How Am I Supposed to Maintain My Confidence During Divorce or Marriage Collapse

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Transcript

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Hey Cody Butler here, and in this video I want to talk to you about how are you supposed to maintain your confidence during divorce, separation, or a marriage collapse? Because if you're going through a separation right now, chances are your confidence has taken a bit of a knock. So, how are you supposed to stay confident through this? How are you stuck supposed to stay confident after this? So, after working with literally thousands of men now, I see the same questions over and over again, the same challenges coming up. So today I'm going to share with you what's actually going on with your confidence, why it feels threatened, and what you need to do to come out the other side of this stronger than ever before. So the questions that I get posed all the time in this scenario is how do I stay confident during a divorce? How do I maintain my self-esteem, my confidence, sense of self-worth, value here? We can interchange these and package these together right during this video. I'm talking about confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, value, personal value, all of these things. When I say confidence or value, use these interchangeable. So the next one is how can I believe in myself or continue to believe in myself after being rejected in this marriage, or at least what feels like rejection right now? And how do I recover from this? How do I get my confidence back when the person that I love rejects me and no longer wants me? So we're gonna talk about all of that. So what is actually going on here is it feels like your confidence is being destroyed, it's being taken away. But the question is, has it or has something else actually happened here that you're confusing with confidence? We're gonna look at that now. So the key understanding here at this point is if your confidence has collapsed during this crisis, it's not because your value has disappeared or something has happened to damage your self-esteem or conf or confidence, it's because something much, much deeper is going on beneath the surface. Now, we can look at the surface level stuff here and make you feel better temporarily, or we can get to the bottom of what's actually going on and make a permanent transformation to where confidence is never an issue in your life ever again. So confidence isn't what you think it is right now. Now, most men associate my wife has rejected me with therefore I've lost my confidence, or I've lost my confidence because something has happened. That's what most men associate, but the reality is all confidence is really is an expression of certainty. And what's actually happened, what's actually happened here is a collapse in certainty. You were certain that this was the state of the marriage, this was this was your reality. You were certain how your wife felt about you, you were felt, you were certain what your present and your future was gonna look like. Before your wife brought separation to you, there was a lot of certainty in the marriage. And all confidence is is an expression of certainty. If you're confident the brakes on your cars are gonna your cars are gonna work, all you're saying is I have a high level of certainty around the brakes working. If you're confident that you can drink the water, you all you're saying is I have a high level of certainty that the water is safe. So when you understand that what's actually collapsed here is not your confidence, self-worth, self-esteem, value, etc. What's actually collapsed here is your sense of certainty, and you're confusing that sense of certainty with confidence. When you can understand this, you can see that actually your confidence really has nothing to do with this. And when we can separate that the confidence comes, it really is just a sense of certainty, we can find that sense of certainty elsewhere, and we can look at what's actually happened to where your confidence isn't going to be a problem at all by the time we end this video. So the key understanding here is confidence isn't the opposite of fear. You can say I'm confident that this investment is going to play out. It doesn't mean you don't have fear making the investment, or you can say I have confidence in whatever. It doesn't, confidence isn't the opposite of fear. Confidence actually is certainty about reality, as we just discussed. So the problem isn't that you've lost confidence, the problem is actually that you no longer know what is true or what you were certain was true about certain things, i.e. how your wife feels about you, the situation, the marriage, so on and so forth, is no longer true. Now, over 70% of men, when surveyed in a divorce marriage collapse scenario, never saw it coming. So they had a lot of certainty before the separation came. They believed a lot of stuff to be true about the marriage, the family, everything, the situation, the wife, that now is no longer true. And that is where the loss of confidence truly is coming from. So all that's happened here is not the real problem, is not that your confidence has collapsed or your self-esteem has collapsed. The real problem is that actually your worldview just collapsed. What you believe to be true and what you had certainty in has just collapsed. That is what truly is going on. So everything that you believed up until the separation being presented to you now suddenly becomes questionable. What was real now suddenly has to be questioned. So when this happens, questions flood the man's mind. I'm sure right now you're experiencing some of these areas that previously required no questioning at all, that came with a huge amount of certainty, now have to be put on the table and the certainty is removed. So questions like, did she ever love me? Was any of this ever real? Am I a failure? Am I a good husband? Am I a good father? Who am I now? What does my future look like? If my wife and my family, which I thought was going to be my future with a high level of certainty, now has been removed from me, what does my future look like? All that certainty has collapsed. Your worldview has actually collapsed. So what's going on actually is you're trying to reconcile the worldview that you've built with the reality that is now in front of you. They're two different things, right? Those two no longer match. So you at this point in time, you you have no choice. Reality, your situation is forcing you to face what you believe to be true, and juxtaposition that over the top of what now actually is true because reality is not allowing you to see it any other way, and these two no longer match. So this is causing some issues inside of your mind, which you are recognizing as confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, value, etc. etc. When actually that's not the case at all. So the key understanding here is what's going on with the collapse of this marriage separation is you're not just losing a marriage, you're not just losing a wife, you're actually losing the the version of reality that you believe to be true. That's what's actually being taken from you, that's what's actually destabilizing you and causing the earthquakes inside of you that you really don't want to deal with right now, the panic, the fear, the overwhelm, the desperation. Your whole worldview has been removed from you. So what's happened is your confidence has collapsed because certainty has collapsed. That that's exactly what is going on here. So what's been happening is you've been building your safety, your confidence, how you feel safe in the world on the wrong foundations. So the marriage has become significantly more than just a marriage. It's significantly more than just a relationship or a partner. It's become safety, it's become an identity for you, it's become stability, it's become proof of your con proof of your value, proof of your worth, proof of your competence, all of these things. It's become validation of who you are as a man, and it's it's it's contributed significantly to the value that you assign to yourself as a man or as a human being. So put that to put that another way, the marriage simply has not just been a part of your life, it has been become the foundation that's underneath your underneath your life. Everything that you've been building on has been built on the identity surrounding this marriage, and now that that's in question, it's for that the foundation of your very life is uh is shaking. And who wouldn't suffer from a lack of confidence or self-esteem when everything that you believe to be true and everything that you have built your entire identity on or a good chunk of it is now shaking beneath you? Of course, that's going to challenge your confidence. So when this foundation that you've built on top of the marriage, or or the foundation that is the marriage is the relationship, disappears, everything built on top of that foundation begins to shake. So the key understanding here to take away is that up until this point you've not been standing on truth, you've not been standing on a solid foundation. You were standing on an interpretation of what was going on. You believed it to be true, but clearly it's not true now. So what you were standing on, truth is immutable and unchangeable. What you have core truth has now been shaken and changed and is in the process of changing. So you were simply standing on your interpretation of what you thought was going on. Now the collapse isn't showing you that you've lost confidence or isn't causing you to lose confidence, it's actually revealing that what you've been building your entire life on is nothing more than an illusion. And at some point this was going to happen because if the found out foundation that you've been building on is sand, at some point that sand is going to shift and everything on top of it is going to collapse. It may not be today, tomorrow, or next week, but at some point that is going to happen. So again, the loss of confidence, or how do you keep your confidence during this? This is a great opportunity for you to rebuild and understand where confidence comes from and the fact that you actually truly never really had confidence in the first place. It was just an illusion. Now you have the opportunity to develop permanent, lasting confidence. So to put this another way, you borrowed value from the marriage, you borrowed your confidence and your self-esteem from the marriage. Now, these are really important to us as men, right, but not only are these things being challenged now, they're also being challenged very publicly. This is not a great thing. And the fact that we're having to actually face these issues internally, worth acceptance, significance, confidence, etc., it's bad enough that we got to deal with that ourselves. It's even worse. It's catastrophic that that now is on display for the world to see. So when you understand that all of these things never actually came from the marriage, they they were just borrowed from the marriage, and they felt real at the time, but the reality was the marriage, you were just borrowing, you didn't have the worth, you didn't have acceptance, significance, identity. They they did not reside inside of you, they were not a part of your DNA. You did not find your confidence based on truth and what is truly inside of you on something that nobody can take away from you ever. You borrowed those things, you borrowed those identities and those values from the marriage, which always puts you on shaky ground. If you're borrowing identity from the marriage, then what happened, what has happened, happens. And when the marriage collapses, all of those values collapse with it as well. So the marriage never created these values inside of you. The marriage never made you confident, the marriage never made you valuable, the marriage never made you competent. It just merely appeared to confirm that you had these qualities already. So now that the marriage is gone or is being threatened, it also feels like your confidence, value, self-esteem is disappearing with it, too. This is what's going on. So the key understanding from this is that your value and your self-esteem, confidence was never created and it never came out of the marriage in reality. It was always just borrowed through the marriage, and borrowed value always comes with a bill and it comes with interest. So again, to summarize, the marriage didn't create the confidence that you feel, it simply became the place that you borrowed confidence from. And now you understand that that confidence was never in the marriage, it was always in you. What actually creates the confidence has not been threatened, it's not been challenged, and it can never actually truly be taken from you. The only thing that can be actually taken from you, which has been taken from you or in the process of being taken, is the illusion, the interpretation, the incorrect interpretation that some form of value that makes you inherently valuable as a human being or gives you confidence is coming from that institution of marriage. That's all you've actually lost. So the great deception here is the lie that my marriage has ended, or my marriage is in the process of ending, therefore my value has decreased, or therefore this says something about who I am as a human being, or this challenges my confidence. This is not true at all. The truth is nothing external to you, i.e., the marriage or your job or your income or your bank account or your car or your watch or anything has the ability to increase or decrease your confidence or value as a human being. If any of those things are giving you confidence, it's simply borrowed value, is all it is. Those things never have the ability to increase or decrease your confidence. The marriage wasn't the source of the confidence, it was simply masking something else, is all that was going on. So the pain that you're experiencing right now isn't proof of anything, it isn't proof that you've lost value, confidence, or confidence. All it is is exposing where you believed that your confidence came from. Now, the the the real secret here is in the title, right? How am I supposed to maintain my confidence during this marriage collapse? Well, it could this could only this question could only be asked because you believe that your confidence lies within the marriage, which is simply not true at all. So the key understanding is your wife's decision to stay, your wife's decision to go, whatever has happened, hasn't changed your value and it really hasn't affected who you are as a human being at all. All it's done is exposed that you were borrowing confidence from the marriage instead of finding that sense of confidence internally in who you are, what you are, and the inherent value that you have as a human being, not in a borrowed institution. So the marriage wasn't creating your value, it was concealing the belief that you had none. Now let's explore that very quickly before we move on. If your confidence, self-esteem value has now been diminished greatly or destroyed because the marriage has threatened, what that is revealing is that zero confidence exists inside of you. And all of your confidence came from that institution. That is what it is actually revealing. And the gift here is now we get to go to work on that. Step number one of any healing process is diagnosis. We've got to actually accurately diagnose what the problem is, and only then can we actually start to move forward. And what's happening here is the marriage is accurately diagnosing, it was concealing that your entire value was coming out of that institution, and that truly you had no confidence all along. This again explains why the loss of the marriage is so painful, so consequential, you feel so much panic because a lot rides on this right now. But quite frankly, a lot doesn't need to ride on this at all. And as soon as you realize that actually, I don't need this marriage for my confidence, I don't need this marriage to feel valuable as a human being, it removes a huge amount of pressure from what your wife is experiencing. And ultimately, if she's asking for separation or divorce, what she's asking for is relief from the pressure. And a lot of that pressure comes from the fact that your entire identity and your mental health and your well-being is be is built upon that marriage being a healthy institution, and it puts a huge amount of pressure on her to create that health. When you realize that actually I can be happy outside of this marriage, not that you should aspire to that necessarily, like marriage is a great thing, and I highly commend you for wanting to fight for your marriage. And my point here is not the marriage is worthless and not worth fighting for. That's not what I'm saying at all. My point that I'm making really truly is that you've been showing up to the marriage in an unhealthy way, and you've been borrowing and taking stuff from the marriage that really shouldn't be coming from the marriage. And when you recognize that and you're able to replace the borrowed confidence from the marriage from true internal authority, true masculine authority, true masculine identity, and you start to see yourself as valuable, worthwhile, confident, and attractive in your own right, irrespective of what's going on in the marriage, that removes a huge amount of pressure from your wife, which is what she's trying to escape, and it actually makes it significantly more likely that she's going to come back. Confidence is very attractive, and when you find that confidence internally, she's going A, she's going to be attracted to that confidence, which gives you a much better chance of reconciling, and she's also going to be relieved of a lot of the pressure that your lack of confidence is currently creating. So when the reconciliation does play take place, it's in a much, much healthier environment, and the marriage benefits massively as a result. So what am I saying here? What am I suggesting? Well, rebuild your confidence on what is true, not on your inaccurate interpretation of what has been true up to this point. If you still want to hold on to everything that you've believed up to this point, I don't know what to tell you, but if you're ready to start looking at truth and start to take the advice of Jesus, who said, Know the truth, for it is the truth that shall set you free, then we stop asking the question, how do I rebuild my confidence? How do I how do I get through this with my confidence in intact? We don't try to rebuild confidence, we try to rebuild certainty. This is what you're actually true, truly craving. You're you're craving some certainty within your life, and you simply have no confidence that that's going to happen. But once you understand that your life is in your hands, your destiny is in your hands, life is your choice, and you have the ability to create that certainty, then that certainty is confidence. And maybe you don't know how to create that certainty right now, but that is what we're here for. And if you want some more advice on that and how to turn your marriage around, do have some resources, a free workshop in the links in the description where you can get some direct advice on that, or you can work with me, or there'll be some other videos on this YouTube that deal directly with that. But what we actually do here, getting back to this video, is we're not trying to rebuild your confidence, we're trying to rebuild the certainty that you experience in life, and we're trying to we're gonna do that outside without the marriage, without borrowing from the marriage, without you needing approval from other people, without you needing to be accepted by other people, without that certainty being based on certain outcomes happened happening, or on another person's choice, such as your wife having to choose to come back into the marriage for that certainty to be created. Or in other words, the destination here, the goal man, is to arrive at a place of emotional sovereignty. My certainty is created sovereignly inside of me, independent of circumstances, people, environments, etc. I control my emotions, I'm in control of my destiny, I'm in control of my certainty, I control how I feel, I control if I'm positive or negative, I control if I feel certain or uncertain, I feel if I'm I control if I've if I'm full of fear or if I'm full of faith. Emotional sovereignty. That is what emotional sovereignty is. Everything that we desire is generated internally to the exclusion of the marriage, wife, work, money, finances, etc. etc. Not that those things are not good and should be pursued, they should, but your value should not be coming out of those things. Your perception and your interpretation of how the world works and truth, reality, false reality are still mixed up if that's the case. So our goal here is to rebuild your life upon truth, which the truth is all of the things that you are seeking right now, the certainty exists within and is available to you at any point in time simply by a choice. So this truth that the certainty is available to you. Which is what you actually crave in the confidence, is available to you at any time and remains true, whether you're married, separated, single, divorced, it doesn't matter. Rich, poor, it doesn't matter. It's available to you. That emotional sovereignty is a gift that you can claim at any given point in time. So our key understanding here is rebuild your confidence on what is true, not on borrowed certainty from someone else. Build your reality upon truth, not the version of reality that you've created. And the truth is that circumst that truth doesn't change because circumstances change. Truth can withstand any storm. When you are able to find that certainty in any place, at any time, in any storm, the economy is good, the economy is bad, we're at war, we're at peace, the marriage is going well, you're getting divorced. Anything, it doesn't matter. So what remains true? What is true? What remains true today, regardless of whether your wife comes back, she doesn't, whether the marriage reconciles or whether you divorce and move on. What's true today, regardless, is your value as a human being, is your value as a man. That does not change. Your competency does not change. Your significance does not change. Your value as a human being is no greater or no less. It actually truly remains unchanged. It's no different than it was before the marriage. It's no different than it is now, and it's no different than it will be tomorrow. Your true value as a human being is constant, it's consistent. When you actually move into that place of emotional sovereignty, and you start to actually operate out of true masculine authority and you stop borrowing the things that you should be generating yourself, your value is a consistent, it's a constant certainty becomes a constant, and this is where you actually truly start to show up with unshakable confidence. Nothing can shake you. So what's happened here is your circumstances have changed as they're going to continue to change. Your health is going to change as your life continues, your marriage, your marriage is going to change, your business is going to change, your finances are going to change, political parties are going to change, the state of the world, the economy, the environment is going to change. All of these things change and will continue to. Just because these things are changing, though, does not mean that your value is changing. Your value remains constant throughout. The value you had at the beginning of your marriage is the value you hold now, and it will be the value you take with you on your deathbed. It never changes. What changes is your interpretation. So hopefully you can see that when you change your interpretation, your level of confidence changes. Confidence is something that you choose to have, not something that is given to you from the environment. It is entirely in your hands. So key understandings is that your value, your confidence, self-esteem, self-worth was never ever determined by anything external, and it never was and it never will be. Yes, the marriage has changed. Yes, the marriage is changing, and it can change back as well. And in fact, if your goal is to save the marriage, which I which I truly hope it is, then you understand your real value as a human being is only going to help that and is only going to make it more likely to happen. So the identity shift that needs to take place here, your practical steps is the confident man no longer asks the question, how do I save my confidence or how do I get my confidence back in this situation? He asks the question, what have I mistakenly believed was giving me confidence all along? What have I interpreted incorrectly in reality? And what is truth now? How do I build my confidence on a rock that never changes, not in sand? That man who gets his confidence no longer borrows value from a marriage or an institution or somewhere else. Your marriage is not borrowed, or your value is not borrowed somewhere that the confident man chooses to recognize his value. You can't create value because you are inherently priceless already. How can you add value to something that's in that's priceless? The question of how do I create value within myself, how do I create conf this is a silly question because the key to your confidence returning is not you building it, it's you recognizing it. It was always there, it never left, and it is available to you at any time you choose to take it. So, as we've said, he no longer depends on that external in external environment for certainty. He lives from internal truth, he creates that certainty instead of borrowing it. So Ken Standing here is confidence isn't rebuilt by getting your wife back, confidence is built by reconnecting which with which was always true. And what was always true is you are an inherently valuable human being. And until you understand that, and until you accept that, you're always going to struggle with confidence. Once you understand that, and once you fully accept it, embrace it, and start living it, your life will change so quickly, it'll make your head spin. So let's bring this home. The conclusion here is the greatest gift that this marriage crisis has given you is discovering that your value and your self-esteem, your confidence was never created and never found inside of your marriage. The marriage didn't take your confidence and your value, it revealed that you had been borrowing it all along and that you're now paying interest on that loan and you simply don't need to. You simply accept that you are a truly valuable human being and you start to operate that. So if you like this content and you want more of this, give me give me a thumbs up, subscribe, leave a comment letting me know. And if you've got any content that you'd like to see, leave a comment in the description. If you've got a video you'd like me to make, let me know. And if enough people want it, I'll go ahead and make that. So God bless you, brother. You're a valuable human being. The sooner you can see that, the sooner your life's gonna turn around. And if you want uh another video on confidence or changing your life, right here. If not, we'll see in that we'll see in the next video.