Cody ButlerCody Butler · Men Relationship Coach

Create a Framework: Rules, Not Emotions

12 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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Cody Butler argues that personal crises require pre-established rules, not emotions. He defines success as consistent, rule-governed action that persists regardless of how you feel, and failure as inconsistent, emotion-driven execution. Without explicit protocols for catastrophic moments, you're left interpreting events through an unreliable emotional lens.

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So the first reason is that there's no framework in place to contextualize events. What is your protocol? What is your process when something feels catastrophic to you or something? When this goes, when this happens, what framework do you have in place to bring yourself back under control? What are the rules when you start to lose control? There's, in other words, there's no governing criteria. There's no perspective. There's only emotional interpretation going on, and emotions simply are not reliable at the best of times. When you're in a crisis situation such as potentially losing your wife and family, your emotions are not going to serve you. So let me define very quickly how to succeed and how to fail, because it's very, it's very easy. So failure is inconsistent execution governed by emotion. Success is the exact opposite, and this is very true in marriage crisis situations. Success is consistent execution regardless of emotion. I'm going to show up regardless of how I feel. I'm going to choose to be stable regardless of how I feel. I'm going to interpret this way regardless of how I feel. I'm going to execute on my stability regardless of how I feel. You have to get emotions out of the situation. You have to. And to do that, you have to have a framework.