Best Advice Ever For How to *actually* SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE (and change your life) In One Easy Step

Every marriage coach and expert out there pretty much is providing incomplete or even bad advice right now, giving advice such as no contact, stop talking about the marriage, whether be more confident and masculine, stop chasing her, get her to come to you, use specific scripts, strategies, etc. And while all of these may be valid at certain times, without the context, they actually become very harmful. So today I'm going to show you why all of that, that advice, it can actually cause her to reject you more. It can cause her to actively distrust the changes that you're making right now. It can actively damage your chances of saving the marriage because your biggest problem may not be that you're doing the wrong things right now. It may be that you're doing 100 things right while you're avoiding the one thing that would actually change everything and have the most impact on saving the marriage. So my objective for you today is by the end of this class, You're gonna, you're gonna have a very thorough understanding of why all effort is not equal, why trying to fix everything at the same time can and often does make the marriage actively worse, and how finding the small hinge in your marriage that swings the big door can give you clarity, concentration of effort, and disproportionately better results in a compressed timeframe. So in other words, how to do more with less, with less confusion, more clarity. So most importantly is my learning objective for you is I want you to leave this, this class today understanding that your situation is not necessarily as complicated or as hopeless as it currently feels. So the name of this presentation today is The Small Hinge That Swings the Big Door and Why Fixing Everything Can Keep You actively stuck in trying to save your marriage. So let's understand the problem that you're actually experiencing right now so we're solving the right problem. So currently, it's very probable that you believe that there are, you know, 20 different marriage problems that you're facing. She says you don't listen to her, then she says you have a temper, then it's your reliability issues, then it's communication issues, and there's intimacy issues. Then she complains about the, the provision that you provide. You work too much. You're absent at work all the time. Then it's something that you said 6 months ago, and every time you solve that, and then another issue appears. So the specifics of what these problems are are going to be different in every marriage, but the symptom— the, the principle stays exactly the same, right? You see a long list of independent problems in front of you. You've got 20 to 100 problems that you need to solve, which is obviously very, very overwhelming. So therefore, you need— when you see a long list of problems, you instinctively believe that you need a long list of independent solutions for each problem. So that simply isn't true. So a good analogy to this is the cancer analogy, right? Imagine, for demonstration purposes only, that somebody has cancer. That, that person that is currently inflicted with cancer, they've got no appetite, they've got low energy or no energy. They're really struggling with motivation. They're suffering pain, nausea. They're in a state of continued weakness all the time, continual weakness. So you could attempt to create a treatment plan for each one of these symptoms, right? And you, you, you could try to deal with each one of these individually, but that approach, the entire approach, would be exhausting and inefficient if these symptoms have are all just downstream of the same problem, right? That you've got cancer. Treat the root cause and many or all of those symptoms will be resolved with it. You don't need to worry about energy, nausea, motivation, pain when you understand that the root cause— all of those are simply an outgrowth of the main problem, the root cause, which is cancer. When you solve the one big problem, all of the other problems go go away. And instead of focusing on 20 problems that all require a massive amount of effort, now you focus on one that solves all of the problems. So marriage works in the same way. Marriage breakdown works in the same way. Not all problems are equal. Every marriage has problems, right? And every marriage will continue to have problems moving forward no matter what. But here's the thing, Many or even most of those problems are actually tolerable to your wife, and they're tolerable to you. Many are just annoyances, and many can exist for decades without causing the marriage to end. They're not deal breakers, right? But then there are other other problems that become categorical. They become deal breakers. So there there there's two categories of problems. There's problems that this is unpleasant, and I would rather that this goes away. And then there's a category of problems of. I cannot live with this. I will not deal with this, and if this stays in this marriage, then I will leave. I cannot stay. Or in other words, there's deal breakers and then there's irritants, and much of the time we're focused on solving all of the problems that are an irritation and avoiding or ignoring the one problem, the deal breaker, that is actually the one or two things that your wife is saying, This has to go. This has to change. So sometimes, and very often, 20 complaints coming from your wife are actually— they're not 20 complaints. They're actually 10— they're actually 20+ consequences of one underlying issue or one big problem. So let's look at the psychology of men and women because we're different, right? We speak different languages. We see the world differently. We process information differently. So let's have a look at this. So your experience of what's going on right now is you're likely looking at the marriage going, man, she's complaining about everything. There are so many things wrong with this marriage. There are so many from her perspective. There are so many problems, and I just don't know where to start to fix this. And then every time I fix something, she finds something else. It's it's It's just an ongoing problem and nothing I do is ever enough, right? So what it becomes essentially is a game of marital whack-a-mole. You, you, you knock down one and then another one pops up and you knock down that, that. And as far— the faster you knock them down, the faster they come up, right? So the experience in— the experience that she's having during this process is very different. The, the, the way she's seeing this Is the one or two things that make this marriage intolerable to me is still here, and everything around that feels secondary. So a great way to look at this would be sex for a man, right? Like, that, that's, that's a primary issue. If sex is absent in a marriage for a man, he's not happy, and it's probably a deal breaker, potentially a deal breaker. And your wife can go, well, I'm doing the laundry, I'm taking care of the kids, I'm taking the kids to soccer. I'm cooking, I'm cleaning, I'm taking care of the house, I'm going to work, I'm bringing income in, I'm doing all of these things for you. And it's like, well, that's nice, but if I had the choice of all of those things or sex 3 times a week, I, I'll get someone else to do that, or I'll do it myself. The sex is the deal breaker. It doesn't matter that she's doing 20 different things for the marriage and for you. When there's no sex, that's intolerable to you. And until that one big problem is solved Nothing else matters really. And once that issue— the example here is sex— returns to the marriage, all of those other problems become completely tolerable. As long as there's a consistent flow of sex, you're going to be pretty much willing to deal with anything, right? And the same is true with the woman. A lot of the problems that are intolerable to her right now are only intolerable because the one big thing that's making this marriage a problem for her is still Present. This is what we got to address. So the core principle, man, is all effort is not equal anywhere. There, there are small hinges that swing big doors, and this is not just marriage. This is life in general. If when you find the highest leverage activity, this is where life gets easy and starts to get fun, right? So one hour spent on the highest leverage problem can be worth 100 hours spent. on rearranging the symptoms of those problems. So your wife can spend 50 hours a week taking care of all of the things, but if she spent 1 hour a week giving you the sex that you want, all of the— all of those other problems would become much more tolerable. And the sex for the man is the highest leverage activity really that the woman can engage. So we want to find that in the reverse, right? So Your natural response here is when the woman doesn't respond to your hard work is going to be to work harder, right? Do more, make more effort. So when a man believes that his marriage has 20, 30, 50 problems, his instinct is to attack all 20 simultaneously. Become more romantic, get a date night, work on communication, do more around the house, send better messages. It goes on and on, right? Control every mistake that you're making. Explain yourself better. If she understood what you were saying, it wouldn't be a problem. Show her how much you care. Try to become perfect everywhere at once. Address every single problem simultaneously. Exhausting, overwhelming, and quite frankly, detrimental to the outcome of you saving your marriage. So why does this— why does the man do this when it's so harmful? Well, it makes complete sense to the male psychology, right? To us, we're animals of cause and effect. Like, we're business owners, we're high-level employees, we're people, we're successful men. So effort produces results. We've got a problem at work, we just put a plan in place and we, when we attack it, we put a list, a to-do list in place, we set goals, we make lists, we just go, go, go, get the results. So we're trained psychologically that effort equals results. And if something isn't working, we'll just work harder, right? Just do more, more, more, better, more, better. And if one approach fails, add another. If she has 10 complaints, solve the 10 complaints, right? Solve the 10 problems and then job done. She says these things are the 10 problems that I need sorted out, or she's complaining about— just solve the 10 and then, then it's done. This is how we see the problem as a man, and this feels very responsible, and this feels like we're actually Really making a genuine effort to save the marriage, right? That's how we see it. But it's like the fly against the glass. There's— if there's a fly in a room trying to escape the room and he's flying against the closed window, and the fly says to himself, I'll just fly harder, I'll just fly faster, I'll just fly more aggressively, and eventually I'll break through this glass. But the truth of the matter is, the more effort the fly makes, the more aggressive the fly becomes, the harder the fly tries, it's expediating his demise and ultimately will result in the death of the fly. Now, if the fly stopped for just a moment and looked off to the side and saw an open door, the fly could change his strategy, leverage the open door, and escape to freedom in, in a fraction of a second. All the effort in the world is not going to get the result and going to result in his death. A change of strategy Finding that the, the big hinge or the small hinge that swings that big door immediately creates leverage, which gets the result in, in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the effort. So the problem isn't necessarily right now in your marriage insufficient effort. This confuses a lot of you because you just don't understand. I'm making so much effort, I'm doing so much, I'm trying so hard. You're putting enormous effort in. Right? But you're simply applying effort to the wrong point of impact. You are the fly going, if I just fly harder, I'm going to get through this window. If I just get more aggressive, if I just do more. The reality is that strategy is never, ever, ever, ever going to work. Never going to work. So here's why that is actually likely to make the situation work, because activity is not the same as progress. The fly is confusing activity and effort with progress. He is not progressing. Now, a man can make 20 positive changes while refusing to confront the one big issue creating the most damage in his marriage and not get the result, right? Your wife can do 20 things, 30 things, 100 things for you But not give you sex, and you still— doesn't satisfy you, doesn't solve the problem, right? But what happens then is the man becomes bitter, the man becomes angry, the man turns into— develops a, uh, um, an idea around women like you can never please them, or it doesn't matter what you do, or you've just got to simp, or you've just got to lose yourself, you've just got to bend over and take it up the rear end, you've got to do it back, right? None of that's true. That's just the conclusion that you've come to because the strategy is wrong. And instead of intelligently looking at what's going on and saying, I'm using the wrong strategy, I'm trying to fly through this window, which is never going to happen, you adopt the idea that freedom is impossible. It's a— it's the wrong idea. So again, we can, we can start to move into resentment, such as, she, you know, she doesn't appreciate anything I'm doing. This makes you bitter. This makes you angry. This puts you in a disempowered state that causes you to resent the marriage, to resent her, to adopt an attitude of nothing is good enough for her. How many of you feel that way? What doesn't matter what I do, nothing is good enough for this woman, which again leads to the stereotype of you can't please a woman, they're unpleasable. Well, that's not true. You just have to look for the little hinge that swings the big door and then fly through it. That's all you have to do. Or I'm changing everything. I'm doing everything that she's asking. I'm addressing every complaint, every concern, and she still wants to leave. What is wrong with this woman? None of us think that, right? So from the male perspective, you're looking at what's going on. You're looking at you at the effort that you're making in this marriage, going, surely she can see how hard I'm trying. Look at everything I've changed. Look at everything I've done for you, woman. I'm proving that I care about you. I care about this marriage. Care about our family. What is it going to take? Why are you not seeing the transformation that I'm trying so hard to bring? And why isn't this making a difference to my marriage? Why isn't— why are you not accepting this? And again, we move into that place of disempowerment, of bitterness, of you just can't please women. And then we, we move ourselves to a psychological position to where it makes it virtually impossible to save this marriage. and it makes it very difficult to move into a future relationship as well. So simultaneously, this is her psychology, that this is how you're seeing the situation. Simultaneously, what's going on is she's looking at it like, you're doing everything, John, except the one thing that matters to me. The actual threat that's damaging this relationship is still here, and now you're doing all of this, you're doing everything but the thing that I need you to do. And now I'm being expected to reward you emotionally for changes that I have not asked for and do not fundamentally solve the problem that I am leaving this marriage for. Or in other words, it's like you, you would be expected— your wife is expecting you to give her all of the credit and benefit and outcome of giving you sex 3 times a week while not doing it. You would be the same. You would go, I'm ex— I'm being expected to reward you and behave in a way that you are meeting all of my needs sexually while meeting none of them. This is a fundamental problem. So often the misdirected effort when, when we address the symptoms, not the root problem, right, it creates more pressure within the relationship, which is the one thing she's looking to get away with. Core principle is like, again, different— every marriage has a different specific, but when a woman looks to leave a marriage, it's because pressure of the marriage has become too much. She's looking for relief. She needs a pressure relief valve, and she believes that the only reason, the only way she can get relief from that pressure is to leave the marriage. Fundamentally, that is every marriage, right? Pressure is what she's looking to escape, nothing else. So flowers can become pressure. Conversation, forced conversations can become pressure. The promises that you're making can become pressure. Even legitimate improvements can become become pressure and are rejected because implicitly they communicate, look at what I'm doing. Now can we be okay? Now do you believe that I'm serious about this? Now will you reconsider this marriage? You're doing more of the very thing that she's trying to escape from. She's trying to escape pressure, and all of these things create pressure for her. So, so from her perspective, you're doing all of these things and you want, you want an emotional reward and you want progress. But from her perspective, the central issues within the marriage remain unchanged. It's like, this is why you hear stuff like, well, I can see your changes and I appreciate it, but you know, so sad, too bad, I'm off. Like, it doesn't make a difference. I'm still moving forward. I'm still divorcing you. I'm still leaving because you haven't actually touched the core issue. The one big thing, and it also reinforces the belief that you still don't understand what the big problem is. Now let me ask you a question: What are the chances of you fixing a problem you don't understand? If you and I are having a conversation, and I said, "I'm pissed off at you, John. I'm angry with you," and you go, "Well, I you know what? What are the chances of me thinking that you're ever going to fix that unless you can demonstrate that you understand why I'm pissed off at you?" You're not going to fix the problem until you can understand the problem. And all of these behaviors that you're engaging in while ignoring to address the big problem just, just reinforces that you just don't understand still why she's leaving. And if you don't understand, the problem's not going away, you know, and that is more than likely doing a lot more damage than doing nothing. You'd be better off doing nothing at this point because now she sees more effort from you, more emotion, more urgency. She sees you really trying to make an effort to save the marriage, but your understanding of the problem is still negligible. So even when you make a huge effort, you're communicating that even, even with cooperation and effort, I still can't solve this problem for you. So that brings us to the sacred cow. The sacred cow is often the enemy, right? How do we solve this problem? So now we've— we understand what the problem is. Now, the one big problem quite often is a sacred cow. So let's talk about what the sacred cow is. So you're all wondering now, like, okay, I get it, Cody. Like, there's, there's one big issue, or there's one big disproportionate problem. How do I find it out? Well, this is, this is harder than it sounds because identifying the real problem Like, you, you may assume that the solution now is discovering what that one big problem is, right? You're like, just tell— to help me find the one big problem, Cody, and I'll fix it. Well, it often isn't that simple because often somewhere underneath everything that's going on, you already know what it is. You already suspect what that one big problem is, right? The difficulty is— the problem is that that one big problem is often a sacred cow that you're not willing to give up, that means that you want to hang on to and you don't want to let go of. Something with a high emotional payoff for you, something you don't want to lose, something that it would be very uncomfortable for you to confront, something that your ego has built an elaborate defense mechanism around. So your psychology, your ego is going to protect this to the death. Your mind will create explanations as to why this isn't the case. It will make exceptions. As to why you don't have to address this problem. It will rationalize, it will produce alternative causes for the problems that you're experiencing, and it will justify compromises within your behavior and marriage so you simply don't have to deal with the sacred cow. Your, your ego will also produce management strategies, right? So a good example here is I used to smoke, and it got to the point where I was smoking 2 packs a day, and I knew, I knew deep down inside that the smoking was causing a huge amount of problems for me, right? So the last thing I wanted to do was quit smoking. Smoking was my sacred cow at that, that time. I wanted the health problems to go away, but I was not willing to address the cause, which was the smoking. So rather than remove the causational event, the cigarettes, the smoking, I searched for ways to remove the symptoms of the smoking. I'd ask questions, why am I coughing, right? Why Maybe it's like I need cleaner air. Maybe it's I need I can take some medication. I can take so that whatever it is, right? I look for a lot of different reasons. But ultimately, you know, I went to the doctor one time and he just laid it down to me, man. Like you you got to stop smoking or die. So what I did well before addressing that was. I look— this— the symptoms of the smoking was the cough, right? It was the chest, it was the cough. So instead of addressing that, I asked the question, or I looked, how can I manage the cigarettes? Can I use patches? Can I use gum? Can I somehow keep the sacred cow and eliminate its consequences? Can I manage it? Can I keep it? And eventually the doctor reduced it down to the reality, right? Stop smoking or die. I had my slides in the wrong order here, that's why I was confused. I had the choice, stop smoking or die. In my marriage— and again, like, a lot of you are going to go, well, I don't drink— but it's like every, every marriage has its own secret cow. Maybe it, maybe it's attachment, maybe it's codependency. There's, there's a ton of different things it could be. But in my marriage, it was the alcohol. Alcohol was a problem, and I knew that deep down inside. But I wanted the marriage and I wanted the bottle simultaneously. Every complaint that my wife had and everything was coming from alcohol. My moods, my aggression, everything was downstream being caused by the alcohol. So I searched for ways to preserve the marriage and the alcohol. I went to men's groups, I went to therapy, I went to counseling, couples retreats, different solutions, anything I looked for, I looked for a way to have the alcohol and keep the marriage. My sacred cow, alcohol. And all of these things, all of these mechanisms, therapy, etc., it all allowed me to feel, feel like I was working on the marriage without actually confronting the one thing that I didn't want to surrender and the one thing that I had to surrender. Which was alcohol. So most men tell me, I've done everything I know to do, Cody. Which is most of you watching this, you believe you've done everything. It's not true. The reality is you've done everything that you're comfortable doing. You've done everything that you're willing to do. So what's the solution? What does work? I think that, that's a pretty elaborate explanation of what doesn't work, right? You know, it's like, that's great, Cody. So I've understand what doesn't work. What does work? Don't worry, I got you, bro. Here we go. The first step to solving this problem is not addressing your marriage. It's radical self-honesty. It's looking at yourself and putting everything on the table. So the first step to solving the problem and identifying the sacred cow is you have to identify what that sacred cow is. And you— the What you need is a philosophy and a psychology that is capable of seeing and diagnosing the problem that is destroying your marriage. And the mechanism, the only mechanism that will allow that, whether you're having a conversation with me and I'm helping you uncover it, or whether you're doing this yourself or through Cody AI or something like that, is everything has to be on the table. You cannot— if you want to be a truth seeker, and it's as Jesus said, right? Know the truth, for it's the truth that shall set you free. The truth is what's going to save your marriage. The truth of what, what the, the big, the one big problem that if you solve that truth, the truth will save your marriage. But the only way you can find the truth is everything has to be on the table. There can be no sacred cows. So you need radical self-honesty. You need radical responsibility. You need to adopt the philosophy of solution begins with me. The philosophy of fix the man, fix the marriage. If you don't start there, you are simply playing a game of marital whack-a-mole. And this is where men go, yeah, but what about her? Well, you understand, like, every, every problem is a symptom of the one big problem. And yes, she has her one big problem too that's annoying you, but you've got to lead her to that place. You can't You, you have to start with you. Leadership— if you want to be a true leader, which is what it's going to require to save the marriage, you have to be willing to take the first arrow. You have to be willing to take the first bullet. How do you, how do you get somebody to do something that every fiber in their body is telling them not to do? The best example I can find of that is how do you lead men into combat? How do you get men to advance into fire when everything inside of that man is telling you Telling him to turn around and run. The only way is you have to be at the front of the charge. You have to be willing to take the first bullet. You have to be willing to take the first arrow. And if you die, you die. So be it. When you do that, those men will follow you to certain death. You, you become the type of man, the type of leader where other men look at you and say, I will live with you or I will die with you, but either way, I'll be beside your feet. side. You can't be the general up on the hill saying, men, advance into fire. I'm going to be up here because you need someone guiding this battle, and if I get killed, you're all screwed. You can't, you can't push the marriage from behind. It doesn't work. You have to lead the marriage from the front, and to do that, you have to be willing to take the first bullet, take the first arrow. It is the only thing That works. That's why if you're not willing to take radical responsibility, self-honesty, adopt the philosophy of the solution begins with me, and the true solution is fix the marriage, fix the marriage. Don't work with me. Don't watch my content. Don't listen to me because truthfully, I can't help you. And hopefully you can see that. So the The answer is always to ask a different question, right? The solution— the way you get a better result is to ask a better question. So the question is that you're asking right now is, what are all the things that are wrong with my marriage that I need to fix? Terrible question. It's going to get you terrible results. The, the upgraded question, the more intelligent, enlightening question is, what is the small hinge that swings the big door that when I look at it, I can fly through it to freedom effortlessly? That's what you need to be looking for, a leveraged action that reveals the small hinge that swings the big door. This is why we can get disproportionately good results with a disproportionately less amount of effort, right? So that what we are looking for is what is the one issue that carries disproportionate influence and leverage over everything else? And again, I'm using the same example, right? Yeah. If, if your wife gave you sex 5 days a week, how many of the other problems in the marriage would be a problem? How much other stuff would you be willing to look? And if you're a woman watching this, right, simple. This is the big— this is the little hinge that swings the big door for you. You want to get your marriage to be a drooling little puppy dog that will do anything you want him to do and be the husband that you need him to be? That's the hinge. You need to find the one big problem that is creating all of the multiple downstream consequences, right? What is the secret cow that I keep defending? For many of you, it's alcohol. Could be porn. Could be attachment disorders. Could be codependency. Could be an unwillingness to separate from your family of origin and put her first. It could be an unwillingness to put her before work. It could be— there's a plethora of things, right? Every— there's not a one-size-fits-all, but every marriage most certainly has the secret sacred cow. So again, so let's look at how alcohol can be that sacred cow. So she's complaining about your mood. This is my— this is my example, right? Just my example, doesn't necessarily apply to you. But she complains about my mood. She complains about my temper, unpredictability, unreliability. You know, the emotional roller coaster. There's there's a hat. She's liable to step on a landmine at any given time. I'm walking around with a loaded gun and and telling her that it's not loaded. Broken promises, withdrawing from the relationship to drink secretly. Now you've got a choice. You could fight six separate fires simultaneously and try and address all of those issues, or you can. Enlightenedly realize that alcohol is the gasoline that is, that is, that is stoking all of those fires, right? Yeah, all of, all of those other issues are real, but alcohol is the fire, the gasoline that is stoking the fire. You remove the oxygen, the fuel from the fire, and it burns out. So anger is another sacred cow. Many of you have anger issues. Anger management issues, right? So what are the symptoms? The anger could be the sacred cow that is the upstream problem that is causing all of these downstream. She doesn't communicate with you. She doesn't talk to you. She doesn't open up. She's emotionally shut down, non-expressive. She avoids difficult conversations with you. She doesn't want to spend time with you, doesn't want to be in the same room with you. She doesn't feel emotionally safe with you. Those are not 5 separate problems. That need to be addressed. They are one problem. That, that it's one problem, anger and aggression, and there's 5 or 6 symptoms all downstream of one problem, one big problem. Or in other words, a good way to look at this is many of you are saying, these spots on my face, Cody, are causing measles. How do I get these spots off my face? Give me some cream, give me some lotion, give me something to deal with these spots. No, brother, those spots are the symptoms Symptom of the fact you have measles. You can't treat the spots until you address the root issue, which is you have measles. Many of you are going, these spots on my face are causing measles. This is a fallacy. Turn it around. Recognize these measles are causing the spots on my face. When you treat the real root problem, measles, the spots go away as a byproduct, as a consequence. Very simple. So once identified, once you've identified your secret, your sacred cow— alcohol, anger, codependency, workaholism, you put everything before your wife, etc.— here's the strategy. You don't manage the secret cow. You don't explain it. You don't protect it. You build— you don't build a nicer cage to put it in and manage it. I'll only drink on the weekends. I'll only Put work before her Monday to Sunday. I'll only be working if I'm awake. You don't build a nicer cage for it, right? You recognize that it is the enemy of something more important to you, and it is a ruthless enemy that will give you no quarter, and it will take everything and leave you nothing. So it— you got to look at it like this, man. If something is genuinely threatening your marriage and family, treating it as casual makes no sense at all. The response has to match the perceived threat here. So if you hear, if you hear a noise in the middle of the night and you wake up and somebody's broken into your house, it is your job to stand between your wife and children. It is your job. You have to meet that threat with potentially lethal force if necessary. You have to do whatever it takes. You have to use the level of violence to match the level of threat. And if you step aside and you let that man through, And he violates your wife and children, and then you try to explain it away, say, well, you know, at least you're still alive, or I could have died and then you wouldn't have me, and you're better off having me after being violated than not having me at all. That's what a lot of you were doing, right? What is going on in your marriage is there is— the barbarians are in the gates. There is a man in your living room trying to violate your wife, and you're trying to negotiate with him. You need to meet the threat with lethal force. Many of you don't understand this. Alcohol is the man in your living room. Your anger issues is the man in the living room, and he is going to have his way with your wife if you don't meet the threat with the required level of response. So what are some of the real enemies here that need to be met with lethal force? I have— this is, this is probably destroying more marriages than anything else, more marriages than affairs, alcohol, everything else. This is probably the number one destroyer of marriages, right? I have time. So every single one of you on this call intend to deal with the problem. That's not the issue, right? You, you know you need to deal with the issue. You agree that, like, many— even the sacred cow, many of you recognize and agree that it's going to be dealt with. You intend to deal with it, but the problem is you don't deal with it now. You deal with it— you delay, right? So here's the linguistic trap that will set you free from this, or this is the snare that you need to avoid. You'll say stuff like, I need to deal with this, which feels almost identical psychologically to I am dealing with this, but they are 2 completely different realities. I need to go to the gym is stating a fact that we all know. I, I will go to the gym is a very different thing. I need, I need to do this is simply state— there's no commitment in that, right? So, I need to do this. I need to eat less red meat and more salad— salads. It's future tense. I need to stop drinking. I need to— who doesn't know that? What info— what new information are you bringing to the conversation? Do you think we don't know that you need to deal with your aggression? Do you think we don't know that you need to stop doing these things? But what it does when you say I need to, it promotes— provides emotional relief because there's— you feel responsible You feel a sense of responsibility, or you're saying, I take responsibility because you've acknowledged the problem. Acknowledging the problem is not fixing the problem. Acknowledging the problem is not removing the problem or the consequences of the problem. Saying I need to quit smoking does not change the fact if I'm well on my way to get lung cancer. I need to quit smoking does not remove the consequences of it— coughing, spluttering, etc., etc. So when you say, "I need to," all you're doing is allowing yourself to feel good without actually being good. So here's an interesting point, right? I had a conversation recently with a man, and we're talking his marriage is not—it's not collapsed, but it's it's it's in trouble. His marriage is in trouble, and the writing's on the wall, right? We're having this conversation, and he told me, "He goes, 'I know I need to sort this out, Curtie. I've got I've got 18 months to sort this out.'" It's what he believed. My question was, and to him was, who told you that? Who told you you've got 18 months? Did she tell you you've got 18 months, or did you just create that timeline out of thin air? Did you just make that up? Because telling yourself you've got 18 months allows you to avoid acting today while still feeling like you're taking the problem seriously. You've acknowledged there's a problem, you've acknowledged that you need to take action, and you've acknowledged that you're going to take action. While simultaneously taking no action, you've done absolutely nothing. All you've done is convince yourself that you are leading the men into battle from the front, willing to take the first arrow, willing to take the first bullet. But in reality, you're still in the mess hall eating bacon and eggs and drinking coffee. That's the reality, right? So the way I responded to him, I asked him, "What if you don't have 18 months?" She didn't tell you got 18 months. You just made that up. That was a number that you. comfortable with. What if you've got 18 weeks? What if you've got 18 days? What if you've got 18— what if you've got 18 minutes, bro? At some point, you are 18 minutes away. 18 minutes from now, your wife is going to tell you she's done and she's not coming back. At some point, the 18-minute buzzer will go. The 18-minute warning will go. You don't know when that is. You may be inside that 18 minutes. Like, what are you thinking? You've got 18 months. Do you know how destructive that is to you? Do you know how destructive that is to your marriage, to your future, to your family? That's crazy, bro. So the enemy has assumed time. You've assuming you've got time. I'll do it. I'm gonna do it. I need to do it. I am. I'll do it soon. But none of these mean that the sacred cow is being confronted. None of these mean that the one big thing that she needs to see dealt with is being dealt with. The train is heading towards the cliff at speed. And you're sat there going, "It's all good, bro. I got this." No, you don't. So the only thing that matters is present tense action, not I need to do this. I am dealing with this, and even better, a timeline. I will have this sorted out by Friday at three p.m. Cody, I need I need you to send some emails out and do X, Y, and Z. Okay, okay, John, I will have that done by 3 PM today. Or, Cody, I need you to send these emails out for me, please. Yeah, I, I know, I, I get it, man. You need me to do it. I got it. I, I understand you need me to do it. It's like the distinction here is— I, I can't overstate how enormous this distinction is between present tense and future tense here. And almost all of you are in present tense right now. Or sorry, almost all of you are in future tense right now. Pacifying yourself, wondering why nothing is changing. You've got to get into present tense action, and that's that starts with using language like I am dealing with this. I've got some some videos on the YouTube channel on power language. Watch it, man. Like I go into the whole hour-long presentation, right? Like you can find it there. So why does this work? Well, because her her psychology. Man responds to what you prioritize. Words— your words have very little value when they contradict repeated behavior. When you said you— when you say you recognize that you need to stop drinking and you don't stop drinking, you, you're in contradiction of yourself. And if you need to stop drinking but you keep drinking, you're prioritizing drinking, and she's responding to the prioritization of your actions. She's not responding to the prioritization of your words. Monkey see, monkey do. What she's judging you by, what you're doing, the life you live, is the man you are. The behaviors you engage in is what engage in right now. Nobody cares what you think. Nobody cares what you plan on doing. We only care about what you're doing right now. I talk to men all the time. They want to give me this big long monologue about this has happened and that's happened, and I'm like, let me cut you off, bro. I don't care. I don't care what's happened. I don't care what you've done. I don't care what she's done. It's irrelevant to me. It's And I'm not saying that because I'm being cold. I'm saying it because all I care about, the one thing that I care about, is what you are going to do now, what you are going to do next. What, what you have done relating to who you've been and what you've done in the past does not save your marriage. Your wife will respond to what you— to the actions you prioritize right now and in the future. So words have no, no value when they contradict behavior. But when you confront actively in the present tense the one thing that you previously defended, something changes, and it changes very, very quickly. My marriage changed overnight when I stopped drinking. Many of you have had that experience where your marriage has turned around in, in literally minutes when, when you address the one thing. This doesn't take years. Trans— true transformation literally is snap of a finger. So what she potentially sees for the first time when you address the sacred cow is he understands, he finally gets it, he finally understands my, my complaints. He's no longer asking me to tolerate this intolerable behavior. He's no longer defending this behavior. Do you know how many men that I talk to that defend their behavior? Yes, I get that this behavior is shocking and bad, Cody, but you have to understand why I do it. I was I was depressed. I was this, I was that, blah. Who cares, bro? Like, explaining why you punched your wife in the face does not remove you from the consequences from you doing it. Stop defending your behavior and start changing your behavior in the present tense. When you do that, it communicates he is choosing what matters to me, my— this marriage and our family over his comfort. He is choosing us. Finally. Do you see the difference? His actions are finally aligned with his words. Many of you complain that my wife just doesn't believe me. Well, why would she, dude? Your words and your actions do not align. You say something, you do something else, and then you create a story around it as to why you didn't do the thing you said you were going to do. Who cares? If you say you're going to send an email at 3 o'clock today, all I care about is did you do it or did you not do it? The email— if the email didn't go out, the consequences are the same whether you have a reason for not sending it or not. I don't care. She doesn't care about your stories. Ditch the stories, bro. Ditch the excuses. Radical self-honesty, radical responsibility in the present tense. This will change your life forever for the better. So this is fundamentally different to trying harder, right? So before, you're asking her to believe that the marriage matters to you, and your strategy is, if I can communicate— like, you think that the one big problem is that she doesn't— she doesn't understand how important the marriage is for you. That's not the one big problem. It's not. In your mind, you think the problem is that if you can just communicate, you're asking her to believe that the marriage matters to you, right? Afterwards, after this transformational change, You're not asking her to believe anything. You're demonstrating what matters to you. It's leave no question on the table. Leave no question on the table. Demonstrate what's important. And the way you do that is you address the sacred cow. You put the sacred cow on the altar and you sacrifice it to the god of your marriage. So, this is the Small Hinge, right? The Small Hinge creates disproportionate movement within the marriage. Disproportionate. It compresses timelines. It accelerates recovery. It facilitates the transformation that you're looking for. The Small Hinge is leverage. It is concentrated effort. So, instead of spreading 100 units of your energy, over 100 different problems, you concentrate 100 units of energy on producing the greatest downstream effect, or on the problem that produces the greatest downstream effect. All effort, brother, is not equal. That's what we said at the beginning, right? 100 units of energy gets expended regardless, but 100 units of energy can produce 10,000 units of results or it can produce 10 units of results. And, and life, every aspect of life, is a game of energy conservation. Any, any scenario is a, is a, is an equation of energy out, energy in. If you consume— if it takes more energy to create an outcome than you consume from that outcome, you atrophy and die. You have to, you have to expend less energy than you consume. Or else you die. You have to consume equal or more calories than you expend on a daily basis, or you atrophy. So how do you do this? I hear you going, okay, Cody, I get it, man, but like, how? How do I do this? All right, I got you, bro. I got you. At this point, the natural question is going to be, of course, Cody, how do I understand? Makes perfect sense, right? Hopefully you're saying it makes perfect sense, but how? How do I do this? How do I change this? How do I give this up? How do I become different? How do I know I can do this? How do I know I can do it? Good questions, right? Well, the problem is you have the wrong order right now, and you can have all the right numbers, but if you put them in an equation in the wrong order, you get the wrong result. You can have the numbers to the combination of the lock, but if you use them the wrong order, you don't unlock the lock, right? So here's the thing, right? This is— take this away. This is valuable. This is critical. The how is never the first problem. The how is never the first problem. The first problem is the why. Write this down: reasons precede answers. Always reasons come before answers. You will never find the answer till you have enough reasons to find that answer. So when something remains a preference, you keep negotiating with it. When something becomes a necessity, you become extraordinarily resourceful. So the example I always use, like again demonstration purposes only, someone goes, "I can't do X, Y, and Z." Okay, well what about? What about gun to the head situation, right? Like in the gym, you know, push that weight till exhaustion, Cody. Okay, I'm done. I can't do some another rep. I can't do another rep, coach. All right, then he pulls a gun out, puts it to my head, and says, you're going to do one more rep or I pull the trigger. Are there resources available to me that were not there before? Absolutely, absolutely. You've got to put yourself in a gun to the head situation, which you are in. You just need to acknowledge this situation through radical self-honesty. Honesty and responsibility. When the reasons become non-negotiable, the answers become easy. Tony Robbins said it very well: your must-needs are always met, your wants are met if it's convenient. Right now, everything that you're not achieving that's difficult is a want for you. I want to quit drinking, I want to control my anger, I want to do this. Well, let me ask you a question. If someone, you know, for demonstration purposes only, if someone said We've got your kids, John, and unless you sort your anger out in the next 30 days, you ain't seeing your kids again, bro. Now it's become a must, right? Now what's the chances of you sorting your anger out in the next 30 days and maintaining that for the next— like, it's 100%. It's not that you can't do it, it's that you're not doing it because it's a want, or it would be nice if it's convenient. It is not a must. What creates the must? Reasons. When it becomes a necessity for you, you become extraordinarily resourceful. Many of you on this call right now have found— become extraordinarily resourceful to find the resources to actually be on this call. Why? Because if you have the necessity now, your marriage is on the line, you have to save it. Saving it is not an option for you. Losing it is not an option for you. You have to save your marriage. So you found extraordinary, extraordinary resourcefulness to do something that would have been extremely uncomfortable or even in your mind impossible previously. So, as we said, wants versus must. What happens once you achieve your wants when circumstances cooperate with it? Must find a way to find a solution. So I hear you saying, "I get it, Cody, but this is hard. This is hard." Be careful with that language because often it isn't hard at all. You're confusing hard. With unfamiliar. It isn't hard, it's unfamiliar. So let me give you an example of that. When you started tying your shoelaces as a 2-year-old or 3-year-old, was it hard? That's why they make Velcro shoes for kids. You don't find— why do they not make Velcro shoes for adults? Because it isn't hard. Because every single adult masters tying their shoes. It's not hard. If every single adult in the world essentially who has their mental capacity masters tying shoes, how hard is it? Every single person has achieved it. How hard was it to tie your shoes? Can't be that hard, right? If only 1 out of 100 adults can tie shoes and there's a market for Velcro shoes for adults, yeah, maybe I'm gonna— maybe I'll accept your excuse that it's hard. But the truth is, it was never hard. It was unfamiliar. As a 2-year-old, tying your shoes was unfamiliar to you. It wasn't hard. This stuff is not hard, man. It's unfamiliar. And when you tell yourself it's hard, you disempower yourself. You put yourself in a position of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you think it's hard, you look for reasons to make it hard to validate yourself. Change your language from this is hard to this is unfamiliar. Driving was once hard to you. Counting was once hard to you. Everything was once hard until it wasn't, right? Anything unfamiliar initially feels difficult because you lack the neurological familiarity and competence of the task. Difficulty does not automatically mean impossibility. So let's simplify this so it's not overwhelming for you. You don't need the entire map right now. Most men need to know the entire journey before they start the journey. You don't. Imagine driving from New York to Miami at night. Your headlights only illuminate 20 meters of stretch of road in front of you, right? It's all you need. You can still make the entire journey in complete darkness, having no idea What's more than 20 meters ahead of you. It's all you need. You don't need to see Miami before leaving New York to reach your destination. You only need to know your destination, and you only need the next section of light. So I hear you saying, well, what's my next section of light, Cody? Right? Well, your job is not to solve the entire future today. Many of you are overwhelmed because you think you have to solve everything right now. Your job is to make solving the real problem a must. That's the next 20 meters of light, right? adopting the philosophy psychology position that I must, I must find a way to, to, to make dealing with this sacred cow— must. You must find enough reasons to stop negotiating with the, uh, the man in your living room wanting to violate your wife. You can't negotiate with him, man. You'll kill him. That's it. You have to come up with enough reasons so the discomfort no longer gets the deciding vote. Right now Your comfort gets the— that gets the deciding vote on what you do. Because once the why becomes strong enough, you start finding the how. How many of you found a way to work with me because it became essential? You find a way. You find it when the why becomes strong enough. When you have enough reasons, the how becomes easy. It simply reveals itself. So you have a binary choice to make, right? Let's, let's move. Let's break this down to black and white. Somewhere in your marriage, without exception— and if you're going, I don't think this is true for you, you're deluding yourself. It's true for you. Look harder, try harder, keep looking until you find it. I promise you it's there. I have never met, come across a situation, whether it's in health, business, marriage, finances, where there is not a small hinge that is swinging a big door, right? Find it. There may be, or there is, a secret cow standing directly— or sacred cow standing in debt directly in front of you, right? You can't keep attacking the symptoms. You can't keep addressing the symptoms. You have to address the bigger problem that's downstream of the symptoms. Uh, you can't keep just working harder. You can't just keep explaining, right? You can't You can't keep making promises. You can't keep telling yourself that you're going to deal with this later. That's your choice. Or your binary choice is you can do all of those things. You can deceive yourself, or you can become radically honest about the one thing that is creating the disproportionate damage, and you can attack it head on. Right? So eventually the choice becomes brutally simple. This is for every single person watching this message. You can have your marriage, or you can have your sacred cow, but you cannot have both. You have to choose. What do you want? I had to choose my wife over alcohol, and I've had to make that choice multiple times since making that decision, right? I've gone back, and it's like I have to make that choice again and again. And it's not like there's only going to be— this is an ongoing thing. Sacred cows show up all the time, man. So this is my challenge to you, brothers. Choose. Do you want your marriage or do you want your sacred cow? And what you choose is not going to be judged by what you say. It's going to be judged by what you do next. If you are serious, if you are claiming with authority language, I will sacrifice the sacred cow, prove it, bro. Prove it. Don't tell me about it. No one cares. Nobody wants to hear your plans for sacrificing the cow, man. They want to eat the meat. That's it. So let's jump over. That's it for me, guys. Let's jump over to, uh, to questions and, and get on with the, with the rest of this call.