fought the British, he didn't go in the military. Hamilton left what today we call Columbia University to join the militia to fight the British. Because he wanted to conquer, see, different type of guy. So now that scale is what is a persistent trait. In other words, I'm sure that he was a leader.
Speaker 4:Hamilton was a leader his whole life. I don't think it changed. Most people live their whole life at one level of that scale because it's not easy to change. Some of the scales change by the minute. You can just watch the person change. So it depends on the scale. You know you can't infer anything about scale A by setting scale B, because every scale is unique. Infer anything about scale A by setting scale B, because every scale is unique. But there is a factor of.
Speaker 4:On any given scale, in any given context, you are at one level and it's usually pretty easy to find. You see, if she loves him, the fact that he has money, that's just gravy, see. That's like the cherry on the cake. That's not the cake, see. So he's not going to be focusing on that, he's focusing on the fact that she loves this guy because you know, when you, when that happens to you, you feel something about it. It's a strong motivation as opposed to you know, well, he's okay, but he's got a lot of money and I'm sure there are many people who conceal how much money they have, especially in dating, because they want to find somebody who likes them for themselves and not coming after them for their money.
Speaker 4:You know, there's a certain type of woman who will meet a guy and say what kind of a car do you have? And if he says a Corvette, she says let's take a ride in it. If he says a Volkswagen, she says see you later. That's somebody who's money motivated, or that could even be status motivated, which is level three. She wants the status. Oh yeah, my husband is the president of a corporation. See, that's status, it's level three, it's not quite money. So there are these seven levels and that's true for all the scales.
Speaker 2:And now you said some scales can change by the minute and some are hard to change. Can you give us an example of like one that can change easy, or like by the minute?
Speaker 4:The scale of the evaluation. Everybody enters that scale at level four, which is neutral. In other words, you're neutral about this thing, and then you either go up or down. You either go from four up to three if you like it, or down to level five if you don't like it. So let's say, friend Joe, and you say, joe, I have two tickets to a polo match, would you like to go?
Speaker 4:He says I don't know anything about polo, I've never been to a polo match. You say that's all right, it's fun. You get to see. He says I don't know anything about polo, I've never been to a polo match. He said that's all right, it's fun. You get to see. He says okay, so he goes right, because he's your friend, so you get to the polo match, right. So he doesn't know anything. He doesn't know the rules, he doesn't know anybody's name, he doesn't know anything, he doesn't even know what is. So he goes in there and he's watching, you know. So after 15 minutes you say to him how do you like this? Right Now he might say, yeah, I could see why a lot of people would like this. This is exciting. This looks like these guys are having a lot of fun. I'd like to try this myself. See, he went up from level four to level three. But that might not happen. He might say to you, you say, how do you like this? He might say, why would anybody want to watch this? This is boring, let's go to a movie. See, he went down to level five. Now he might continue to go down or go up, you see.
Speaker 4:So if you ask a person about, let's say, you have a guy who's a lot of people used to be what they call deadheads, big fans of the Grateful Dead. Most of those people are deceased by now, but it was a big thing for many years, deadheads, you know, and they would go to, they loved the Grateful Dead. So that was like they were high on the scale of evaluation. You know, a lot of other people did not like the Grateful Dead. I saw the Grateful Dead twice. The first time I fell asleep, literally I'm. The second time I left, you know, like, why would anybody want to watch this? Well, I could see why people want to see Cream or Hendrix or Zeppelin, but Grateful Dead, what's the thing here? So, like, I went down the scale of evaluation when I saw them.
Speaker 4:So that happens all the time, you know, a guy turns on a certain TV show. He watches it for 10 minutes. He says I want to watch this. He went down a level. See, when he turned it on he was neutral, he didn't know anything about it, he didn't even know the name of the show. Right, just comes on, he says this is stupid, he turns it off. He went down a level. So that could happen in minutes.
Speaker 4:Now I find now like I like to watch old movies online, so like I'll find some movie. Very often they don't tell you the name of the movie, what year it was. So I put it on, you know, and after three minutes I say I'm not watching this movie, this is a dopey movie, I turn it off. So I went down on the scale of evaluation. Other times I put on a movie and after three minutes I say, oh, this is a cool movie. Humphrey Bogart, sidney Greenstreet, you know all these great actors. See, I went up a level for that movie. So that's what I call a volatile scale. Some scales, that is an extremely volatile scale. And then you have other scales, like the scale of basic purposes. Most people never change on that scale. They spend their whole lives on one level.
Speaker 2:Basic purposes what is that scale?
Speaker 4:Well, everybody has one of seven basic purposes and it really defines your life. When you find your level on that scale. It is a life-changing moment, because what happens is you find your basic purpose and it explains your whole life. Oh, that explains why I did this and I didn't do that, because my basic purpose is this thing, see, even though you weren't aware of it. So what you do is you throw out the other six levels. You say that's not for me. You see, like Jefferson hated Hamilton. Anybody who studied American history knows that they were at different levels. There were two different levels. So Jefferson could not appreciate Hamilton's motivation, the fact that Hamilton was willing to risk his life as a young man. Eventually, hamilton was murdered by a political opponent. That's what happens to leaders. Martin Luther King was a leader. Leaders get killed or something else like that, whereas Jefferson, he lived to be an old man. He wasn't like that. It's a different type of person.
Speaker 2:So would you say, Septimax applies to everyone.
Speaker 4:Absolutely Every person on Earth is at some level, on every scale.
Speaker 2:There's like no circumstance where someone doesn't fit, like on a scale.
Speaker 4:There are a couple of scales where a person at some point in time might not be on that scale, but at another time he is going to be on that scale. So, for example, the scale of aberration level one, which is where everybody enters, is irritated. Okay, if you're not irritated at all, you're not upset, you're not worrying or anything like that, you're not on that scale. But as soon as something bothers you, you're on that scale, you see. So like you come home, right, you're fine, you know normal day, and you see your dog has chewed up your slippers. That irritates you. You are now on the scale of aberration, see, and then you might go down, which is not what you want to do, because that's the scale that tells you how you go from being a rational person to a crazy person. Go down that scale. It's impossible to find somebody who's not on all of the scales at some point. You might find an occasional person who's not on a certain scale at a certain moment in time. You know like I've done a lot of meditation and sometimes after meditation I'm like floating in heaven. You know everything looks beautiful, nothing bothers me. You know it's a temporary state. You know, after a while you come back to earth. You don't go back to the state you were in before the meditation, but you come back down a little bit. So you might say at those moments I was maybe not on some of those scales, but as soon as reality sets in, you're on there.
Speaker 4:So, for example, recently I had some vendor. I went on their site, paid the money Minutes later I said I don't want to do this. I found I couldn't cancel it. They refused to give me back my money. I got nothing no service, no product. Okay, that irritated me, okay. So then I would have to go into meditation and deal with it. And after I deal with it in meditation I'm not irritated about it. So I've kind of gotten off that scale. But most of the scales are not like that. Most of the scales you're on it. And if you actually study the scales you'll see that If you actually read them you say oh yeah, the scale of thought, my thought, has to be one of these seven levels of thought and you will find it and it'll be there so it can change your level of thought. It could go up, it could go down, but you're still on the scale.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense and it seems like it can really help you with yourself or with other people. That's right, it does Believe me.
Speaker 4:I've been watching this for 29 years. It's not hard to get, it's very easy to use and I'll tell you why it's easy to use. I designed these scales to wrap around the reader. In creating the scales from the data that I had, I very carefully worded it and explained it in such a way that people would get it. And if you actually look in the book, you'll see it's very clear. So people who have read the book, they say, yeah, this is not hard to get. I was able to use it right away. So you know you could get this book and just use it to go through your whole life and straighten out your whole life.
Speaker 4:This is 35 scales and if people aren't involved, it's relevant. Now, it's not going to help you to fix your car if you blew a gasket. That's a mechanical issue. That's not about people. Right, this is about people.
Speaker 4:But everybody has to deal with people. We all deal with people. You know, even if you live alone, as soon as you go outside your front door, you have to deal with your neighbor. You have to deal with the guy at the store. You have to deal with your boss. You have to deal with people. Everywhere you go, you're dealing with people. So most people have trouble with that. They can't get along with people.
Speaker 4:So you know that's how guys get into fistfights in bars. Right A goes into a bar and the guy says, yeah, I voted for Trump. The other guy says you're an idiot, and they have a fistfight. Well, if you're high on the scale of equanimity, you're not going to have a fistfight. An equanimitous person doesn't descend to that. He would say okay, you're entitled to your opinion. Why do you think that he's not going to get into it? And the more you know yourself, the more that's true. You know what you're about. So when situations come up, you know who you are, you know how you're going to deal with it. So it makes your life very stable and smooth and everything runs the way you want it to run. And as things come up, you just use it to facilitate your life.
Speaker 2:I'm sure this is something that has helped a lot of people. I am definitely going to read it. I am definitely going to dive into it. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me. I really appreciate it, my pleasure. Where can listeners connect with you?
Speaker 4:Well, I invite your listeners to go to my website, which is septemexcom. You can see what many readers have said about it, what many journalists have written about it. You can read sections of the book itself and there's even a pre-recorded 15-minute introduction to Septemex that explains it to a new person. So it's obviously free and you get all the data about it and people get this. They get it and I'll tell you. If you can speak read English reasonably well and you want to improve yourself or others, this book is for you.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Do you have any final words of wisdom for the listeners?
Speaker 4:Yes, I would like to say to your listeners that the data in this book are vital for every person. It can help you to achieve your goals faster and easier by explaining what might otherwise seem to be inexplicable or random. So you know most guys. You've talked to most guys. They'll tell you they don't understand women. Well, if you use this book and analyze your girlfriend, you will understand her. So you know, it's very applicable and user-friendly and it applies to anybody who wants to improve himself. Now, of course, not everybody wants to improve himself. You know psychopaths and sociopaths and narcissists and drug addicts and professional killers and things like that. They're not the public for this book, but you certainly are.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, I appreciate that, and I end my podcast with two ending segments. Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty? No, he's an author, motivational speaker, formal mom. He's got a podcast and he ends his podcast with these two segments and I like them, so I incorporated them to mine. First segment is the many sides to us. There's five questions and they need to be answered in one word each. Okay, what is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as?
Speaker 4:Smart.
Speaker 2:What is one word that someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as?
Speaker 4:Smart.
Speaker 2:Level-headed, conscientious what is one word? That if someone didn't like you or agree with your?
Speaker 4:mindset would you use to describe you as In one word? I never really thought about that before. It's hard for me to say it in one word. Maybe stuck up Might be something that some people might think.
Speaker 2:What is one word you're trying?
Speaker 4:to embody right now, at this very instant, or just in general in my life.
Speaker 2:In general. Presently I'm trying to embody angelicness. Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in up to a sentence.
Speaker 4:What is the best advice you've heard or received.
Speaker 2:Mind your own business.
Speaker 4:Why is that the best advice? Because people get into trouble when they don't mind their own business. You know that guy, daniel penny, who was on the subway and there was a crazy guy there threatening to kill everybody and he subdued him, they charged him, he had to go through a trial. Now he was acquitted but still, if he had minded his own business he wouldn't have had all that trouble. You know, alexis de Tocqueville, 19th century philosopher, said something to the effect that the main reason that people get in trouble is they're not willing to just stay in their homes and that's kind of the same thing in their homes.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of the same thing. What is the worst advice you've heard or received?
Speaker 4:The worst advice. Oh boy, that's an ugly thought, probably. My mother encouraged me to go with a certain, to be with a certain woman, you know, and it was. It turned out to be a trend wreck, so that was like the worst advice ever go.
Speaker 2:What is something that you used to value that you no longer value?
Speaker 4:I guess I would say sugary foods. You know, I don't eat sugar at all and that was something I used to do before I learned not to do it.
Speaker 2:If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?
Speaker 4:That I helped the people of earth to lead better lives through my book.
Speaker 2:If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I want to know why.
Speaker 4:Could this be something somebody else thought of, or do I have to come up with a new one?
Speaker 2:It's supposed to be a new one, not a law that already exists.
Speaker 4:Do not penalize people for being productive.
Speaker 2:And why would that be the law?
Speaker 4:So that productive people are not stopped from being productive.
Speaker 2:How are they penalized now for being productive?
Speaker 4:Well, it's wall to wall. It's wall to wall. It's whatever way you go. Like, for example, if you're really good at something, you get well paid for it. Your taxes go up. You're being penalized. You know, my son complains to me. He's a brilliant designer and he makes a lot of money and they take a lot of it away from him. A lot of people say why am I killing myself like this? They're only going to take it away anyway. I mean, you know, anybody who's really good is going to wind up paying 50% in taxes. So that's penalizing people for being productive. I mean, the federal government has been going after Elon Musk for some time now. He's like the most productive guy I can think of, and you know he tells all kinds of stories about absolutely idiotic things that he has to put up with from the government Stupid rules that don't even make any sense and that's really a good example of a productive person who is continually hampered by people punishing him for being productive.
Speaker 2:I get what you mean. Well, thank you again for speaking with me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4:Thanks, amanda, it was great to meet you.
Speaker 3:You as well, and thank you, guys for tuning in to another episode of Mander's Mindset. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five star rating, leave a review and share it with anyone you think would benefit from this. And don't forget you are only one mindset. Shift away from shifting your life. Thanks, guys, until next time.
