She’s Pulling Away - And You’re Missing Why
Cody Butler argues that happiness is life's purpose and traces relationship problems to its absence. He outlines a seven-step program starting with building internal identity and boosting energy through movement and diet, then shifting thoughts and rewriting narratives about yourself and your partner. Leadership and personal growth, not manipulation, is what draws people back.
Chapters
Hey everybody, how's it going? How are you doing today? Excited to be here for day number 4 of our retreat, Reboot Your Marriage. And today we're going to be talking about anxiety, depression, stress, and how to overcome them. And that's really, really important, right? Because this is the ultimate goal in life. There's only really one purpose in life. There really is only one outcome that means anything, and that is happiness. Everything we do leads back to happiness. I like to think of it like peeling the layers of the onion. Anything you do, we can start to peel the layers and say, "Well, why do you want to do that?" "I want a new car." "Why do you want to do that?" "Because it makes me feel good." "Why do you want to feel good?" "Because it makes me happy." "Why are you here? Why do you want to have a great relationship?" "Because it makes me happy." Everything we do ultimately leads back to happiness. It's our goal in life, and that is it. If we get to the point to where we're happy, there's nothing else to achieve. We've achieved it. It's why people aspire and reach the top of the mountain in their field, and then they shoot themselves because they realize that they thought that their success and their happiness and everything was going to come in the fulfillment of their dream, and it's not true. And then when they get to the top of the mountain, there's just nowhere else for them to go. And then when they realize they're not happy, well, they've got nowhere to go, right? So we're all looking to be happy. Why are we— why do we want to improve our relationships? Why do we want to improve our marriage or save our marriage? Well, the answer to that question is because we think it will make us happy. So let me ask you the question. If you could just be happy, it doesn't matter what's going on in your relationship. It doesn't matter what's going on in your life, in your finances, in your business, all of that stuff. Would any of that matter, right? We want to fix all of that stuff because it makes us happy. And that's really, really fundamental and important to understand. What is the goal? What are we moving towards? What are we trying to achieve? It's not a great relationship. We want a great relationship because we think that's going to make us happy. And the reason that we're depressed or we're sad or anxious is because the thing that we think is going to make us happy is falling apart right now, and then what does that mean? Well, that means that we're not gonna have our happiness. So I want to share with you some steps to happiness to where it doesn't matter what's going on in your relationship, it doesn't matter what's going on in your life, you can have that happiness right now. I'm gonna give you 7 steps today. I'm gonna give you 7 steps to get there. So just before we start on this, because we're kinda crossing over into what I guess could technically be considered some medical fields right now, stuff like that, and I don't wanna get myself in trouble and act like I've got qualifications and stuff that I don't. So I'm not, I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving medical advice here, right? I'm not telling you what to do medically. I'm sharing with you my experience. I'm sharing with you what I've experienced in life. And I'm sharing with you the solutions to depression and anxiety and stress that really worked well for me and that have really worked well for a lot of people. And I've also written the book here, uh, Cut the BS: A No-Nonsense Guide to Happiness, which is number one— was number one bestseller on Amazon when it was released, which is a comment— which is that all of my experiences put together, because at one point I was really a very, very unhappy person. I was not able to get out of bed. When I did get out of bed, I had so much anxiety I'd throw up. My productivity was very, very low. It was very difficult for me to function normally, and I had to get out of that. I couldn't live like that anymore, and I found the path out, and I found the path out very, very quickly. And ironically, the cause of my depression, the cause of my anxiety and stress was failed relationships, and the result of solving that depression and anxiety was getting into my dream relationship, which 15-some years later almost, I'm still in that relationship right now. So this really is fundamental to your relationship. It's really really important. So the first thing we want to do, a great place to start here is if you're suffering from stress right now, if you're suffering from anxiety and depression or just, just unhappiness, I'm not talking about you have to be clinically depressed or you can't get out of bed or you're throwing up every day, you got so much anxiety. If you're in a marriage or a relationship that isn't doing well, you're going to be sad, you're going to be down, you're going to be unhappy. And that's what I'm talking about here. It's a lack of happiness. It's a lack of that fulfillment. Right? It's not necessarily just clinical depression, can't get out of bed stuff. It's just a lack of general happiness. So a great place to start when solving the happiness problem is to look at a subset of the population, a cohort where zero depression exists, zero anxiety exists. And what is that? Well, the answer to that question is it's in very young children, right? I have a 2-year-old. My 2-year-old doesn't experience depression. Ever. He doesn't experience depression. I have two other children. I have a 6-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a 2-year-old. My other son just turned 5 the other day, and they don't really experience depression either. The older they get— and the 6-year-old is starting to experience some unhappiness from time to time, the 5-year-old a little tiny bit, but the 2-year-old, zero anxiety, zero stress, zero depression. And the same was true for my other two children. And I think that can We can understand that that's true across the board, right? 2-year-olds don't suffer from depression. Why is that? Let's look at that, because success leaves clues. What do 2-year-olds do that we stop as we get older? And as I'm seeing in my other children, they start to stop as well. Well, the answer to that question is a 2-year-old is high energy, right? A 2-year-old is high energy. They're He runs everywhere, he jumps everywhere, he's bouncing up and down, he's running high energy. So the first conclusion is that depression cannot live in an environment of high energy. The higher the energy, the less the depression, right? Let's look at the ultimate state of depression. Let's, let's, let's look at this logically so we can see that. What is the ultimate state of no energy? What is the ultimate state of no movement? Well, the answer to that question is death. You're dead if you are not moving at all. If your heart's not moving, if you're— if the blood vessels are not getting blood, all that stuff. If there's no movement in your body, you're dead. So at the low end of the spectrum of no energy, we've got death. And at the other end of the spectrum of energy, the higher it goes, the lower the levels of depression and anxiety, right? So I always say the easiest way is If you're suffering from anxiety, the quickest way to change the anxiety that you're experiencing and the quickest way to change the stress that you're experiencing is through movement. Start moving your body. Whenever I'm starting to feel that anxiety, whenever I'm starting to feel that stress come into my body, and I still get it. Now, it's not that I don't get stress and anxiety and depression anymore. It's like I just don't live there. I just don't stay there anymore. I'll get down and it'll be for a morning or an afternoon or a day. It's not that I don't get it or experience it, I just don't stay there. And I've got strategies to get myself out of that. And one of those strategies, the first strategy is movement. I've got to start moving my body. And it doesn't have to be going for 2 hours at the gym or something like that. A brisk walk. If I'm starting to feel depressed, I will walk at a brisk pace until it goes away. Because here's the thing, here's the key thing, right? You want to do battle with the monster while the monster's still a baby. You don't want to let it grow. Into a full-grown beast. When I, when I learned how to deal with downness, sadness, depression, all of that kind of stuff, I'd allowed it to grow into a fully grown monster before deciding to do battle with it. And he was a formidable foe. He was a formidable enemy. It was a fully grown beast, and it took me a long time to do battle with that monster and overcome it. Whereas now, whenever I see the warning signs of anxiety or depression or stress, I do battle with it right then and there, and the key to it for me at this point is energy, is to get energy into my body, is start moving, to start moving my body, and that's a brisk walk. Now, again, let's demonstrate this so you can really understand this. How many depressed people do you see on a tennis court? How many depressed people do you see in the gym? How many depressed people do you see on the treadmill running? The answer is zero. The answer is zero because exercise creates the energy and the energy that the depression simply cannot live in a state of energy. It just simply can't. So the second thing that a 2-year-old, that my 2-year-old has, which I can see as my children progress through their ages that it starts to disappear a little bit and then the more negative emotions start to come in as this disappears. Is presence. My 2-year-old is always present. My 2-year-old is always present. He's not thinking about the future and he's not thinking about the past, right? He doesn't— the moment that he's in is the moment that he's in, and he's absolutely loving it. He's giving it all. He's giving it his all. He's giving it everything, right? He's jumping up and down. He's jumping off couches. He's jumping on beds. And all he is doing is thinking about the present. He's not thinking about the fact that he's got to go to bed in an hour and he's going to lose his mind over that. He's not thinking about he got into trouble earlier on and he got his TV taken, or time taken away from him, or something like that. He's not thinking about any of that stuff, right? He's not thinking about what's gone wrong in the past, and he's not thinking about what bad is going to happen in the future. He's present. He's present all the time with energy. Now, as I see my children move forward, that presence starts to move away from them. They start to move out of that presence, And that's when the negative moods start to move in to what's going on. My 6-year-old will start thinking about— he was looking at remote control cars this morning, he was kind of sad, he's like, "It's going to take me forever, Dad, to save up enough money to get the car that I'm going to want." And he was getting a little bit sad about it, but that sadness was coming from leaving the presence of the moment and starting to move into the future and starting to live in the future, right? And the final thing that I see in the cohort of people that there's no depression, which is 2-year-olds, is that they don't hold grudges. They have no memory of wrongdoing. They have no memory of the past of wrongdoings. My 2-year-old, he'll get disciplined every single day, but 10 minutes later, he loves me just as much as he did. He wants to play with me. He wants to cuddle me and kiss me and he wants to jump around. I'll put him to bed in the afternoon for his nap and he will hate that and he'll scream and he'll be really mad at the time, but when he wakes up he's a happy little thing that wants to hang out and play. He's not holding— excuse me, I've got an itchy nose— he's not holding memories of the past against me. He's not holding what he considers to be wrongdoing against me. He's letting it go. Or in other words, he's not consciously doing that. As adults, the language that we can use He's offering forgiveness and he's moving on. He has no memory of wrongdoing. And when you put these 3 things together, not a single 2-year-old in the population suffers from depression. Not a single one. It's as we get older that these things start to take over. So that, to recap, those 3 things are: you've got to get some energy into your body. You've got to start moving. You've got to start moving your body. The closer The less energy you have, the less movement you have, the closer you are to death. Ultimate state of non-movement is death, and we don't want to do that. The second thing is got to be present. We've got to learn to be present in the moment and really focus on what we have today, what we have right now. And I guess we can throw into that gratitude as well, being grateful for where we are, being grateful for what we have. We tend to, uh, we look at what we would like to have, and then we measure from where we are to what we would like to have, and we can become very ungrateful because there's always going to be a deficit, right? When we're looking forward and saying, this is what I want, but this is where I am, then there can really be a deficit. But if we go the other way, if we, if we start measuring from where we were to where we are now, then there's always going to be an abundance. We've got to look at how far we've come, not how far we've got to go. And we've got to create those wins, right? If you're always measuring from where you are now to where you want to be in the future and you're looking at that deficit, there's always going to be a deficit and that's always going to be a loss. If you start from where you were and you look at where you are now, there's going to be a win, right? I used to teach guitar. I'm a musician. Teaching guitar has been a big part of my life for a long time. And when I'd work with a new student, they would always get frustrated that you take somebody who couldn't play anything at all and then 4 or 5 weeks later they're playing some songs but they're like, "I want to play like, I want to play this and I want to play that." And it's like, that's virtuoso musicianship. It's like, you got to look at the fact that you couldn't play anything 2 or 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, and now you're playing songs. That's a great thing. That's a big win. You've come a long way. You've shown great improvement. And if you continue this level of improvement, you're going to be awesome. But if they start looking at where they want to be and what they want to do and go, "Yeah, but I want to play this song." And, "Yeah, I'm just so useless because I can't get this right." 'cause I can't do that.' It's like, you're just going to get discouraged and you're going to quit. It's all that's going to happen. You're just going to get discouraged and you're going to quit. So we've got to find those wins. We've got to become grateful for where we are right now. We've got to become grateful for what we have right now and find ways to be grateful for our situation. If you can do that, you are going to win the game of happiness. You are going to win the game of life. And I know it's difficult sometimes, but even in the most difficult and trying of circumstances, there is good, there is growth, there is positivity there are things that we can find that are going to— we can be grateful for and we can focus on. Because where our focus goes, energy flows. Whatever we focus on is going to ultimately be the result of the life that we experience. And changing your focus is key. Being able to control what you focus on really is the key to your happiness. It's really the key to your marriage. It's really the key to your life. Because wherever your focus is going, that area of your life is going to expand. Let me pull up my, my slide here again quickly. This would be a good time to go over this again. Let me see if I can find this very quickly here. What have I done with it? I think maybe— is this it right here? Yep, here we go. Our feedback loop here. So we looked at this the other day, so have a look at this again here. So what we're seeing here is our thoughts, which we can look at as our focus, right? This is, this This is our focus, this is what we're looking at, and those thoughts become feelings. If you're having positive thoughts, right, you're going to have positive feelings. If you're having negative thoughts, you're going to have negative feelings, which then obviously turn into our actions, which produces a result, and then that brings us back into a feedback loop. Now, a good way to illustrate this is— I was talking, I was trying to explain this to my 6-year-old the other day. I'm really teaching him the power of thoughts and how thoughts shape your life. And if you have control of your thoughts and you have the ability to master thoughts and control what you think, then you can shape your destiny. And every night he's like, "Talk to me about thoughts, Dad. Talk to me about thoughts." So a couple of nights ago I asked him, I said, "The thoughts that you have create the things that you have." And he's like, "How does that work, Dad?" I said, "Well, let me ask you a question." I said, "The last time something bad happened to you, what was that?" And he goes, "I was mean to my brother." I said, "What happened?" He goes, "I got put to bed early." I'm like, "Yes, exactly right." And I'm like, "What were you thinking before you got into trouble?" He goes, "I was thinking my brother was mean to me and I just need to revenge him." That's it. Great language for a 6-year-old, right? "I need to revenge my brother." I said, "Okay, is that a good thought or a bad thought?" And he goes, "It's a bad thought, Dad." And then I said, "Okay, so did that produce a good result or a bad result? Was the result of that thought good or bad?" He goes, "Well, I got sent to bed early, which was bad." I'm like, "Okay, so a bad thought produced a bad result." He's like, "Yeah, that's right." I said, "Okay, well, when did something good happen?" He goes, "I was nice to my brother the other day. His brother got into trouble and EJ stood up for him and said, 'Give him another chance. He didn't know what he was doing. He didn't mean it. Give him another chance.'" And I said, "Yeah, so what was that, a good result or a bad result?" And he goes, I said, "What was the result of that, was it good or bad?" He goes, "It was good, I got a movie night out of it." I said, "Yeah, that's exactly right, you got a good result out of it. And was your thought that you had a good thought or a bad thought? When you thought, 'I should give my brother another chance,' or, 'Please give my brother another chance,' was that a good thought or a bad thought?" And he goes, "It was a good thought." I'm like, "Yes, exactly. So when you had a good thought, good things happen to you." When you had a bad thought, bad things happen to you. And he really got that. And that's the key to teaching, right? It's like if a 6-year-old can understand it, we can all understand it. And that's a very simplistic term, but what kind of— a very simplistic way of putting this, but what kind of thoughts are we having right now? What kind of thoughts are we having on a daily basis? Are we having good thoughts? Are we having bad thoughts? Because a thought is a seed. and that seed is going to grow regardless. If it's a good thought, it's going to grow into something good. If it's a bad thought, it's going to grow into something bad. And when you think negatively about your partner, when you think negatively about your situation, that can only grow into something negative. You can't think negatively about somebody or something and expect something good to come out of that. Good never comes out of bad, and bad never comes out of good. A good thought is a good seed and that will produce good every time. And a bad thought is a bad seed and it will produce bad every single time. And we've really got to get a grip of our thoughts. Those are the things that's really going to control our destiny, right? It's going to control the outcome of our lives. And if we're experiencing depression right now, it's because our thoughts are focused on things that are causing us anguish. Those thoughts that we're having are focused on things that we're telling ourselves a story around those thoughts that I'll never be happy again, or if this person doesn't come back, I'll never experience happiness. You know, something like that, right? Our thoughts are creating a story and we're believing those stories. So another reason to really get a grip of your thoughts is because, and to get a grip of the depression and the sadness and that, is because you have to become an attractive person. If you want to succeed in your marriage, if you want to succeed in your relationship, whether it's to grow and improve what you've got now, or whether it's to win somebody back, you have to become an attractive person. You can't make them come back to you. You can't put a chain around them, chain them to you. You can't cast a spell on them and make them come back. They have to come, they have to be attracted back to you. You have to attract them back, and the way you attract somebody is by becoming an attractive person, and you have to understand what attractive behavior is, right? Somebody that is in a state of depression, somebody that's in a state of anxiety all the time is not somebody that's going to attract anything to them that's positive, and it's not somebody that's going to attract something to them that's good in a healthy way. Now, you might be attracting attention, it might be attracting compassion and emotions that are good towards you, but it isn't attracting people in the way that you want to be attracted. It's not attracting people in a way that makes them want to be around you because you're advancing. If you want to be successful your marriage, if you want to be successful in your life, if you want to be successful with anything, any area of your life, be advancing in every area of your life. Show to the world that you are a man or a woman who is advancing. I'm advancing in my personal development. I'm advancing in my health. I'm advancing in my physique and my body. I'm advancing in the way that I think. I'm advancing in my marriage. I'm advancing in my business. I'm advancing financially. I'm advancing spiritually. Every aspect of my life I am showing advancement, and that is what is attractive. Everybody wants to be around the advancing man or the advancing woman. Nobody wants to be involved in the retreat, right? How do officers in the army get soldiers to follow them into battle? How do they get somebody to advance into combat? How do they do that? Well, the answer is You've got to be willing to take the first arrow. You've got to be willing to take the first bullet. You've got to be willing to go out front and you've got to lead. If you want to lead, here's how you do it. You lead. If you want people to be attracted to you, if you want people to follow you, you've got to become a leader and the leader has to be advancing. There has to be advancement there. The general up on the hill or the officer up on the hill that says, "Men, advance into battle. I'm going to be up on this hill because if I get killed, you're all screwed. Nobody's going to be able to see me." save this. Nobody's going to be able to, uh, guide this battle, and you're all screwed. So I'm up on the hill with my binoculars and my walkie-talkie guiding this battle. That is not somebody that's ever going to be followed. That is somebody that's in retreat. That is somebody that's showing no integrity, no leadership, and there is nothing attractive about that person that is going to encourage somebody to put themselves in mortal danger, right? The soldiers are not going to follow that leader. If you want to be followed, And if you're in a situation right now where you need to get your spouse back, if you're in a situation where you need your marriage to improve, if you're in a situation where you need your spouse to change, you have to lead them. You can't tell them that they need to change and expect them to advance into arrows. You can't be up on a hill saying, "Partner, there's something wrong with you. You need to advance so you can improve, but I'm up here because I'm fine and I'm going to guide this whole thing." You have to take the first arrow. You have to be willing to take the first bullet. You have to lead by example. You have to be willing to do what's uncomfortable and to take the steps that other people are not willing to do. I remember a long time ago, musically, I was, I was never technically gifted as a musician. I've got my talents and I've got areas which I am very gifted at musically, but like the technical ability is not there. And there are a lot of people that were a lot more technically gifted than me. And they were too shy, they wouldn't get out and play in public. And every night I tried, I set a goal of playing live 100 times in a year, whether it's just at the local bar or anywhere I could play, in church, at the local bar, anywhere. I was like, I'm going to take every chance I can get and I'm going to play regardless of how bad this is, regardless of how embarrassing this is to me. And the first few times I did it, I was so stressed out, I literally threw up. It was like Eminem in 8 Mile or whatever, it's like I was getting ready to go on at an open mic and I would literally be in the toilet throwing up. I was so scared. I had so much anxiety about what I was about to do and I had such little ability to do it. I was terrified. I could get lost in a song and that could be the end of it, right? That could be the end of it. I could get lost and that was it. I was done. But I did it. I said, I'm going to lead. I'm going to do this. I'm going to first lead myself and then I'm going to lead others. And the number of people that came up to me that was so much more talented than me, that had so much more ability than me, that it freed them up to start doing. And the number of people that came up to me that said, you know, thank you, Cody, for giving me permission to fail. Thank you for giving me permission to get up there and do what you do. It's like when you get up there and we see what you're doing up there and how difficult it is for you, it gives us permission to do it as well. It gives us confidence, and as a result, I was able to get involved with a community of talent, very, very, very talented musicians, and I was able to swing, I was able to punch well above my weight, and I was able to get into a community that really I would not have been able to get into because I was leading. I took the first arrow, I took the first bullet, and by doing that, other people followed me And it was the leadership that was attractive to them. I became an attractive person and I attracted the success to me. And I ended up working with some world-class musicians, absolutely world-class musicians. I ended up working with some of the best musicians in the world. I ended up working with some of the most famous musicians in the world. And for somebody, I went to music college and I had probably the least, I was in the bottom 5% of technical ability, but I ended up in the the top 1% of successful graduates, and it was because I understood that if I want to be success, I have to be— I have to attract that success to me. And the way I attract that success is by becoming an attractive person. And the way I become an attractive person is I step out and I'm willing to take the first arrow, I'm willing to take the first bullet, and I'm willing to do what's not comfortable. So anybody that's saying, my partner needs to change, my wife needs to change, my husband needs to change, I'm telling you, that's not the solution. They will not you may never change. You will not be able to get them to change. The only thing you can do is start walking. You can start walking, and I don't mean start walking away from the relationship. You got to start walking to the top of the mountain, and they're going to see that you're happy. They're going to see that you're successful. They're going to see that you're improving your finances, your health, your body, everything. They're going to see that you are improving your life, and they are going to see that because you are walking, because you are advancing into bullets, because you are advancing into combat and they are staying back there. They're getting left behind and they're not going to like that. When they see that you are a person of advancement, they're not going to like that. And now I think they're either going to catch up or they're going to go, I can't deal with this and I'm going to check out. That's how you change a spouse. It's not what are the, uh, go to a spellcaster. I see these all the time. This man casts good spells. This man, it's like, yeah, that's witchcraft. If your plan on saving your marriage is by casting spells, Good luck, good luck with that. Like, that's, that's not going to work, right? So you've got to become an attractive person because that attractive person attracts success and attracts what you want. And I'm telling you, depression is not attractive. How many, how many people do we know that are depressed, that are sad all the time, that are negative all the time, that have a negative view of the world all the time, that look down on the world all the time and is, "Woe is me, everything's a problem"? How many of those people are we attracted to? How many of those people do we look at and go, yeah, I really want to be like that person, or yeah, I want to, I want to be involved with that person, I want to be around that person? None of them. None of them. You've— that is why it's so important. So let's look at— I've got 7 steps, I've got my notes, I don't want to miss them here because they're really important. So what are the 7 steps that we can do here to start really rebuilding our life? And ultimately, we're talking about leadership here, right? We're moving into another area, we're actually talking about leadership skills. You know, if you want to— you've got to take your marriage and you've got to start leading it, and that requires leadership skills. And these really are foundations of great leadership here. You've got to, like we've just said, you've got to advance and be willing to take the first bullet. So the first thing you have to do if you want to really achieve long-lasting, permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable, unshakable, rock-solid happiness, confidence, self-esteem, And the ability to be resilient in every situation regardless of what's going on around you. And I'm telling you, when you achieve that, when you achieve what I've just stated, you will be attractive to everybody. Everybody will want to be a part of your life. Everybody will want to be involved with you, and your partner will get on board because they want to be a part of it, or they will just decide that they're really small and they're smallest, so they just want to be small over here by themselves. So here it is. The first thing you've got to do is you've got to find your identity internally. And within yourself that is not challenged, cannot be challenged from the outside. So for me, this is why I'm a God-centered counselor, coach, whatever you want, whatever I want to call myself. I don't really like counselor. Coach is a better term because I coach people, I help people achieve these things. I, I could not do this without the power of God. And if I tried to say this was my own stuff, I'd just be a plagiarist, right? I'd just be stealing the content and claiming God's work as my own. The way that I got out of the depression, the way that I got out of all of this stuff, the way that I absolutely rocked my life in a good way was I found my identity in the idea that I am perfect internally. And I'm not perfect because I'm a great person. I'm perfect because I was created by a God who is perfect and cannot make a mistake. So if I'm not perfect, that means I'm a mistake, right? That means God made a mistake. And that does not jive with my belief system. God is perfect. God is beyond error. Everything God creates is perfection, and he created me. So therefore, by default, by nothing I've done, no goodness of my own, none of my own actions, I am perfect, I am complete, and I am whole by virtue of the fact that I was created by a flawless creator. God created me and he is flawless, therefore I accept my own flawlessness. There is nothing you can tell me that's going to make me feel flawed. There is nothing that you can tell me that is going to challenge my identity and make me feel worthless, because God did not make a mistake. He did not create something that was worthless. That's a lie. That's a lie that we get told that is robbing you of all kinds of good things. It's robbing you of sex. It's robbing you of passion. It's robbing you of great communication. It's robbing you of deep intimate connection emotionally, physically, spiritually. With your partner. It's robbing you of finances. It's robbing you of romantic vacations. It's robbing you of great meals in romantic restaurants. It's robbing you of amazing experiences. The lie that you are not adequate, the lie that you are not— all of that stuff is robbing you. It's like the reason you don't have the finances right now is because you don't believe you deserve them, because you have self-esteem issues. The reason you don't have the marriage right now is rooted in self esteem issues. The reason you have depression or anxiety or stress is rooted in self-esteem issues. What we have in our lives right now is a 3D printout of our thoughts. Everything you see, everything you're looking at in your life is a 3D printout of what's going on in your head, and ultimately it's about what you see is what you're willing to tolerate. What you see is the lowest standard that you're willing to tolerate in your life. Because once we cross below that low standard, we start to do stuff and we take action. Once we get to a point to where our self-esteem actually kicks in and says, "No, you're worth more than that. No, you have more value than that," then we take action and we correct that situation. Even the person who's in a really bad relationship right now, there's a line that they will draw. Like, there's certain ways that you will not let me talk to you. Because regardless of whether your value's here, here, here, your self-value, there comes a point where your self-value does kick in and you do have that amount of value, right? And you will not allow me to talk to you below that. You say, no, I have more worth than that. So the reality of the situation is whatever you're seeing in your life right now is a direct reflection of your standard. And, you know, we might have heard of the law of attraction and stuff like that. It's like we attract the things we want. We, you know, all you have to do is think about the things you want and attract, you know, you attract it and all that kind of stuff. It's rubbish. It's rubbish. You don't attract your highest values, you attract your lowest values. Your life is a manifestation. Your life is a reflection of your lowest values, not your highest values, because your highest values are hard to reach, right? They take commitment, they take sacrifice, they take hard work, and you're going to have to do a lot of stuff to reach your highest values. Your lowest values are easy. You just naturally Settle to your lowest value, and that's where you sit. So really, the key here to a great life is you've got to raise your standards. And when you start to change who I am— when I say raise your standards, you've got to change your self-esteem. You've got to raise your self-esteem. If you have a bad marriage right now, I'm just here to tell you, you might disagree with me, but I'm right. It's because you have low self-esteem. If you're not experiencing love in your marriage right now, it's because you don't love yourself. If you truly loved yourself, you would not let somebody behave in that way towards you. You wouldn't put up with it. And I know people are going to go, yeah, well, what about blah blah blah, you know, my partner does this and my partner does that, and you've just said, Cody, I can't change my partner. Yes, that is correct, but let me tell you something else as well. You chose that partner. You chose them. And I'll give you, I'll give you a good example here, right, of how this works. When I was younger, I was a, I was a restaurateur actually. I was a had a bunch of restaurants. I was a regional vice president for a big restaurant chain, and I owned a few restaurants, and I was a restaurateur. That was the business I was in. When I was, when I was coming up through the ranks, I was a general manager of a restaurant, and I had an assistant manager. This was back in the day. This was probably early '90s, mid-'90s, when you still got paid with paper checks, right? And the checks would come in the mail, and then we'd hand them out to the employees on Friday afternoon and stuff like that. And my assistant manager was in the office with me one day, It was the end of the year, my yearly bonus had come in, and I opened— or she opened the checks to hand them out to the employees, and she saw my yearly bonus, which was quite sizable, and she looked at me and she goes, "I don't really think that's very fair, Cody, that you get paid that amount of money because I'm the one that's done all the work that's got you that money. I'm the one that hired the employees. I'm the one that made the schedules. I'm the one that made sure that people showed up. I'm the one that made sure the quality of the food goes out the door. I'm the one that did all of that, yet you you are the one that has got that big paycheck, and my annual bonus is significantly smaller. I said, yes. And then with Jessica, I said, yes, Jessica, that is true, and I'm very grateful for that, but here's what that check is for. The check is for the ability to recognize the talent in you. That is what I'm getting paid for. I'm getting paid because I recognized your talent, and I hired you, and I was able to bring you in, and I was able to motivate you, and I was able to get you on board. That check is for recognizing talent and making good hiring decisions. It's not for work done on the service line. And your marriage is exactly the same, right? What are you getting right now? The payment that you're getting right now in terms of satisfaction, fulfillment, that's a reflection of your ability to make decisions to hire. That's the ability to make, you know, that, that exactly the same situation. You hire— let's look at it like that. You hired your partner. You made the decision to bring them into the relationship, and what you're experiencing right now is the paycheck for your decision to hire that person effectively, right? It's not— you're not getting paid for the work that you're doing in the relationship. You're getting paid for the high-level decision. That's where the money is. That's where the success is, and that's where we've got to start to change, right? So even when people say, "Yes, Cody, I get what you're saying, but how can I, how can I have high self-esteem when my partner's doing this and my partner's doing that?" or "How can I have high standards when my partner's doing this?" You've got to recognize that, you've got to own that, and you've got to take responsibility. Because again, leadership is about owning stuff. It's about taking responsibility when things go wrong. And if it wasn't a great decision, you've got to own that and say, I didn't make a great decision, but I'm going to live with it. I'm going to move forward and I'm going to take the corrective action. I'm going to lead, I'm going to take the steps, and I'm going to do what needs to be done. I'm going to own this. And that comes from raising your sense of self-worth and raising your sense of self-esteem. So this all changed for me when I had a very bad relationship that broke up, and she was horrible. She was horrible to me. What, you know, I don't want— I'm going to go into the details, but basically it was a terrible relationship, and I was very upset at the end of it. But I thought, well, what would I have to believe to be upset about this? What would I— how low would my self-esteem have to be to be upset? This girl cheated on me. She was abusive to me. She caused me problems at work, she caused me problems with my friends, like I've got just problems here, there, and everywhere as a result. It's like just problem after problem after problem after problem this girl has caused me from day one in the relationship, yet here I am depressed, sad, crying over this girl going, "Oh, why has she left me? I can't believe it. I'm so sad that she's left." What would— where would my self-esteem have to be to feel that way? And that's the canary in the coal mine, right? For me, for me to be upset about the way this girl treated me, I would have to have low— I'd have to have self-esteem that was in the basement, right? I'd have to have self-esteem that was so low. I'd have to have a sense of self-worth that was so low that it's off the chart low. And that really woke me up and I'm like, well, is that true? Because I kept going through these experiences again and again. I'm like, until I can get a grip of that, until I can until I can find my happiness from within, as long as I'm dependent on spouses and partners and romantic relationships to get my sense of self-worth and to feel like I'm something and to feel like I'm worthy and to feel like I'm a valuable human being, I'm like a flag on top of a flagpole. I'm just waving around, right? I'm just waving around and whatever way the wind blows is what I'm going to blow. If we've got a favorable wind, I'm going to feel good, and if the wind blows the other way, I'm going to feel really bad. And you've got to get a grip of that, right? And the solution to that is you've got to find that identity internally. It's like, you might love me right now, you might hate me right now. Some people really love what I do and say, Cody, you're amazing, I'm so glad you came into my life. And other people go, Cody, you're full of BS, and I just think you're full of it, and you're just a scam artist, and you're just trying to rip people off. It's like, neither one of those impact me. I love it when people say nice things, but it's like neither one of those impact me because I'm not getting my sense of self-worth. I'm not finding my value as a human being, and I'm finding my value that I'm a flawless creation from a flawless Creator. So that's that, right? So let's move on from that because we're running out of time, and I want to talk to you today. We've got a brand new program that I'd like to introduce you to where we can really work together over an extended period of time to really transform every aspect of your life, and I'd love to talk to you about that if that's okay in a few minutes as well. But we're going to get through these 7 things before before we talk about that. So the next thing is your physiology, right? The way that you move your body affects your psychology. Physiology affects psychology. Now again, you attract success by becoming an attractive person, right? Now somebody that's like hunched over, head down, you know, really low voice, monotone voice, not very excited, just bent over. Is that somebody who's happy or somebody who's depressed? Is that somebody who's attractive or somebody who isn't attractive? It's pretty obvious, right? We could go through a bunch of these, like, you know, depressed or happy, right? Low tone of voice, quiet voice, it's just really monotone. Happy or depressed? Depressed, right? Or what about something that's, you know, really upbeat, energized, energetic, got some movement in the voice, up and down, some some tonality to it, happy or depressed. Well, what about shoulders, you know, slumped and forward or back and erect? Which one's happy? Which one's depressed? You know, bent over, slouched, like if I'm slouched like this, you know, is this someone who's full of energy and full of life? Or is that somebody who's maybe not as happy as they could be? Your physiology absolutely changes your psychology. And the quickest way to impact your psychology is to change your physiology, which is what we talked about earlier, right? It's movement. You've got to start to incorporate movement into your routine because physiology impacts psychology. E-motion is E-energy, motion-motion. Emotion is energy in motion, and the more energy you can put in emotion, the more positive emotion that you're going to experience. It's energy in motion. Now, the second thing is our psychology. So we've got to— I'm sorry, our physiology. The next thing we got, we can look at here is our diet. Do not underestimate the impact of diet on your, your psychological state, right? It will dramatically impact the way you are. Now, there are times I'll go out, and if I eat junk food 2 or 3 nights in a row, I don't know, 2 or 3 nights in a row, I know I've got depression coming. I'm going to be sad, I'm going to be down a few days for the next few days. I know that those chemicals are impacting me. My diet is impacting me. Now, I don't want to go too much into that because we're running short on time here, but your diet is massively impacted by— or your energy and your emotion, whether you're happy or sad, depressed, is massively impacted by your diet. There are certainly diets that you can eat that are going to improve your mood, and there are diets that are really going to wreck your mood as well. And we really want to look at that. Now, alcohol is included in that, right? Alcohol will wreck you. It will wreck you. And we're going to talk about that tomorrow in alcohol and substance abuse, about how damaging alcohol is. Alcohol is depressant. It will depress you. People get depressed and they drink alcohol to, uh, come out of the depression. It's like, well, how does that work? You're using a depressant to overcome depression. Alcohol is going to be terrible, terrible for your psychology, your physiology, for every aspect of your life. Now the next thing, uh, number 4 here. So first one is change your identity internally. Find your identity. I would suggest you find it in God because that can't be challenged. Once you have that identity, it's not challengeable. You want to find it internally, not externally. You want to change your physiology. You want to start moving your body. Get your diet under control. Get a good diet going. Next thing is change your focus. What are you focused on? What you focus on is going to change, is going to determine exactly how you feel right now. If you're feeling down, it's because you're focused on the wrong things, and which goes into number 5 here, which is change your story about what you're focused on. As well. Change your story about what you're focused on. So what you look at, where focus goes, energy flows, and what is the story that you're going to tell yourself? So you can, your spouse may have just snapped at you, right? They just got, they just came at you and they just snapped at you and it seemed like it was an attack out of nowhere. And now you're focused on that. It's like, my spouse just attacked me, my spouse just attacked me. Well, that's your focus, right? For one, you've got the choice, you can change that focus. You don't have to focus on that. You can choose to focus on something else. And that's where over time now I've been able to train my mind to where I only think about the things I want to think about. I only think about the things that are positive and that benefit me. So if I get, uh, someone road rages me, right? If someone honks the horn or something, I don't let that affect me. I don't even think about it. I just think, okay, well, that's not something I want in my life, so I'm going to think about something else. So you may not know how to do it yet, but you have the ability to choose whatever thought you want to think about. You have the ability to choose that and you can only feel what you're thinking about. If you're thinking about something negative, then you're going to feel something negative. You have the ability to change your thought to something positive. If you choose to think about something positive in that situation where your spouse snaps at you, you can choose to think about that or you can just choose to move on and think about something else. And then number 5, even if you're thinking about it, right, you've got the choice to change your story. What are you telling yourself about what just happened? Are you telling yourself that they just snapped at you because they're mean and they don't like you and they just don't care and they're just hell-bent on destroying this relationship and they're selfish and narcissistic and stuff like that? Or are you going to tell yourself they're just a hurting human being like me and they snapped at me because they're broken like I am and they're frustrated and they're disappointed with life and they're frustrated and They're just trying to get through life in the best way they can, in the same way that I'm trying to get through life the best way I can, and that's why they snapped. It's got nothing to do with me. The fact that they snapped really just tells me that they're a hurting person and I need to have some sympathy for them and I need to come alongside them and maybe give them a hug. It's a different story, right? You have the ability to change your focus and you have the ability to change your story. Now, if you're telling yourself negative stories about your partner all the time, is that going to be a behavior that's attractive, that attracts them to you? No, you've got to start thinking good things about your spouse, especially if they're estranged right now. If they're not where you want them to be, if they've left or they've asked for divorce, they're separated, you've got to start thinking good things about them. Why would somebody want to be around you when all you do is think negative things? The number of times that I've been in a coaching session with somebody and they're like, My wife this, my wife that, my husband this, my husband's that. And I'm like, you don't even like them. You don't even like your spouse, yet you expect them to come back and share a bed with you? You expect them to come back and take their clothes off in front of you and share their body with you and be happy about it when you don't even like them? How does that work? It's like you've got to change your story. You've got to change your story. You can't be telling yourself a story that degrades your partner. You've got to build them up and you've got to be able to see who they are before they can see. As a mentor, I would love to be your mentor. I would love to work with you. And what a mentor does is sees the greatness in you before you see the greatness in yourself. A mentor believes the greatness that you have in yourself before you can believe it in yourself. A mentor has the belief that you're going to be something when you can't see it. A mentor has the belief to give that belief to you when you do not yet have the ability. Now, I would suggest that you become a mentor to your spouse as well. Do you, do you see things in your partner? Are you the mentor that sees an aspect of your partner that you can, that they cannot yet see? Can you see a goodness in them and believe that for them before they can see it? Can you see a supportive behavior in them that they do not yet have the ability to see in themselves? Can you hold a belief about who they are and what they can be and what their potential is and have that belief for them because they are not yet capable of having that belief in themselves. That is what a mentor does. That is a mentor ultimately, is they are able to give you belief when you are not able to have it for yourself. My 2-year-old, I mentor my 2-year-old, right? I feed him before he can feed himself. I teach, I teach my 5-year-old and 6-year-old beliefs before they're able to have those beliefs for themselves. I see greatness in those children before they're able to understand and perceive that greatness themselves. Now, my 5-year-old, 6-year-old actually, EJ, he was able to read at the age of 2. He was able to read at the age of 2. And I have a— we're not going to go into this in any great detail, right? But this is a great example. And I had a belief system in teaching. I'm like, any 2-year-old should be able to believe, should be able to read. That was my belief, and I had a reason for that. And I told everybody before when he was born, I said he's going to be reading at the age of 2. And I'm telling you this now So at the age of 2, when he can read, you don't dismiss it as him being a gifted child. You don't dismiss it as him being a gifted child, because I want every child to be able to read at the age of 2. I believe it's possible, and I'm going to demonstrate that with my children. And I'm telling you now, so you cannot dismiss that they're just gifted. I'm telling you right now. And at the age of 2, EJ was reading. It was unbelievable. I remember at the age of 3, um, somebody came— we was in a business meeting actually, and EJ was, uh, the way he was talking, the guy that I was with, he goes, "What's your kid gonna do over the weekend? He's gonna go home and do your accounts for you?" Because that's the level of intelligence my 3-year-old was demonstrating. It's like, "What's he gonna do, go home and do your accounting for you?" I'm like, "Yeah." It was kind of a flippant joke, right? But the level of intelligence he was showing was off the chart. And that was because I believed in him. I tell people, when my 2-year-old was reading and people were looking at him, they say, He's got a gift. I said, the gift that he has is he had— he has parents that believe in him. That's the gift that he's got. The gift that my children have is they have parents that believe in them. They're not gifted. They don't have special abilities that other people don't have. The gift that they have is they have parents that believe in them. That's it. That's what mentorship is. And the fact that I believed in him was the catalyst for him being able to read. Do you think If I— how much belief do you think I had that he was going to be able to read, to put the effort in, do the time, to tell people ahead of time that he was going to be able to read at 2, and then do 2 years of work to get him to that point? How much belief do you think I needed to have? And how much belief do you think people around me had? Because I was not— I was being noisy about this, right? I wasn't going, oh, I'm going to quietly tell her I'm going to teach him to read, and then 2-year-olds, I'm going to bust him out and I'm going to put him on YouTube as the 2-year-old reading sensation. That wasn't going on. Everybody around, I was telling them, and the same thing has happened here. If any of you guys that are listening right now saw any of the materials that I put out before this retreat, I'm like, come expecting good things, come expecting transformation, because I want to put that belief out there and I want to give that belief to you. I want to be able to believe in you and give you the same gift that my children had before you have the ability to believe in yourself. Before that you have the ability to recognize it in yourself and to actually realize that. And then I want you to take that out into the world, and I want you to take that into your relationship. Do you now have the ability at this point to believe in your partner for greater things than they're able to believe in themselves? Do you have that ability? Can you look at your partner and say, he's, he's just been born, he's a newborn, but in 2 years from now he's going to have phenomenal relationship skills, he's going to have world-class relationship skills? Or can you look at your wife and go, She, she has no skills at all right now, or negative skills, but within 2 years or whatever it is, whatever the time frame— I'm just saying that because that was my story, right? I have the belief that this person is going to be a phenomenal relationship expert, and maybe we're even going to go into the relationship industry, right? Maybe we're gonna— this is gonna be our ministry. Maybe we're gonna solve our problems in our relationships, and then we're gonna take that out and we're gonna help other people. Do you have that belief right now? Because I want to give that belief to you, and then I want you to give that belief to your partner. It's not about you trying to change your partner. If you want to change your partner, have the belief in them right now. Start to see the good. Start to believe the potential and be a mentor. See the greatness in them before they have the ability to see it in themselves, because they've probably got low self-esteem. They've probably got confidence issues. They're probably getting beaten the crap out of them left, right, and center from the world because they don't have that centeredness. They don't have that security of coming from a place of, I'm perfect because I was created by a perfect being, and he cannot create something imperfect. Therefore, by default, I have no choice. I have no option but to believe I'm perfect. If I don't believe that I'm perfect, I have to give up my spirituality. I have to give up my belief in God. Not going to happen. If I believe in God, I have to believe in my own perfection. Through nothing I've done, through his goodness, through his goodness. That's how it works, right? Have the belief in your partner. Let's move on, right? So change your meaning, and then that is obviously going to change your actions. If you take that belief, if you can become your partner's mentor, if you can change this, the way that you're thinking. So again, what I've just given you here is a practical way to change your thinking, to change your story, which changes your action. From going, I need to change my partner, I need to do that, my partner needs to change, blah blah blah blah blah. Let's change that way of thinking, right? Let's change those thoughts. I'm going to mentor my partner. I'm going to become a mentor to my partner. And I've just explained what a mentor is. And then the story around what you're telling yourself is not, my partner's a disaster. My partner is greatness who needs my inspiration. My partner is greatness who needs my help to get there. That's the way I look at clients that I work with, right? This person is greatness that just needs a little help to manifest that greatness. That person has greatness in them. That person is great. This person is perfect. This person is flawless. This person is complete. They have everything they need. They just need some help seeing it. They just need somebody to believe for them while they do not yet have the ability to believe for themselves. That's the gift that we want to give, right? That's how we're going to change our actions, to give that belief. And ultimately, you're going to love them back to you. That's what you're going to do. You're going to love them back to you. The number of people that I see in coaching sessions where they think they're going to change their way, they're going to change them back to them, or they're going to, they're going to, the whole no contact rule, like let's separate and, or I'm going to, I'm going to cut you off from communication and you're going to miss me and you're going to come begging back. I'm going to manipulate, I'm going to manipulate you back, back to me. All of that kind of stuff doesn't work, guys. It doesn't work. That's not how you get, you don't get somebody to come back through manipulation. You don't get somebody to come back through blackmail. You don't get somebody to come back to any of these things. Get them to come back through loving them. You love them back to you. You see greatness in them. Who would not want to be around you if you are seeing greatness in them and you are acting as though they are already great? You're starting to act out of that greatness to where you're starting to bring that belief into existence. Faith is the catalyst for everything, and the definition of faith in the Bible is the evidence that the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things seen. The substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen. So faith, the sub— what we hope for is that our partner is going to transform. That's hope, right? Faith is the substance of hope. We're hoping. That's the first part of faith, is we've got to have the hope that our partner is going to transform. We have to have that hope, and hopefully I'm giving you that. Then one emotion that I want to leave you with this week, if you only leave with one thing, I want to leave you with hope. I want you to go away thinking there is hope. I may not know, I may not know what it is yet, I may not know how to do this, or I may not know how to get there, but Cody's given me enough information to where I can see there is hope for my marriage. There's hope, because without hope there's no faith, and with no faith there's no transformation, right? You've got to have hope. And then, so it's hope. And then the second part of faith is the evidence of things unseen. Well, what is the evidence of things unseen? It's like you need to see in your mind what your partner can be, and then the evidence of the unseen, which is your mind— no one can see your mind, right? Nobody can see your thoughts, but you're seeing your partner changed in your thoughts. You now need to provide evidence of what is unseen. How do you provide evidence of the idea that your partner has changed? You start to act in the way towards them as if they were already changed. The evidence of your faith is I believe that my partner has greatness. I believe that my partner is going to do great things. I believe, I have the faith and the hope that my partner is going to achieve their full potential in life, and the evidence of that unseen hope is the way that I behave towards them. What is that behavior? That behavior is love. You love them. You love them when they're mean. You love them when they're nice. You love them when it's hot. You love them when it's cold. You love them when they're giving you sex. You love them when they're not giving you sex. You love them when they're talking to you, you love them when they're not talking to you, you love them back to you. Now let me ask you a question, is that attractive? If you can achieve that, is that attractive? Because you have to become a person that's attractive to attract the person back to you. So hopefully that is helpful. That I believe is our 7 steps, right? So let— I've got them written down here in my highly technical slide deck here. So find your identity internally. I would suggest through God, but if you're not, if you're not that way inclined, find your identity internally. I don't know how you're going to do it without God, but yeah, maybe there's a way. I don't know. I did find a way, so I highly suggest it's through God. The second thing is use your physiology to impact your behavior. Highly energetic people are attractive. Lethargic, slow people are not attractive at all. That's why, you know, people that smoke Marijuana is called dope because it makes you dopey. How many people that are dopey on dope are attractive to you? Not very many, right? Don't be dopey. Use your physiology. Get a grip of your diet. Change your diet. If you're serious about changing your life, if you're serious about changing your marriage, change your diet. It's important. You can— it's fuel. You can't run a high-octane, high-energy physiology on crappy fuel, on substandard fuel. It's not going to work. You've got to be putting high-quality fuel in which means good quality nutrients, get the crappy chemicals out, get the alcohol out of your diet if you can, and focus on getting a really good diet. The next one is change what you focus on. Decide to focus on only things that you want in your life. Become aware of your thoughts on a minutely, hourly, daily basis. And if you're thinking about something that you don't want, if you're thinking about an experience that you didn't want to have, change that thought. Start thinking about things that you want, not things you don't want. Number 5, it's going to be change your story about what you're telling yourself, about the story that you're telling yourself about yourself, the story that you're telling yourself about your partner. And number 6, change the meaning of those stories. Make them positive, make them empowering. Number 7 is going to be change your actions, and that is going to come out of all of the above things, right? If you were doing all of the above things, your actions are just going to naturally change. They just are. That's— there's no way you can change your diet, your physiology, your internal identity, your change, your focus, your meaning, uh, change all of those things and your actions not change. Your actions are a 3D printout of your thoughts. These, these, all these previous ones are really thought related, right? We're going to start to see a new version of you. You're going to start to see a new version of life showing up. So that's it. That's what I wanted to share there.
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