She Wants a Divorce Because You're Solving the Wrong Problem

So a common question is, how do you restore connection and rebuild trust in a marriage when, when your wife wants a divorce, or when that trust has already been, been destroyed and she just simply doesn't believe you anymore? So the problem that we're dealing with here ultimately is going to be one of she doesn't believe anything that you say or do, and even when she asks for some— you to do something and you do it, she's still mad at you. So you don't— there's no winning here, right? If you do it, she's mad. If you don't do it, she's mad. There's just no way. To, to win here is what it seems like. So by the end of this, you're going to hopefully understand why she's mad, what the problem is, what actually restores trust within the marriage, and it definitely isn't what you think it is. And you're going to have the solutions that you need to move forward to, to sort this out. So trust is built within the Marriage Matrix. So you can't change trust without changing the operating system. So What I mean by that is she's not evaluating your words in the same way that you're not evaluating my words or anybody else's words. You're evaluating who the person is, and if you've decided that the person is trustworthy ahead of time, then there's not a huge amount that they can do barring catastrophic incompetency that's going to destroy that, and vice versa. If you've decided that they're incompetent or untrustworthy, it's like you're going to see them through that paradigm and almost everything that they do is going to be judged very harshly. Or in other words, we see the world through a confirmation bias. We talk about our wives having confirmation bias towards us, but it's not a problem. Confirmation bias is not a problem or a condition that is unique to women and marriage. We all have confirmation bias at all times. And essentially, What the mind is doing is seeking to find evidence of what the mind believes to be true. So we find— we form an opinion, then we seek evidence to support that opinion. We— unless you're very enlightened and very sophisticated emotionally, you have a high level of emotional intelligence, very rarely does anybody look at the evidence and then come to a conclusion. The evidence supports the conclusion that has already been arrived at. So when you understand that, then it makes it easy to fix the problem because we go to work in the right area. So every day, every task, every decision that you make that is observable by your wife and is observed by your wife falls into one of four categories, and it's the Marriage Matrix. So it falls into not important, not urgent, in which case that needs to be eliminated. Urgent but not important, important but not urgent, and important and urgent. So we'll go through all of these as we go on, but fundamentally this is the category in which trust is built, and you'll see why by the end. And this is where, this is where you live an extraordinary life. This is where you start to have everything. This is where You become one of those people that they say everything he touches turns to gold. You're always in the right place at the right time. Lady Luck lives with you. We all know those people, right? Well, it's not because they're lucky or born lucky, it's because they're operating in the important but not urgent paradigm. Important and urgent, which is where most of us are, which is why we're here, also known as crisis. This is, this is where the real problems start to happen. So let's unpack this a little bit more here. So The objective here is to become the kind of man who rarely allows important things to become urgent. We want to deal with important things while they're not urgent, right? So a key understanding to take here, a key philosophy, is how you do anything is how you do everything. If you're sloppy in your business, you're sloppy in your marriage. If you're sloppy in your health, you're sloppy in your email. If you're messy in your car, you're messy in your bedroom, so on and so forth. So when you understand that how you do anything is how you do everything, your wife isn't actually evaluating the tasks that she's doing, she's evaluating the operating system. And a lot of times When I'm talking to a man on a one-to-one call, I'm not actually listening. I mean, of course I'm listening, but I'm not listening particularly to the situation that he's describing. I'm listening for the operating system that he's running. Where does this man live? What operating system is he running? What paradigm is he operating in? Because that's where the transformation takes place. To listen to the situation and say, okay, we'll do this, do that. Say this, say that, move here, move there. It's putting a Band-Aid on cancer, basically. The only way that the situation changes is to uncover the underlying operating system and then move the operating system. So the question isn't whether the task gets done, right? For most of you, if not all of you, the task is going to get done. We know it's going to get done. You know it's going to get done. The question is not whether it gets done or not. The question is whether it gets done easy or only after it becomes a crisis. Now, all of you on this call are willing to do the work, and you're doing the work, and you're gonna do the work, but you could have done the work 6 months ago. You could have done the work 18 months ago. And the truth is, this was important but not urgent a year ago. Now it's important and urgent. So you've allowed a situation that quite frankly could have been dealt with very easily 18 months ago to become a crisis, and now it's much, much harder to deal with. So the question was never, are you going to do the work? Are you going to change? The outcome was always a given that you're going to change. The question is, are you going to do it when it's easy, or are you going to wait till it gets hard and do it hard? And that's really important as we move forward to understand that. So what is your wife actually evaluating? Because I hear it all the time. I did— she said she's not happy about I don't do this, and now I do it and she's still pissed off at me. Like, I can't win, Cody. What's going on? Well, most men believe— they're operating from the belief system that if I eventually get it done, I will receive credit. As long as it gets done eventually, and I know it's gonna get done, she will give me the credit for doing it. So her position is she isn't evaluating the completion of the task, she's evaluating the competency of the man performing the task. Did you do the task when it was easy, and it— or did you wait till it got hard? Did you do the task when it was important but not urgent, or did you only do it when it became a crisis? This is what she's evaluating, because if you only did it when it became a crisis, it doesn't matter that you've done the task. The fundamental underlying operating system is a man that operates out of crisis, and the man that only operates out of crisis, which means if she wants anything to get done, she has to create a crisis. Which means she is constantly living in crisis and instability. So questions she's unconsciously asking herself during this process: Why didn't he do this when it was easy, right? A great example here is a man will say, let— when divorce is presented, let's go to marriage counseling. Why didn't you do that 6 months ago? Why didn't you do that 18 months ago when it was easy? Why didn't you do it when I was willing to do it? Why did you wait till this became a crisis to take action? Why did I have to remind you? Why did I have to tell you over and over again? You knew this was important. You knew this has to— had to be done. Why did I have to keep reminding you? Now in your mind, you go, "Well, I knew it was going to get done all the time," but you waited till it became a crisis. Why do I have to fight all the time to get things done? Why do I have to carry the mental load in this relationship? Why did I have to wait until the deadline to get this done? And that's where many of us are, right? The reason we're on this call, because the deadline came. The marriage is now ending. The deadline has arrived, and now the deadline is here. You've decided that you're willing to take action. You're in urgent and important, or otherwise you've sprung into action. Now the crisis is here. You're a man who only acts in a crisis. But guess what? What if you— what if the other person doesn't want to live in constant crisis? This is a problem. So what she's evaluating here is your foresight, your leadership, your reliability, your ownership, and your competency to get these things done. So the key understanding, man, is your wife isn't evaluating, was the dishwasher loaded? Did you take the trash out? Did you help around the house? She's evaluating the man that's doing it. She's not looking at did the task get done. She's looking at who is the man that's doing the task. That's what's being evaluated. And if you think that she's evaluating the task, you're looking at the wrong thing and you're acting in the wrong, uh, wrong, in the wrong area. It's a given that the task has to get done. You don't get any credit for loading the dishwasher. You don't get any credit for fixing the fence, cutting the grass, paying the bill. You don't— these are These are minimum entry requirements. This is expected of you, and you're not going to get credit for that. And if you have created an environment where you only do what is expected of you in a crisis environment, she's not giving you any credit for what's going on here. So trust isn't built because you eventually solve the crisis, because you eventually do what needs to be done. Trust is actually built because a crisis rarely happens around you. Most crises are created, created by you by operating in the urgent and important category, or the other categories other than important but not urgent. Almost all crises can be avoided if you operate in category, in the category that we're going to describe here. So We talk about emotional safety all the time, right? Like, same question I get all the time: can my marriage be saved and how long is it going to take, Cody Butler? Well, the answer is, can you re-establish emotional safety? Is she— does she believe it? And how long is it going to take you to re-establish emotional safety? That's the answer to that question. But let's talk about it. What is— what are some characteristics of that emotional safety? Your wife does not want a man who says, when the fight comes, I'll protect you. She wants a man who says, "My leadership will prevent any unnecessary fights." She wants a man who says, "The fight will never come to this house. There will never be any need to protect you because I will make sure with my foresight that the crisis never arrives." And again, this is the difference in the paradigm shift between the man and the woman. How you're thinking is, you know you're going to protect her. You're not worried about the crisis because you know that when the crisis comes, you're going to take care of it and you're going to protect her. She doesn't know that, and even if she did, it's still not very comfortable for her. She, she wants the fight to stay somewhere else. She wants a man who will prevent unnecessary crises, which is very possible for you to do. So to put it another way, she doesn't want a great firefighter, she wants a fire prevention officer. And if you're sitting there going, "Well, I'm a great firefighter, Cody. I do this and I do that and blah blah blah blah blah." Well, great. That's great for you, but the question I always ask, if she's going to come back to this marriage, is it for your reasons or is it for her reasons? You know, the answer is very obvious, right? If she's going to come back, it's clearly going to be for her reasons. Well, her reasons for coming back is she wants a fire prevention officer. She wants a man who is going to have the foresight, leadership, and intelligence to avoid crises ahead of time versus a man who says, "I'm just going to let the crisis arrive, and when it gets here, I'll deal with it." So protection isn't reacting to a situation. Protection is anticipating the situation that's coming and never letting it get here. Or in other words, operating in the quadrant of the matrix that is, this is important but it's not urgent. It was important you did the work that you're doing right now on this call 18 months ago. It was important that you did it, but it wasn't urgent 18 months ago for you because you didn't feel the consequences of it. Now it's important and urgent, or in other words, it's a crisis. You're in a crisis. Had you acted 18 months ago, if you'd have been the prevention officer, not the firefighter, All of this could have been— all of this could have been prevented. And again, how you do anything is how you do everything. This is how health crises appear. This is how financial crises appear. This is how crises of confidence appear. So the key understanding, man, is a protector isn't the man who wins the fight. Or in other words, the man that the wife trusts isn't the man that loads the dishwasher. Although you do have to do that, don't get me wrong. He's the man whose foresight meant that she never had to ask him to wash the— to load the dishwasher. The protector isn't the man who's fighting for his marriage right now. Every one of you is fighting for your marriage. You're fighting like hell for your marriage right now. She wants the man who would never let that fight take place because you would have taken action 6, 12, 18 months ago. Or in other words, the man that she truly can trust is the man that begins before protection is needed. So let's talk about the actual significance of this. Why does this matrix change everything? So living in— let's, well, let's go through each one of these. So The first one we're going to do is important but not urgent, right? This is where we are. In which case, if you're in important and not urgent, and a lot of you are, you got to eliminate those activities flat out. There's no two ways about that. So living in important— sorry, my mistake— important but not urgent, right? This is, this is where we need to live. This is where the actual transformation takes place. If you can move to important but not urgent, your entire life shifts from being one constant firefight to having everything basically. So when you shift to important but not urgent, your health changes, your marriage changes, your finances, your parents, your parenting, your business, your faith, everything. Why? Well, let's look at it. How many health crises could have been avoided if you, if you were in important but not urgent? Is it important that you change your diet right now? Is it important that you exercise right now? Is it important that you address the ever-increasing weight that your body is carrying around? Yes, of course it is. All of these things are important, but for many of you, it's not urgent right now because you haven't got the diagnosis from the doctor. Your marriage is the same. Is it important? Was it important 6 months ago that you did the work? Was it important 18 months ago that you understood this stuff and you made the changes? Was it important that 2 years ago you went to counseling or whatever when she said— yes, of course it was. It was important back then, but it wasn't urgent. You put it off and now it's a crisis. Finances. It was important that you invested in property 10 years ago, but you didn't. Now some of you are millions of dollars behind the curve. You could be millions of dollars better off if you'd have taken action when it was important but not urgent. Was it important that you started investing into your retirement at 25 years old? Of course it was. Was it urgent? Absolutely not. Now you're way behind the curve, a lot of you. And here's the kicker on this: some of this stuff's not fixable. Once it moves into crisis, some of this stuff becomes unfixable. If you let your health deteriorate to a certain point to where the diagnosis comes in, that might not be fixable. If you've let your finances get to the point to where you're planning for retirement, you, you start to plan at age 60, probably not fixable. So again, how you do anything is how you do everything. If you're operating in anything other than important but not, not urgent, these are all suffering in your life. And even if they're working out, they could be way better than what they are. So key understanding here, man, it's like the man who repeatedly walks past small problems trains himself to tolerate disorder. If you can just walk by a small problem, that small problem is always going to turn into a big problem. Extraordinary lives aren't built in crisis, they're built in ordinary moments. The man that operates in important but not urgent is very boring. He's very— there's not much excitement going on there in the moment because it never becomes a crisis. But when every aspect of your life, when, when, when your health is taken care of, when your finances are taken care of, when your business is taken care of, when your marriage is taken care of, when your relationship with your children is taken care of, because they were all built in the ordinary moments in the moments that were urgent but not important, then the life becomes extraordinary. When you're making choices because you want to make them, not because the crisis requirements— requires it, that's when your life truly becomes extraordinary, man. That's when your marriage becomes extraordinary. So who are you? Let's, let's, let's create some personas here to see where you see yourself in this. So Crisis Chris, many of you are going to be here. Crisis Chris operates in the Important and Urgent category. So that is where many of you are, right? Your marriage is now— it's important that you do the work and it's urgent that you do the work. You've let it get too important and urgent. We can now describe your marriage as in crisis. Getting, getting the necessary documentation on your car, right? I live in Australia, we have to do a rego check, has to, has to pass, and certain work might be required to get it through. If I wait till the day of the rego check to get it done, well, this is now important and urgent. And what if work needs doing that can't be done on the day? Now I've got problems. This was important but not urgent 6 weeks ago. Could have done it then. So Crisis Chris, his motto is, I'll deal with it when I have to, I'll get it done eventually. He basically— his characteristics are he lives from crisis to crisis. Pressure is his motivator. Many of you are here because you're motivated by pressure now. Pressure caused you to take action. Only acts when consequences become painful. Many of you are only taking action now because the consequences have become painful enough for you to take action. Had you— had your wife not pushed this crisis, you wouldn't be taking action right now. Crisis Chris thinks he performs well under pressure. He prides himself on working well under pressure. He delays the easy tasks until they're difficult. Goodness knows why. He's of the opinion that he will always sort it out. It'll get done eventually. I'll sort it out eventually. I'll get to it eventually. What are you worried about? You know I'll get it done. Some marriage examples, just a few of where this could possibly show up in your marriage, right? He starts to offer date nights after she's already told him that she wants to leave, agrees to marriage counseling, or suggests marriage counseling after divorce is mentioned, apologizes after she's emotionally withdrawn, looks at his finances only after the debt has become overwhelming, unmanageable, and unavoidable, starts to work towards health solutions only after the diagnosis forces it. And quite often Crisis Chris doesn't even do it then. So the hidden cost of operating in this category of important and urgent, i.e., crisis— small problems become expensive, difficult to deal with, time-sensitive, and sometimes absolutely impossible to recover from. If you failed to sort your retirement out before a certain age, that situation is probably unrecoverable now. Certain health diagnoses become unrecoverable. This is not always a case of, tell me how to fix this, Cody Butler. Sometimes it becomes unfixable. That's why we have to operate in a different quadrant of the matrix. We can't let it get to this point. We can't operate as this man, because this man, Crisis Chris, is going to experience pain. 100%, this man is going to experience pain. Sometimes the pain can be resolved, sometimes it cannot. So the wife's experience of Crisis Chris is nothing changes unless I push him, nothing changes unless I fight for change, nothing changes unless I create a crisis, which is exactly what she's done, right? She's created a great crisis here of divorce. Now change is on the table. That's why she doesn't trust your change. That's why she doesn't believe you, because she's not looking at what you're doing. She's looking at you as Crisis Chris and Crisis Chris is deeply unreliable. And it's not the behavior, it's not, it's not the man, it's Crisis Chris who's loading the dishwasher and he's only doing it because she's created a crisis. You have to shift into a different paradigm, a different category, and stop being Crisis Chris. You have to shift your identity into something else. And start acting differently. So eventually what happens is she just lives in crisis mode permanently. Now ultimately, a woman who's asking for a divorce, what, what she actually means when she says, "I want a divorce," she's saying, "I want relief from this relationship. I want relief. I want to— I want relief from this emotional pressure." And she's determined that the only way she can get that emotional relief is to leave the relationship or outside of the relationship. She has determined that she cannot get that relief in the relationship. And if you're Crisis Chris, going from crisis to crisis to crisis, and even though you understand you're going to get the job done, it still creates pressure and crisis for her, then you're giving her no choice but to leave the relationship. And even if you start to do the tasks that she's asked you to do, i.e., the housework or whatever it is, she's not looking at that. She's looking at you. I can't reiterate that enough because it's very, very important. So let's look at the key understandings to take away from Crisis Chris. Every major crisis was once a minor inconvenience. Going to the gym at some point was a minor inconvenience. Now it's a $250,000 medical bill and 6 months of rehabilitation. Your finances were a minor inconvenience 15, 20 years ago. Now it's overwhelming, catastrophic debt. Your marriage— going fixing your marriage, doing the work that was required to save your marriage was a minor inconvenience 18 months ago, 2 years ago. Now it's a crisis and it's going to require a hell of a lot of work to fix. Every major crisis that you are experiencing, have experienced, and will experience was at some point a simple— simply a minor inconvenience that you could have dealt with very easily. Important but not urgent always becomes important— or important but not urgent always becomes important and urgent. Always. Protection begins long before the danger arrives. So let's look at Busy Ben. Some of you fall into this category: urgent but not important. This is going to— this is going to describe business really, and work. A lot of people that are, that are workaholics and addicted to work, that you're going to fall into the Busy Ben category. So if you're— if it's urgent but not important, then Delegate it or delete it, right? Delegate it. Get rid of it. Get it off your table. So Busy Ben's motto is, "I've been flat out all day." His characteristics: constantly busy, constant interruptions, constant notification, constant emails, constant phone calls, constantly prioritizing other people, and endless activity, right? Always in these things. Always prioritizing these things. Emails, for example, are always urgent but not important. Anytime, anytime somebody sends you an email, it's because they want you to get on their agenda. It's urgent for them. It's urgent for them that you get on their agenda. Very rarely does an email come in that says, Cody, I'm here to get on your agenda. Cody, I'm sending you this email to do what you want me to do. Almost every email, every phone call, every notification or interruption is somebody else trying to get me on their agenda. Or in other words, their urgency— they want me to make their urgency, or they want you to make their urgency a priority. But here's, here's the truth: a failure to plan on your behalf does not constitute an emergency on mine. Busy Ben, it does. Your emergency becomes my emergency. And if you're addicted to these things, then you're constantly in these things— emails, notifications, etc. So Busy Ben, he feels productive but sees little progress. So let me give you an example of Busy Ben that might be in this particular program, right? The guy that joins the program goes through all of the content, on 2x or 2.5x speed in a day and then books a call with me and calls and goes, I've been through all the content, Cody, I've been through all the content, I've done everything. And it's like, well, yeah, you feel productive, you feel like you've done something, but what have you actually— what progress have you actually produced? All you've done is produce a feeling of productivity and a feeling of progress. It felt urgent for you that they felt that there was urgency in you. You felt urgent to do that, you felt urgency to do it, but it's actually produced no progress at all. So marriage examples of Busy Ben is he's always available for work, he's always available for his phone, he's always available for friends, social media, email. He prioritizes all of these things, or essentially he prioritizes everybody else over his wife and family. Or to put it another way, he clearly operates in the category of this feels urgent to him, but it just isn't important. Just isn't important at all. Can be delegated. So Busy Ben is never available for his wife, or very rarely. Never available for his marriage. Never really available for his health. Never really planning or growing. He's just constantly dealing with other people's urgent agendas. So the wife's experience of this man is motion without leadership, activity without direction. And again, as I've said, many men in this program fall into this category. You're constantly doing stuff, but it's not going anywhere. Constant activity, but no direction of the activity. I did this, this, this, and this, Cody. Why? Why did you do that? What were you trying to achieve? What was your objective? Is that important? And is that important but not urgent? What is it? Where are we at here? This is, this is particularly insidious because Busy Ben feels productive and he feels like he's moving forward when actually he's just spinning his wheels or going backwards. So key understanding here is being busy isn't productive. Transformation doesn't come about from exposure to new information. It comes about from radically seeking out and aggressively implementing new behavior. Transformation comes about from a new experience of you. Many men will take stuff and go, 'Heart of the servant, Cody. I did this, this, this, this, this, and this.' Okay, well, that's great, but what, what experience did she have of you in that? Or is she just experiencing Crisis Chris responding to everything? Is she looking at a man that's going, 'Yeah, well, yeah, he's doing it, but only because it's a crisis now. Only because I've forced his hand and made him do it. I don't want to be with a man that's only going to do these things because I forced it upon him. So being occupied, being busy isn't the same as moving your life forward. Don't make that mistake. So the next category here is Passive Paul— not urgent, not important. That's got to go, right? So some of you fall into this category, not so much, but some of you do. So 'Not important, not urgent, I'll do it later.' You know, this is the man— video games, watching movies, smoking weed, drinking, going out with his friends. All of these things, they're neither important nor urgent, and it's keeping you in this category of just not focused at all. A man that's in 'important but not urgent,' this is— you're effectively, if you fall into this category, you are a dependent for your wife. Children, are this. This is what children do. Not urgent, not important. My children want to watch Star Wars movie. That's what they're focused on right now. It's not important, it's not urgent. They get to do that as children. As adults, we need to be here— important but not urgent. This is where we need to be living. So this is, uh, Passive Paul, right? His motto is, I'll do it later, later, later. Stop your whinging, stop your whining, stop your moaning. My wife nags all the time. I'll get it done later, later, later. His characteristics are he escapes discomfort. He focuses on entertainment, scrolling, television, gaming, procrastination, comfort, all of these things. The hidden cost here is that every ignored task that Passive Paul ignores compounds, right? The monster does become a dragon at some point. Here's the key philosophy. If you're making notes, write this down: kill the monster while it's a baby. This is what happens in the important but not urgent. That monster is easy to deal with while it's a baby, easy to deal with. Don't let it become a monster, a full-grown monster, before deciding to do battle with it. It's never going to be easier than it is today to stop drinking. It's never going to be easier than it is today to start to work on your marriage. It's— you're never going to be younger than you are today. No matter what situation that you're facing, whether it's marriage or otherwise, it will never be easier to deal with than it is today. Every day you delay moves it closer into the crisis category. So some, some examples here within the marriage: small conversations you just never had, you knew you should have done it, you didn't. Little actions you could have taken and you just didn't. You just ignored it. Minor repairs that would have been easy at the time, you just didn't do it. You could have apologized. You could have held her hand. You could have taken her to the whatever. You could have taken her out to dinner. You could have listened to her. Minor little things that just did not get done. Financial planning delayed, health neglected, emotional distance just accepted. This is Passive Paul. And every day you accept that passivity, that monster grows, and that monster grows, and that monster grows until one day you— that monster is in your living room and you have to deal with it. And now it's a full-grown, fire-breathing dragon, and you got problems. Don't let it get to that point. So what's your— what's your wife's experience of passive Poor. Well, she's, she's now emotionally responsible for tomorrow. She's carrying some tomorrow while you are actively escaping today. Passive Poor lives a life of escapism. He just is not— he just does not live in reality at all. And you can ignore reality all you want, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality. If you are Passive Poor, you got to change that immediately. So what's our key understanding here? If you're passive Paul, every dragon began as a baby. You've been better off smashing the egg than letting it grow into a full-grown, fire-breathing beast that, quite frankly, you've got no hope against. The problems destroying your marriage today were easy to solve months ago. And I know a lot of you are going to go, well, that's great, Cody Butler, but here I am right now. What do I do now? The problems— this cycle repeats again. 6 months from now is going to arrive, and the problems that you can solve today will be bigger 6 months from now. And it goes on and on and on. So we've got to start today And wherever we're at, we've got to move from whatever quadrant we're in right now into this is important but not urgent. So now we get to the only category that works. This is the category in what you're— in where your marriage is saved. And when we talk about identity and creating an identity, this is the identity to create. Intentionally, and it's important but it's not urgent, right here. And what is the key characteristics of important but not urgent? Intentionally, we schedule it. We schedule it in. We schedule the dental checkup. We schedule the health checkup. We schedule the maintenance on the car. We schedule, schedule, schedule. Yes, boring, not very exciting. No, I understand that, but this is how crises are avoided. Calvin, can I get you to turn your mic off please? You're coming through. So Intentional Ian's motto is do it while it's easy. Do it now while it's easy. If you can't put the plate and the glass and the knife and the fork into the dishwasher now while it's easy, what makes you think you're going to fill the whole thing up when it's hard 2 days from now? If, if you can't do it when it's easy, why would anybody believe that you're going to do it when it's hard? And this is the problem that you have to overcome with your wife now. This is the— this is what you're up against. She's looking at you, your wife is looking at you going, you didn't do it when it was easy, so why do you think I'm going to believe that you're going to do it now it's hard? I know you don't, I know a lot of you don't want to hear that. You want the magic pill, but your only solution moving forward is you've got to start to become Intentional Ian. You've got to start moving out of that category and you've got to make it indisputable that that's who you now are. And you don't do that by script or telling her. You do it by starting to act that way. So the characteristics of Intentional Ian, right? He's calm, he's deliberate, he's disciplined, he's consistent, he's prepared. He's regulated. He anticipates problems and therefore rarely has to experience them. His core philosophy is, "Do it while it's easy." It's never gonna be easier than it is right now. It's never gonna be easy to start— never gonna be easier to start a workout routine and go to the gym than it is today. It's never gonna be easy to start a retirement fund. Never gonna be easier than today. It's never gonna be easier to start to repair your marriage than it is today. It's never going to be easier. It's never going to be easier to stop drinking than today. It's never going to be easier to get off porn than today. Today is the easiest it is ever going to be for you. And if you can't do it while it's easy, then why would she believe that you're going to do it later when it's much harder? When you're older, when you're more overweight, when you've got health problems. Why is anyone going to believe that? They're simply not. So the next philosophy, and these are killer philosophies, man, like this will, these are the philosophies that absolutely transformed my life in phenomenal ways that I can't even begin to explain. Fight the monster while it's a baby. Do not let it grow into a full-grown beast. That's called stupidity. This one's massive, right? This will, this, this alone will absolutely transform your life. If it's a 5-minute job and you've got 5 minutes, do it now. 5-minute jobs turn into 10-minute jobs, and 5-minute jobs start to stack up. If you have a 5-minute— if you are faced with a 5-minute job and you've got 5 minutes, do it now, then it's done. That's fighting the monster when it's a baby. Throughout the course of the day, there may be 10, 15, 25-minute jobs that you come across that you had the 5 minutes but you didn't do it. You decided to sit there on your phone and scroll, right? Or you decided to do something else. The amount— this is the greatest productivity hack in my opinion of all times, of all time. So many of the problems that you face right now are because you had a 5-minute job in front of you, you had 5 minutes to do it, and you chose not to. How hard is this? How hard is it to do a 5-minute job? And let's, let's Extrapolate that out. If it's a 1-hour job and you've got 1 hour free, do it. If you need to cut the grass and you've got an hour free, it's Saturday afternoon and you sat on the couch, bloody do it. If it's a 1-day job and you've got a day, do it. Do not procrastinate. This is how you overcome procrastination, procrastination, with this one sentence: if it's a 5-minute job and I have 5 minutes, do it now. Next philosophy: solve today's inconveniences before it becomes tomorrow's emergencies. Let me give you an example of how this almost cost me vast amount of money. Hailstorm in the town I live in recently. I've got, I've got a number of rental properties in this town. Vast— a lot of damage done. Severe storm, a lot of damage done to my rental properties. It was last November. 8 months go by without an insurance claim because I just put it off, because I can't be bothered to fill out the insurance documentation, and I'm just like, it's not that important. Until finally, tenants are complaining about leaking roofs, and I've either got to pay for the repairs or get an insurance claim. Make the insurance claim on the properties— it's about $250,000 worth of work that needs doing— and the claim is denied. The question being, why did you wait 8 months to make this claim? And they denied the claim. $250,000 worth of work now that I'm stuck with because it was inconvenient at the time. 8 months ago when that storm happened, it was important but not urgent that I made those insurance claims on those properties. It was important but not urgent. I didn't do it. So guess what? Every important but not urgent problem eventually becomes important and urgent. Now I've got a $250,000 expense on my hand because I just didn't, I just didn't act there. It became a crisis. Now fortunately, I was able to work, work it out with the insurance company in this instance and get the claim paid, but this is a great example, right? Solve today's inconveniences before it becomes tomorrow's emergencies. Here's the philosophy that I teach my children: do what you have to do before you do what you want to do. When my children wake up in the morning, I tell them they can have— they can— they can have screens before breakfast as long as they're fully dressed. Because you have to get dressed. You want to watch screens, you have to get dressed. And they're like, why, Dad? Why? Why do we have to get dressed? We're not even going out till whatever time. Because you don't know what's gonna happen. The house could catch fire and we have to leave. Somebody could call and we gotta go in an emergency. You have to be ready. If you're awake, you have to be ready to leave this house. Do what you have to do before you do what you want to do, and adopt the attitude of pay now, play later. Many of you have adopted the attitude of play now, pay later, and here you are paying and you're asking, how can I avoid the bill? You can't. You can't. So the hidden benefit here to being intentionally in and operating in important but not urgent is this man appears to have more time, more peace, more margin for error, less stress. He rarely allows crises to develop because he's dealt with the monster while it's a baby. He's had the foresight. So our key philosophers here, the key shift in identity is the easiest time to solve a problem is when the problem is small. Every 5-minute job will eventually become a 5-day crisis if you don't deal with it. Like, whether you deal with this or not is not optional. The question is, what is the cost? Is it a— do you take 5 minutes and do it now, or do you allow it to become a 5-day or a 5-week or a 5-month crisis. Many of you watching this have lost your marriage over 5-minute jobs. Wife just got sick of it. The kindest men aren't lucky. The most successful men aren't lucky. They're proactive. No luck involved. I had a situation recently where a real estate agent said, you're always in the right place at the right time, Cody Butler. I'm like, well, that's not an accident. Accident. I'm proactive. I know what I want and I'm proactive. I go to the bank, I get all my financing sorted out, I know what my borrowing capacity is, I get a mortgage agreed in principle, and then when a property becomes available, I'm ready to go instantaneously and I beat the competition. I don't wait until it becomes available and then deal with all that stuff. I'm proactive. So the identity shift here is the reactive man, Crisis Chris, asks the question, what's on fire today? What fire do I need to put out? The intentional man, which you're going to become, is what will I become? What will become a fire if I ignore it today? Where are sparks that are going to catch? This is where you need to live. This is the question you need to ask, the identity shift that needs to take place. So the goal here isn't to become better at managing crisis. The goal, man, is to become the kind of man who prevents those crises in the first place. Many of you, your question is, how do I deal with this crisis? How do I deal with this crisis? This crisis happened, that crisis happened. You're up, you're behind the 8-ball if that's the case. If you're asking those questions, the question is, how do I become the kind of man who prevents these crises from happening in the first place? And I've shared that with you. So this applies to 2 types of men, right? So men already in marriage crisis, if that's you, then you need to start rebuilding your operating system today immediately. There's no point crying about spilt milk. This— well, this has already happened, Cody Butler. I've let that monster grow into a full-grown beast. Well, we're gonna have to do bit— you're gonna have to do battle with the full-grown beast now. That's all there is to it, unfortunately. There's no way around that. The key is not how do I avoid those battles. You got to fight those. There's no— you got to fight those battles. That's— you did that. That's your responsibility now. But you can start to rebuild your operating system and to move into the intentional Ian category. I'm going to act on things when they're important but not yet urgent. This is where trust is rebuilt. This is where your wife starts to look at you and go, okay, I can, I can, I'm up for this. So there's also the man that's not yet in crisis. A few of you will be in the situation where it's not that bad. I'm here because I am preventing the crisis from happening. Or you've prevented the crisis, the divorce was introduced, you've managed to avert that, and now you're on somewhat solid ground. If that's you, if you're not actually thick in the crisis right now, then it's still— now is the time to really build this operating system, to identify where you are, which persona are you, Don't wait until your wife says she's done. Don't wait till the crisis arrives to do something about this, because when it shows up, it's going to be— it's going to be harder to deal with by an order of magnitude. And unfortunately, there's just no silver bullet that gets you out of the hole. You have to deal with it at that point. So the key understanding here— and again, I'm repeating myself for a reason, because you This has to get into your head. Important but urgent always becomes important and urgent. Always, always, always. Important but not urgent, easy to deal with, 5-minute job, always turns into a crisis if you don't deal with it. So the bottom line here is the task will get done The only question is whether it gets done easy or whether it becomes expensive for you to do it, right? We have to start to understand what is inevitable and what is not. I was talking to my son the other day. He was— he was— my wife had an activity for him and he was creating some fuss about it. And I said to him, EJ, The variable here is not— Are you going to do this task? You are going to do this task, and you know that. You know that. The variable is, what happens after this task? Are you gonna do this task and then have a problem with me, or are you gonna do this task and then have a nice evening? The variable is whether you have a problem or whether you have a nice evening afterwards, not whether you're going to do the task. You know it's and I know you're going to do this task. The same is true here. The task is going to get done. You know that. The question is, is it going to be, is it going to be free or is it going to be expensive? Here's the kicker, right? Your wife doesn't trust the man who's good at solving crises, which is where a lot of the confusion is coming from for a lot of you. You, you think that you're good at solving crises, which makes you an excellent prophet, provider, prophet, uh, protector, provider, prophet, and priest. It doesn't. She trusts the man whose foresight means that she rarely has to experience a crisis. Just because you're good at fighting doesn't mean that she's happy for you to get into a fight every time you're out in public. That doesn't give her confidence. She wants the man who's able to avoid the fight in the first place. So that's it. This is how you rebuild trust, man. You move into that category, you recognize where you are, and you move into the category of urgent but not important. I'm going to stop it here, uh, or sorry, urgent— not urgent but important. I'm going to stop this here and we'll head over to some Q&A.