The 4 Stages Every Man Goes Through to Save His Marriage

So what I want to talk to you about today is the 4 stages of marriage recovery. And as, as with most stuff I talk about, this is not related specifically to marriage. This is, this is a process that's going to apply to pretty much every area of your life. But we're going to, we're going to relate this specifically to marriage. So that's because that's why we're here, right? So the 4 stages, that they're the 4 stages of competency. So Stage 1 is unconscious incompetence, and that's you don't even know that you don't know. So that you're unaware of the gap that exists. You don't see the problems in the marriage. You're operating on autopilot in, in a destructive way, and typically very defensive of, or dismissive of feedback. So This is when you're in unconscious incompetence, it's basically you're blind and you don't even know it. And what, what typically that produces is a very high level of confidence but a very low level of competence, and that's obviously a very negative thing. So we'll go through all of these in more detail. I'll just go through the 4 quickly and then we'll go into each one in detail. So when we come out of unconscious incompetence, we go to conscious incompetence. So we're still incompetent in the specific area, but now we're actually conscious of it. We, we know that we lack skills, we know that we lack mechanisms, etc. We become aware of the gap, we see the problem, but at this point it's simply an awareness. We're not sure how to fix this, and this can feel very overwhelming, very frustrating, and very discouraging because this is where all of a sudden you go from having a high level of confidence to having a very low level of confidence. But actually, this is a step in the right direction. Then the next stage is we go to conscious competence, which is I can see what the problems are and I'm actually working on it. But at this point, the, the solutions require conscious effort. So the example that I like to use that makes, makes understanding the 4 levels of competency really easy is driving. Learning how to drive. So I drove, we went to visit a friend yesterday down on a farm and it was about a 2-mile country road off track and I put my 10-year-old son on my lap and said, you know, let him drive and I said, hey, put your hand in. He goes, I know how to drive, Dad, I know what I'm doing. My 10-year-old, he's unconsciously incompetent. He doesn't even know that he doesn't know. But he sat in the back and he's watched me drive for, you know, 10 years now, and he thinks he knows everything. The next level is when you move to conscious incompetence. This is when you actually start to realize— for me, I, when I started driving, I almost had an accident pretty quickly, and I realized at that point that I was actually less competent than I thought I was, at which point you move to conscious competence, which is you're able to do the task but you have to work on it consciously. And then finally, the final stage is going to be moving to unconscious competence, which is the goal. And this is where real leadership is. This is where skill mastery is. I know it and I don't have to think about it anymore. Right. So again, driving is a great example. None of us think about driving anymore. We can mess with the radio, we can lower the window, etc. So the skills become second nature. John, if I could get you to mute yourself, brother. Your mic's on, you're coming through. So at this point of unconscious competence, the skill becomes automatic and effortless, you become consistent and reliable, and then you can actually, actually focus on what matters. So the order is awareness, skill, mastery. This is the order that it goes. So let's look at these individually and how we can apply these and how we can get through these in the shortest, most productive time possible. So the first one is unconscious incompetence. I don't know, or you don't know that you don't know. So a good example of this is I ask people, if you had a blind spot, would you see it? No, of course not. If you were delusional, would you know that you were delusional? No, of course not. That's what a delusion is. You don't understand that you don't understand. So the core state of the man in unconscious incompetence, which is pretty much everybody when they start this journey, and it's all of us to some degree, we don't know what we don't know. And the quicker you can recognize that and say, I don't know what I don't know, the faster we're actually able to move forward. So the core state of the man in this condition is he's blind to impact. He doesn't understand the impact that his unconscious incompetence is actually having on the situation. So in business, a business that's going bankrupt, and the man says, "I'm good at business." Well, you don't even know that you're not good. You don't understand the— you don't understand how little you know and what you don't know. The unconscious incompetence is actually driving the outcome of the business. Same here. All you need to do is look at the results that are going on in the marriage and if the results are less than ideal, then it's because there's something that you don't know, and that reveals an unconscious incompetence in that particular area. The thing I want you to understand here is this is not an insult, or this is not a, a put-down. We're all unconsciously incompetent. You take any man out of his area of expertise and you're dealing with an imbecile. For the most part, we're all unconsciously incompetent to some extent. So the second core state here is like a high, high certain certainty, low accuracy. When we're in this state, we're very— we have a high level of confidence in that what we're doing is correct, but we have a very low accuracy rate in diagnosis. Driving— teenagers driving is a great example. Anyone who's got teenagers or been around teenagers understand this, right? They have very high certainty in outcomes with very low accuracy of diagnosis and very low competency in those areas. It's the worst possible combination. It's almost like saying it's ignorant and opinionated. It's not— that's not somebody you want to have a conversation with. So typically You're going to be defensive instead of examining the behavior. Prioritizing being right over being effective and seeing her reactions as the problems within the relationship. This summarizes pretty much all of us, day one when we show up, right? So typical behaviors here are going to be the toxic habits. We're going to escalate situations, we're going to invalidate, we're going to negatively interpret, we're going to start to withdraw. Also, these behaviors fall into the category of unconscious incompetence. We don't, we don't even realize that we're escalating. We don't even realize that we're invalidating. We don't even realize that we're negatively interpreting the situation. But here's, here's the truth: your situation responds to your behavior, not how you interpret your, your behavior. So once we can see that we're escalating instead of de-escalating, that we're invalidating instead of etc., etc., now we move to conscious incompetence. And this is where we can actually start to make a difference. So some other behaviors that we see that will indicate that you're in this situation is explaining instead of listening, explaining your behavior. I understand why you see it that way, Cody Butler, but let me explain. I understand why it looks like that, but let me explain. This is unconscious incompetence. This is a man who's in chaos, who's in crisis, explaining his behavior instead of uncovering, identifying, and correcting his behavior. So minimizing her emotional experience is going to fall into this. She's just emotional, PMS, time of that change, etc. Repeating the same patterns without while expecting a different outcome. So we all do this, right? We do the same thing over and over again, hoping that if we just try harder, we're going to get a different outcome. But this is the story of the fly. This is the, this is the parable of the fly who's flying, trying to get outside of a window, trying to go through a window, and he flies against the window and he hits it and butts his head against it. And he goes, if I just fly harder, if I just fly harder, if I just put more effort in, I will break through this window eventually. But the reality is, the more effort he puts in, the harder he tries, the quicker he expedites his demise, the quicker he dies. More effort is not the answer. But when we're in the state of unconscious incompetence, we think that more effort is the answer. The answer— if that fly just looked off to the side and saw an open door, he could fly out of that open door effortlessly. Could have got the result with, in a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the effort. But the fact of the matter is the flyer was unconsciously incompetent at how to exit the room. Had he had someone to guide him or coach him, he could have exited the room very quickly and very easily. And again, typical behaviors here are going to be high confidence, low competency. Teenage drivers, the example that I've given. So what's the, what's the impact on, on, on your wife When you're in a state of unconscious incompetence, she's going to be very frustrated. She's going to see the marriage as pointless, hopeless, and a complete waste of time because fundamentally you're unreachable. You don't know what you don't know and you're unwilling to move beyond that. So she loses respect for that man, the man who's absent. The man who's absolutely wrong but insists that he's right. Can I get you to mute there, Tim, brother, please? Tim, Tim, if I could get you to mute yourself. Give me one second here, let me sort Tim out. Sorry about that, guys. So at this point, to move beyond unconscious incompetence, intervention is required. You cannot self-diagnose. Like this, we're talking about blind spots and delusions. You cannot see your own blind spots, you cannot uncover your own delusions. This is why fighter planes fly in pairs, because they have blind spots and they understand that it requires two planes. It requires an additional pilot to see the blind spot to fly safely. This is why number one rule is never grade your own homework. You simply can't. It's like saying— it's a fact— saying never, never grade your own homework is effectively saying never look at your own blind spots. You simply can't. So the next stage that we move to is conscious competence. If anyone's got their microphone on, can I get you to mute please? You, you're open as well, Marty. So the next stage is conscious competence. I see the problem, but I don't know how to fix it. Now this is a very difficult stage and a very painful stage for most men, because this is where you see just how bad the situation's been. And you see the problem clearly for the first time. It's like you went to the doctor with a headache and he tells you you've got cancer. It's very difficult. I see the problem, but I don't know how to fix this. So the core state that the man enters into in this stage is awareness without any capability to fix it. He sees the patterns that he's running, but he has no ability to interrupt those patterns. And this hopefully is where he starts seeking action. So the, the— some of the drawbacks here are This is very confrontational to the ego. This is where you actually have to look at yourself and start to accept some responsibility, but at the same time, it's like you're still incompetent. You're just aware of the incompetency now. So the typical behaviors are going to be— this is where you go into apologizing without any change. You just try to fix the situation without any skills to actually fix it. So another behavior is overcorrection. So either being too soft or too intense, trying, trying to fix that, trying to fix all of the inconsistencies that you're now aware of, and also going into content and consumption mode. So a key point to take away here is that transformation— you don't move from, from from the unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence areas to competency through exposure to information. You move through the seeking out and implementing new behavior. And a lot of times we just consume, consume, consume, consume content. A lot of people when they join this program will just go crazy in content consumption. They'll go through the— through all of the material at 2x speed and think that that's going to do some good. You're significantly better off picking one thing and working on that at a time. Because the way we move out of the unconscious incompetence and the incompetent side of the quadrant here is through execution. And the typical behavior is men go into content consumption to the exclusion of execution. So the internal state that the man is going to experience at this particular time is regret, remorse, guilt, fear, despair, hopelessness. Because here's the thing, you're not a bad man, you're not a bad person, you just didn't know what you didn't know. Like the number of men that I talked to that once they understand the damage that's been inflicted or, or the problems that have been caused or their role in the situation, and don't get me wrong here, this applies to the woman too, she's also unconsciously incompetent. In this relationship. She also moves through all of these cycles as well. But the vast majority of us here are in a situation where the woman, your wife, is not necessarily making the effort at this point. So that's why we're focusing on the man. But this is not unique to the man by any, any stretch. And once the man understands his actual behavior and his role in it, role in it, then this, this can show up. Because nobody wants to cause these problems. And once it becomes— you become aware that you have potentially caused these problems, it's not a nice feeling. It challenges the ego. So the impact that this stage is having on the woman is emotional fatigue increases because you're apologizing without change. Frustration increases. Trust continues to decline. She gets angry. Why? Because you're acknowledging these problems, but at this point you're still not changing. You're still, you're still in the incompetent part of the quadrant. You're just consciously incompetent now, and she doesn't want you to acknowledge your incompetency. She wants you to move to competency within the relationship, whatever that is. So if she's seeking emotional safety from you, she's not, she's not looking for you to acknowledge that there's a lack of emotional safety in your role in it. She's looking for you to change that. And the— again, the reason I'm holding this presentation today is because realistic expectations will help you through this process. Men jump to apologize. This was one of the actions, right? Excessive apologizing. All it's going to do is frustrate her and it's going to continue to diminish the trust. The best thing to do at this stage is to not in— keep this to yourself and work on fixing the problem. You don't need to tell her you're improving. You don't need to tell her you're fixing the problem. You don't need to tell her that you acknowledge the problem necessarily. She will see that for herself when you start to fix the problem. Otherwise, this just turns into another cycle of you acknowledging that change needs to happen and it doesn't happen. Because for the vast majority of men, they will simply go back to sleep. Moving from conscious incompetence through the cycle to conscious competence, it requires a lot of effort. We're going to talk about that, and most men, they just simply won't do it, or they don't have the support necessary to support them through it, or they don't understand how this works, so they, they get frustrated and they give up. So again, the danger in this stage here is this. This stage creates an illusion of progress in the man without any actual progress taking place, because you now have an awareness of the problem that feels like progress within the relationship to you. That's, that's not relationship, that's not demonstratable relationship within, uh, progress within the relationship. It's the first stage of it, which is internal. This is putting the seed in the ground. The whole world, none— the world cannot see the fact that you're about to have a crop, that you're about to have a harvest. Only you know that you've put that seed in the ground, and as far as the world is concerned, that's still a barren field. And you know that you're making progress, and you know that you're moving in the right direction, and you expect that to be seen and recognized by other people, and it's too soon. This is the danger. This is the danger. This is where I hear, my wife is not seeing my changes, my wife is not recognizing my changes. It's because you're aware of the what needs to happen, but they haven't sprouted yet. You don't have the harvest. So next we move into conscious competence. I know what to do, but it requires effort and it requires discipline. This is the key— effort and discipline. You need to show up consistently. You need to apply Consistent effort, consistent discipline. So the core state of the man here is skill with effort. You're starting to do the right things, but my goodness is it hard work. My goodness is it fatiguing. You can drive the car safely, but the radio needs to be off. The passengers need to be stopped. They don't need to be talking to you at this point. This requires your full attention. You can get to the destination safely but it requires your full and undivided attention. So what we start to see here, our goal is intentional behavior starts to replace reactivity and reactions. This is the key. We're starting to put it a simpler way, we're starting to replace habits with new habits. And that only happens through disciplined application of effort over time. And it only happens through the following of structure, not emotion. You don't get any reward for being emotional about this. This is why we have 4 toxic habits. They're structured— invalidation, negative interpretation, withdrawal, etc. Escalation. If we have the habit of escalation, which almost all of us do— be— that's why we're here, either on the live call or watching the replay— it's because we are reactive, not intentional, and our behavior follows emotion, not structure. And when we start to use language like that— intention, not reaction, structure, not emotion— what are we talking about? We're talking about discipline. We're talking about the disciplined application of correct effort with feedback. You've got a wingman. You're now flying with somebody else who can see your blind spots, and you're consistently asking for that feedback. Is there any Is there anybody on my six? Is there anybody on my six? So typical behaviors that you can recognize as you start to move into this stage is you pause before responding. You're no longer a monkey with a machine gun, you're no longer reactive to the situation. You start to understand the consequence of your behavior instead of experiencing the consequence of your behavior. You start to ask yourself the question, do I want to die on this hill? Is this worth dying? Is this hill worth dying on? Do I really want to do this? Do I want to be right or do I want to be effective? Do I want to be right or do I want to be married? Do I want to be right or do I want to be in a position of leadership? You start to regulate your tone and how you deliver that tone. You start to deliver, you become emotionally sophisticated. So there's nothing wrong with anger. Anger is righteous and anger is appropriate. But here's the thing, right? Emotional sophistication, emotional intelligence is learning how to be right, learning how to be angry at the right person at the right time in the right dosage and for the right reason. Is your anger— your anger is justified right now, but is the volume of it justified? Are you directing it at the right person? Is this the right time to be angry? Or do you have a level of emotional sophistication where you're going to control through disciplined effort the tone of your anger, the delivery of your anger, the timing of your anger? Are you going to use the anger to communicate something important, or are you going to use it to destroy? Are you going to use it to show the other person the error of their way, or are you going to use it as aggression. We start to validate before solving problems. What do I mean by that? You'll start to use phrases like, "Help me understand that." "I'm frustrated right now." "Well, I don't understand why you're frustrated. That makes no sense. Help me understand why you're frustrated." Help me understand what's frustrated you. I can see you're frustrated right now. Talk to me about it. Instead of moving into the validation stage, instead of invalidating— I'm frustrated. Well, I don't understand why. I don't understand why you're frustrated. And consistent behavioral correction of your own, recognizing where your behavior is going off track, recognizing when you're invalidating instead of validating, recognizing when you're starting to escalate instead of de-escalating. You start to catch your behavior in the act, in the moment, and you start to develop the ability to correct it. But this is still very much on manual operation at this point. This is not autopilot. You are still essentially, uh, an escalator. You're still essentially an invalidator. The habit has not yet changed, but you're starting to correct the behavior in real time. Your internal art and dialogue becomes, "Stay controlled, Cody. Stay measured, Cody. Seek understanding, Cody. Seek to understand what she means right now. Evaluate the situation before determining that you're going to exercise the nuclear codes. Respond to the situation Don't react to it. My children made me very mad the other day, and my wife says, "You need to do something. Are you going to let— you're going to deal with them right now? Are you just going to let them get away with that?" And I said, like, I said, "I'm— all I can do is react right now. I can't. Just send them to their room. I'll deal with them when I'm able to respond to the situation." Because if I react, I'm going to be a tyrant. I'm going to be a war criminal. I'm going to act in a way that damages the relationship because they've triggered me. They've put me in an emotional state. But here's the thing, I've realized that I'm about to escalate. I've realized that I'm about to invalidate their position. And I've realized that I'm about to react to the situation instead of respond to it. So I separate. This is what, this is what we start to do when we're in this stage is we start to respond instead of react. This is what leadership is. This is what men do. They, they evaluate the situation. They seek all sides. They, they make an evaluation emotionlessly. They seek counsel and bring it to the council, this call, or your council, and ask for advice. Am I evaluating this correctly, or do I have blind spots I don't see? And then they respond from a place of control, measure, justice. Our goal here— we have a lot of new men on the call— our objective here is we want to achieve the role. Our role in our household is protect— protector, provider, prophet, and priest. We protect our family, we provide for our family, We prophesy into their life. We speak good things into them. We speak future, a future that they can't see. We speak things into our children's future. We speak, we speak the future into our wife. We see, we see a future for them that they don't see for themselves yet. That is what a prophet is. He sees a future that others are not yet capable of seeing in their current state. Many of you do not have the vision yet to see what your marriage could be, to see what your home could be. It's my job, and it's the coach's job, to prophesy into your life. And that's not a religious thing. I know it has a religious connotation, but it isn't. It's seeing— it's seeing who you could be and who you have the potential to be and speaking into that and treating that man, or treating you as that man that you have the potential to be, not the man you've shown up as. That's what the prophet is. And the priest is to accept the confession when you've screwed up, to be there, to be the shoulder to cry on, the ear to listen to, to be the person that says it's going to be okay, and to give them the steps of correction. When you move into the role of protector, provider, prophet, and priest you're now leading from conscious competence, and you're leading from a place of authentic leadership where every— people are going to seek you out. Their leadership is probably the rarest quality in the world today. It's absent in almost every aspect of life. And when you move into that role of protector, provider, prophet, and priest, you will be sought out not only by your wife, your children, by everybody around you. So again, words you start to hear in your own head in the Conscious Competence stage is, "This is not about being right, Cody. This is not about being right. This is not about you making a point. This is about you being effective. This is about you protecting your family, speaking into their future, correcting them where they need correcting, correcting, receiving correction in yourself where it's required." This isn't about being right anymore, it's about being effective. Many of us seek to be right over being effective. And I hear, I hear it all the time on phone calls. I have a phone call and I will say, this is what's going on, let me interpret what you've just said, my friend, this is what you've just said. And the response 9 times out of 10 is, well, I could see why you would think that, "Or I could see why you've interpreted it that way." Basically telling me I'm wrong. "I can see why you would think that, but you're not right. I'm right." And then the follow-up question is always going to be, "Well, how's that working out for you?" This is not about being right or wrong, man. This is about being effective. And that's not opinion, that's fact. Look at your life, look at your marriage. Look at your health. Look at your mental state. Look at your relationship with your children. If it's broken, then responding to feedback with, "I understand why you would think that," or, "I could understand why it would come across that way," is just insanity. It's a man refusing even to shift into conscious incompetence. He, he, he is utterly asleep and refuses to even wake up enough to see that he's been asleep. So psychological— man, man, and remember, we're in the state here of conscious competence— increased discipline. You start to see the value of discipline. Discipline is no longer a concept. Discipline is no longer a desirable idea. Discipline is a practice that produces measurable fruit that you're going to want more of. That you become addicted to. Discipline and chaos maintain an inversely proportional relationship, meaning that as one goes up, one goes down. As one goes down, the other goes up. The higher the level of discipline in your life, the lower the level of chaos. Chaos is a direct result of a lack of discipline. Discipline in, in the early stages of this process, when we move from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence, etc., discipline is a necessary evil. It's something that we have to do that's just painful and we don't really want to do it. But once we realize, once we see the benefits of discipline and how it benefits us. And we start to experience what a life that has no chaos in it is actually like. Many of you don't even— many of you have no concept of what a chaos-free life even is. You've never experienced it. You grew up in chaos. You modeled chaos from your family, your parents. You moved into a chaotic society. You watch a television that actively seeks to create chaos, to control you. And you've operated in a marriage that has been chaotic at best from day one. Chaos is not something that— or calm is something that you've never experienced. But once you experience that and you start to experience, experience it, and you see that discipline is a pathway to that, you'll become addicted to discipline. You'll seek it out. You'll join organizations, masterminds, groups like this that enforce discipline. Discipline stops being something that's causing you pain and starts to be something that produces great pleasure. So the thing to understand at this stage, man, is this is, this is effort-heavy and mentally taxing. You are undoing a lifetime of conditioning. You are undoing a lifetime of programming. And this can take some time. This can take months or even years to some extent to undo all of this. But at the same time, your confidence is growing through demonstrated execution. It's like when you go to the gym, right? You can go— like, it takes 3 or 4 months if you go. You have to consistently go to the gym for 3 or 4 months to actually see results. You have to consistently engage in diet for 3 or 4 months to really see the results. And when you're going to the gym and you're not getting anything but a hard time and sore muscles, when you're dieting and you're getting nothing but hunger pains. This is taxing. This is hard. And at this point, this is discipline. Only discipline will get you through this, which is why if you're on this live call, man, and we're going to jump to the Q&A, you're in the right place. This is where, this is where the discipline is reinforced. This is where the motivation is given and the willpower. At this point, it's like Help is needed to enforce this discipline. So what's the impact on the woman in this stage? Her nervous system begins to settle down because now she's seeing fruit. That's the seed is out of the ground. She's seeing results. You're not— you're no longer just saying, I'm gonna— I recognize that there's a problem and I'm going to change. You're actually changing. She's seeing those results. She's starting to see some fruits. She's also starting to start testing you for consistency. This is stage 4, for those of you who want to relate this to the 7 stages. This is by no means certain, man, that you are competent now. You are demonstrating competency, but it is with a conscious effort, with discipline and with effort. At any given point, you're prone to say, "This is too hard, screw it," and go back to sleep. At any given point during this process, your ego is likely to get involved and go, "How dare you tell me that, Cody? How dare you speak to me like that? Do you not know who I am?" So at this point, she will start to gradually increase in openness. Gradual being the turn. And this is where emotional safety begins to rebuild. So this is where hope is reintroduced into the relationship. This is where, this is where the relationship starts to feel positive to you again. So let me give you an example of this, of how the seed is growing beneath the surface without you understanding it. I had a For any of you who've been around any length of time working with me, you've heard stories of the mother-in-law saga, the next exciting episode of Cody and his mother-in-law. We're frenemies, constant source of entertainment. And we went to Sydney, not— well, it was a few years ago now, but I made a, I made a real effort to really do well with my mother-in-law and to keep everything calm because I will protect, to provide, a prophet, priest. This is not about me, this is about my children getting kids getting to see their grandparents. This is about my wife getting to see her mother. And this isn't— this is not about me and my mother-in-law. This is about them getting what they need, right? So I just made a real effort. Did I— did she give me a reward? No. Did she say anything? No. Did I get feedback from her? No, I did not. But I was at the gym when we got back a few days later, and my wife and I have the same personal trainer, and my personal trainer said to me, "You got some brownie points in Sydney. You did well in Sydney." I said, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "Your wife's really pleased with you." I'm like, "First I've heard of it. I don't know anything about that." And he goes, "Yeah, she was telling me how impressed she was and how much restraint you showed and how mature you were and how happy she was with how you behaved in Sydney. She didn't tell me because she was testing for consistency." People go, my wife is not— she's not recognizing my change. No, she's not recognizing them to you. She's talking to her friends. She's talking to people around you. She's talking about you. She's just not talking to you because, quite frankly, this is something you need to do on your own. Moving through this process is not something that involves her. This This essentially, when we put it in these terms, moving, moving from inconsistent and reactive to controlled and disciplined, this does not involve her and this does not relate to the relationship at all. In some extent, this is about you growing as a man. This is about you growing as a leader. And it's not her job to give you feedback. You're the prophet and priest, not her. You're the protector and provider, not her. You're the one that speaks positivity into her life and you're the one that consoles her and comforts her when she falls, not the other way around. Now, not to say that she can't, but when you start assuming that you're going to get that feedback and that she's going to be the prophet and priest in, in the marriage, you've inverse— you've inverted the roles, and now you're not behaving in a true authentic position of leadership. So her internal shift at this stage is she moves from being tired and exhausted to being cautiously hopeful. Cautiously hopeful being the the term here. Realistic expectations is what we need. If we can have realistic expectations, we can absolutely succeed in this process. But if you think that, you know, you— we're 3, 4, 6 months into the process at this point, right? And all she can do is be cautiously hopeful. We expect it. We expect a cookie for our behavior. We expect a reward. Also, she's going to transition from being distant to being selectively engaged. So I say this can be 3, 4, 6 months. It doesn't have to be. She can selectively engage very quickly when you, when you show that you've shifted from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence, which actually can happen in one conversation if you're open to it, if you're willing to to take direction and you're willing to execute with discipline. Had a conversation this week, it was on boundaries. Unconsciously incompetent on boundaries, didn't understand the boundaries were being violated. It's like once that becomes consciously incompetent, now you understand the boundaries are being violated, that now you can move to conscious competence immediately. Now you understand what to do. Now you can start to respect those boundaries. And when you start to respect those boundaries, you, the The woman can go from distant to selectively engaged very, very quickly. These changes can happen quickly, but have an expectation that they might not as well. So the key reality here is in the Conscious Competence stage, this is where change becomes visible, but not yet trusted. Critical, but not yet trusted, and rightly so. I don't trust your changes yet. There's no guarantee that these changes are permanent because they do not become permanent to the next stage, which requires identity-level change. So to become unconscious, to move to unconscious competence, which is the goal— you're all unconsciously competent at driving now. You can, you can have your knee on the wheel, you can be taking a Big Mac out of the box with the other hand, you can be messing with the radio on the other hand, and you can be shouting at the kids in the back while you're doing it. You no longer need conscious effort to drive because now you're a driver. This is who I am now. You don't go, I'm learning to drive, or I'm pretty good but I got some skills to learn. If I ask you 'Do you drive?' You go, 'Yeah, I'm a driver, I drive.' So what's required for this unconscious competence is this— an identity level change. So this is where automatic regulation and leadership shows up. You automatically regulate yourself because that's who you are. You've, you've done it so many times that it's now a habit. So I read a study— not— I read a study, it was actually probably a lot of years ago now actually, and it said if you go to the gym, if you can consistently go to the gym for 6 months, it will become a lifelong habit. Even if you stop, then you will pick that habit up again. And I found that to be true. I committed to going to the gym for 6 months and I actually did 2 years at that point, and then I stopped, but then I started again, then I stopped, but then I started again. It became a lifelong habit because I view myself now as somebody who goes to the gym, somebody who looks after themselves. An identity level change took place. Zig Ziglar tells the story of a man who was vastly overweight, grossly overweight, and he was working on losing the weight. One day he was in a store and a child came into the store and said, Mom, mother, Mom, look at that fat man over there. Look at the fat man. And the man turned around to look behind him to see the fat man, because he no longer saw himself as the fat man. When the child said, 'Look at the fat man,' his identity had changed from being a fat man to being a skinny man to being a trim man. And at that point, the result was inevitable, because behavior always follows identity. When your identity is truly one of protector, provider, prophet, and priest, your behavior will follow that unconsciously on autopilot. This is why there is truly no— there is truly no long-term reconciliation of your marriage without that identity level change. This is the core of what we do. It's changing your identity. If you see— if you can see yourself truly as protector, provider, prophet, and priest, you, you've got 10 times the value that you spent to be here, because you will, you will find— you will act in a way that's consistent with that and when you act in a way that's consistent with that identity of protector, provider, prophet, and priest, then the results also follow. So this is automatic regulation and leadership. There's no internal conflict between knowing and doing anymore. You know what the right thing is and you do it. You know what the right behavior is and you do it. Right now, many of you will go, I know I need to de-escalate, but I still escalate. I know what the right thing to do is, it's validate, but I still invalidate. I know I should be seeking to understand before seeking to be understood, but I just can't help myself. There's a gap between knowing and doing. You know the right thing, but you're still not actually capable of doing the right thing unconsciously and consistently. This is the autopilot. This is you put the plane on autopilot and you go take a nap. This is the self-driving Tesla. So what, what can you expect if you actually are able to get to unconscious competence? Well, you can expect consistent emotional stability within yourself? How many of you are frustrated with yourself, with your own emotional instability, with your own mood, with your own anxiety and depression, with your own challenges? How many, how many are unhappy with it? Well, this is the key. This is how we move beyond that. We can experience consistent emotional stability within ourselves. We don't have to be anxious. We don't have to be depressed. This is going to piss some people off, but it's a choice. It's just people that are in those stages are unconsciously incompetent and they don't understand that they have a choice. Consistent emotional stability within your marriage, it's a choice. You choose it. How do you choose it? Well, you understand the behaviors that produce it, and then you move towards that becoming your identity. You become predictable under pressure. This is key. So you, you are going to You're going to default one— whatever for one of which— whichever stage you're at, you're going to default to it under pressure. You start to assume a position of leadership without force. You don't need force anymore because people trust you, and they know even when you make a mistake, it's with their best interest at heart. They trust you and they choose to follow you. The difference between leadership and dictatorship is paper thin. Absolutely, absolutely paper thin. We'll do a presentation on that at some point. But the difference, the gap between leadership, authentic, genuine masculine leadership that I would choose to follow and your wife would choose to follow, and a totalitarian dictatorship, you, you couldn't— you can't get a hair between the two. They're so close but so far apart. And you start to develop a presence that requires no effort. A presence that requires no effort. Someone asked, someone said the other day, well, I said, what's your plan? They said, I'm going to be more present. What does that even mean? What does presence mean? So at this point, what does this look like in conscious, unconscious competence? Well, your internal dialogue, the correction that's needed is minimal at this point. You no longer have to ask yourself the question consistently, do I want to be right or do I want to be effective? Do I want to be right or do I want to be married? You simply choose being effective. You simply choose being married. You don't have to go, I'm about to escalate this situation, I need to, I need to chill out, step down, evaluate, and then come back. You just, you just do the right thing. Doing the right thing is as easy as doing the wrong thing. Success is every bit as, is as easy as failure. Every bit is easy. We've just put failure on autopilot, and the default becomes stability. You become stable. So when you enter into the state of unconscious or unconscious competence, you become calm, grounded, and carry a level of certainty that is high confidence, high certainty. Right now, many of us are high, high certainty, low confidence, or high confidence, low low certainty. We don't, uh, low competence. Sorry, high certainty, low competence. We think we know more than we do, which is dangerous. But we move to a place of high certainty, high competence. Our reactivity reduces down to almost nothing. Our clarity— we develop a high level of clarity and control of ourselves. We essentially become the rock. We become the oak tree. We become the shelter from the storm. This is your goal. Question I always ask myself, which I ask you now, is when people talk about you when they're not around, when you're not around, how do people talk about you in one sentence? What do you think about Cody Butler? What do you think about Steve Butler? What do you think about John Butler? When you're not around and that conversation's taking place, how do you want that question answered? For me, I want people to say, "Cody, do you know Cody?" "Yeah, I know Cody." "What do you think about him?" "Cody's solid." "Cody's a rock." "Cody's dependable." That's what I want people to say. The last thing I want people to say is, "Oh, you know, Cody's Cody. Like, we deal with him." "Cody's a clown." "Cody's a..." You know, Cody Butler, yeah, what do you think about him? He's a monkey with a machine gun, man. Great intention, horrible results. This is very important. This is a very important question to ask yourself. How do you want to be talked about when you're not around? And how are you talked about right now when you're not around? I would suggest that this is where we want to go when you reach a place of calm, controlled, certain, low to no reactivity, and a very high level of clarity and self-control. You pretty much got anything you want at that point. So the impact on the woman, your wife, she moves from being cautious and testing you to being secure. You've now become the protector, provider, prophet, and priest. There's not a chance she's leaving you. You are everything she needs. There's nothing she can get outside of the relationship that is even remotely comparable to what's in it. Everything outside of the relationship at that point is vastly inferior to being in it, and she moves from testing what's going on to actually trusting it. And this is where she becomes your wife. She becomes— you become a partnership again. You become a team. You've created— you've become that protector, provider, prophet, and priest. You've created a secure, trusting, safe environment for her. You are now by far the best option. So the reality, this is the only place in unconscious incompetence, this is the only place the long, the relationship stabilizes long-term. Only place. It may stabilize in others, it may seem to stabilize in other stages, but it's not. She's not truly choosing you, she's choosing you over fear. She's choosing you over the fear of being alone, and you've demonstrated enough to where you're a better option than being alone. Or she's choosing you over financial instability, or she's choosing you over starting again. But she's not choosing you purely on the merits of who you are. She's choosing you on the fact that you've shown just enough to be the least crap option. She's not looking at you going, I would choose this man under any circumstances. I would choose this man over every other man, and I will follow him, and I will, I will submit to his leadership of this home. This is the only place this truly happens, is in conscious competence or unconscious competence. That is our goal. That is what we work towards, man. That's what we're going to do when we finish this call, uh, this presentation and jump on the Q&A. So let's look at some transition points. What are the danger points, failure points? Going from each quadrant. So going from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence, this requires a massive pain spike, requires that the threat of loss shows up, because you get to see— you get to see how you've been showing up as you get to see how everybody else is seeing the situation. And this is, uh, it's ego-threatening. Most resist awareness to protect the ego. Again, this is where people say I can see why you would see that that way, Cody, or I can see why you would interpret it that way, but they're trying to have their cake and eat it. They want it— they want to act like they're in conscious incompetence while still being unconscious. So what's required to move from unconscious to conscious incompetence? Accept full responsibility without deflection. There can be no but. I understand, Cody Butler. I hear what you're saying, Cody Butler. I can see see your point, but there's no but. There is no but. I or anybody else that you're working with within my organization is here for one thing and one thing only: to reveal your blind spots to you. Not to placate your ego, not to boost you up. It's to reveal your blind spots, to give you the choice. Now you see your blind spot, you can do something about it, or you cannot do something about it. It's up to you. It's to reveal your delusions to you. You're delusional right now about the state of this marriage. Here's the actual state. Here's the blind spots causing the delusion. Here's a path of action that will, that will move that in the right direction. Ball's in your court. You choose what to do. You either make the changes or you don't. It's up to you now. I see why you see all of that, Cody Butler, but I'm going to respectfully disagree. Well, that's your choice. That's your choice. Moving from conscious incompetence to conscious competence. This requires structure, not intention, right? Structure, not intention. It's not enough to want to fix things. You need a structured process, which you have. Most stay stuck here consuming content instead of exact— executing on the content. This is the biggest gap You've been given the structure and you've been given a wingman, me, to reveal your blind spots. And there are people around you. It doesn't require somebody highly skilled to reveal your blind spots. It revi— all it, all it requires is somebody to be emotionally detached from your situation. This is why the group sessions are great, right? It doesn't require a highly skilled person. Another man can see your blind spots because The only reason you can't see them is because you're so emotionally engaged, you're so emotionally involved in the situation that you can't see the forest for the trees. Many times you'll see another man explaining your situation and you'll go, "Well, how's that going to work out? How ridiculous is that?" And then you realize, actually, that's me, that's my situation. It's very easy to see your error in somebody else. It's very hard to see it in yourself. It requires another person or a group of people. The assembly is not optional. For me or for anybody. Most, they start consuming instead of executing. What is required here? A repeatable behavioral system. It's not enough to say work on yourself. It's not enough to say personal development. It's not enough. You need a system that's repeatable, measurable. To go from conscious competence to unconscious competence, where the real win is, this requires consistency over time. Time is the only, uh, The only thing that's actually going to truly make this happen— now here's the thing, time is going to happen. Do not make an enemy of time because you will lose that. You'll lose that fight. People get frustrated and go, "What are you saying? It's going to take this long?" Well, that— the 6 months is going to pass, my friend. That's not negotiable. That's not optional. That's not even in question. What is in question is the condition that you're going to show up at the end of the 6 months. That's the variable. In every— this is good advice for every aspect of life, right? Do not make time your enemy because you will lose. Time will beat you. Put yourself in a situation where time becomes your friend, where, where you get compound gains with time. Property investing is a great example, right? Like, you make— when you invest in a property, you make time your friend. When you rate— when you rent, you make time your enemy. You will not beat time. And the same is true here. The next 6 months is going to happen. Make that, make that time your friend by showing up consistently, engaging, using the resources that are available to you, and show up in 6 months at least consciously competent, if not unconsciously competent. Most men revert under pressure here. They get tested. In the conscious competency stage, their wife says, you're full of it, I don't believe you, I can see that you're making an effort, but I just don't think you got it in you just to follow through on this, I don't think you're going to see it through, so on and so forth. They get frustrated, they— pressure is applied, and they revert back. Game over. So what is required here to move from the conscious to the unconscious competency? It's a required— we've said it's an identity shift through repetition over time. So the core takeaways for this session is like, you are always in one of these 4 states. You are in one of these 4 states right now. There are no— there's no other option. There's not a 5th state. Under pressure, you default to your true level. It's who you show up as when the pressure is applied that we find out who you are. We find out whether you're an apple or an orange when you get squeezed. You can tell me you're an orange, but if I squeeze you and lemon juice comes out, you're a lemon. It's only when you're squeezed do we get to find out who you are. Therefore, this is why testing is a necessary part of the process. Her responses are not that random. People think that a woman's that random. Not true at all. Women are very predictable. Their psychology is very understandable. They're not these mystic creatures that just They follow patterns, as do we. We're human beings and we're patterned. We, we follow patterns as human beings. Human, human nature, male and female, is hugely predictable, very predictable once you understand it. Her response is not random, it's a reflection of your pattern stability. She's responding to your pattern stability. And if you want to move into protect or provide a prophet-priest, the prophet has to have wisdom. And the wise man learns how to read patterns and use them to determine his own behavior. Her behavior is the canary in the mall— in the coal mine. It tells you how you're showing up. It helps you to move out of the unconscious incompetence because her behavior is what is going to ultimately inform you of that. And again, progress here is not measured by your intent, it's measured by results. So let's wrap this up. This is the final stage here, and then we'll jump over into some Q&A, man. So most men, quite frankly, stay stuck between stages 1 and 2, which is unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence. Why? Because they're simply not willing to take the ego hit. They're not willing to— they're willing to partially acknowledge that they might be wrong, they're willing to assume some responsibility be, uh, it's just too painful and it's just too much work. They want her to do the work simultaneously, which she should be doing, granted, but hey, we live in the real world, not an ideal world. Stage 3 requires structure, not motivation. You can't motivate a teenage driver to be a better driver. You have to give them structure. Here's what you do: 100 meters before the turn, you indicate. You maintain a 3-second gap between you and the next car. Being— becoming a safe driver requires structure, not motivation. Get— just telling them you're a good driver and you're doing great and everything's going well and the driving you did yesterday was awesome, you're a good driver— you don't want to motivate someone who's incompetent. You want to educate them and give them structure. Stage 4, which is unconscious competence, requires identity change, not tactics, not strategies. It requires true identity change to be permanent. And the truth here is that without intervention, regression is the default outcome. We're pack animals for a reason. Human beings are herd animals for a reason. The assembly is not optional, it's mandatory. And whether you get that, whether you're on— whether you're in this group with me right now, and we're going to we're going to go into the assembly in a minute, we're going to have a Q&A, we're going to talk about this. That's intervention. Or whether you do it through your church, or whether you form a men's group, or whether you get an accountability group online, or whether you do it with a friend, it doesn't matter to me. I don't care. If you want my help, it's here if you, if you're in a position to get that. But ultimately, you can do this without my help, but it does require intervention, and it does require accountability, and it does require people that understand this. You can find them out there. But understand, this is— building a marriage is a team sport. Becoming a leader is a team sport. They say there's no I in team. It's like, well, it's a bit cheesy, but it's true. So that's it for me, man. This presentation has concluded. I'm going to stop my screen share. If you're watching the replay, go save your marriage. If you're in the live call, let's jump over and field some questions.