Episode 588: Resilience, Discipline, and the Habits That Build Real Confidence

0:00Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where we talk about the habits, strategies, and mindset shifts that actually make a difference in your health, happiness, and success. In this episode, we're getting into what happens when we remove too much discomfort from our lives. We talk about overprotective parenting, how smartphones are changing childhood and human connection, and also why exercise can build confidence far beyond the gym, and how social media has distorted our perception of beauty, and why discipline will take you further than motivation ever will.

0:39But before diving in, if you're listening right now and you've gotten something out of this show, please do me a favor. Hit subscribe if you haven't already, and leave a review of your own. I read every single one. So now, let's dive in.

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2:37So my entire premise and what I'm really passionate about, because now I have two kids, you have kids, you under... Like it's much more it's something that I'm really struggling with, to be honest, as a parent, because I'm really about basically doing hard things, letting my kids fail and how failure is how everybody learns. That's how I learned. I was I was I grew up similar to you or the same age, like where we had to figure shit out. There was consequences to bad behavior. And then that's how you learn not to do that thing again. And now there is, you know, no score games, participation trophies, helicopter parenting, you know, safe spaces, trigger warnings, all of these things that are kind of they're creating a very soft next generation of weaker and weaker children, which is not really good for anybody, not really good for them, not good for like the world, society.

3:26and it kind of is a ripple effect. And so I guess my intention is to kind of bring it up yet again into whatever echo chamber I'm talking to and hopefully try to get people on board to help change the social norms of what we are seeing. What I've noticed and what the research has even shown is that people who were born after 1995, all the things that you and I grew up with, riding our bike, getting into trouble, dating, flirting, just kind of like having fun or fighting with your friend even, 80 % of that shit is now gone and it's replaced by screen time and smartphones and Instagram, which is then I think led to a lot of these other issues that we're dealing with is, of course, this coddle culture that's kind of happened with people and emotional triggers and parents who have now been overprotective and safetyism.

4:16I just feel like it's really kind of a troubling time because people are just now soft because they're not even allowed or it's not even like it's not even a thing to even go on a bike ride. People are not even doing it. People don't even have bikes anymore. Right. Or they're not even participating in in sports. Kids are not even doing that as much as they used to because they're stuck on a screen the whole time. And what's happening is if kids are not the ones who are starting the game, the parents complain. Right. If the coach. Right. Right. Only so many people can start. Only so many people can start.

4:51And if you're if your kid's not one of them, you'll hear it from the parent. Or if someone if the if the coach raises his voice, parents complain. Or the best is like I went to the silent games where you're not allowed to cheer because you may hurt the feelings of someone else on the team. I haven't even heard of that one. Oh, God. Or you can't say the word don't. Have you heard this one? You can only start a sentence with do. So I went to my kid's soccer game and I'm like, don't go that way. And the mom beside me was like horrified by me. Would say like, we don't start sentences here with don't.

5:22We only start with positive do. And so like, this is the way like we've been trained. Like we don't do this. We only do that. So now what's happening is we're bubble wrapping our kids and to making them kind of the environment to kind of adapt to them versus the child or the person to adapt to the environment. So this is like what's happening. What are some of the habits that you have? or when did you start developing some habits that kind of led you to a place of success? I would say the first thing, honestly, is exercise. Like I think people really under-index the importance of taking your fitness and your health seriously.

5:58I think health is a number one thing. If you don't have that, you have nothing. And I started doing that at a very young age. And I think it really did teach me a lot of foundational, fundamental skills in life that people maybe just maybe papoo and not really think about how it has been. Like fitness to me was like a microcosm of everything else because it teaches you discipline. It teaches you patience. It teaches you like you need to be consistent in anything you do to be successful. It teaches you patience. All of these things that I was learning while I was like on a fitness journey. Yeah, why were you into it?

6:33Well, in the point - Like how young do you mean and why? I've been that young. Like I was, I didn't, you know how I got into fitness, funnily enough? I didn't get into it on a dance team that I wanted to get onto. Like all my friends got into onto this like dance, like this dance team. This high school, junior high? No, no, no. It was like a, it's actually, it's called high. It was like an Israeli folk dancing troupe. I'm Canadian. And it was like the biggest thing when I was a kid, like all, like I went, I went to a private Jewish school for many years and then I went somewhere else, but it wasn't part of the school.

7:03It was actually like a national dancing team, like troupe. And I didn't make it, but all my friends made it. And so I was really bummed out. And so because they were all now going to be doing this, like all the practicing, I was like, what am I going to do? And so I found like some women's gym down the street of my house. And I went in to think, OK, maybe I'll just do this because apparently I'm not a good enough dancer. And so I went and did like some, you know, step class of some kind and I ended up liking it. And so I went back the next day to do another thing. And then like it kind of happened by accident.

7:33And then slowly but surely, I became really strong, like physically strong, not because it was even intentional. I didn't go there because I wanted to get muscular and do all these things. But what was happening was as I was becoming physically stronger, like my brain, like the neuroplasticity, my brain chemistry was changing because I started to be like really confident, much more confident than I was prior. my mental toughness was really becoming something was actually really shifting and it was changing like the neuroplasticity of my brain to like to really believe I can do hard things and to you know seek at a goal like have a goal in mind and then and so I really used exercise as kind of like a stepping stone to do all these other things in my life later on and if I when I really look back at like the, when I kind of reverse engineer and I think of like, why, why am I so bold and why am I so ambitious and driven and all these things?

8:32It really started from like the, the, the, the kind of the core and crux of it all came from like exercise. And so to me, that's one habit that I think is fundamental for people to, to really partake in and not just a little bit. I think that you've got to take it somewhat seriously. And I think once you do and you see the effects of what it does for your life and all aspects of your life, it takes on a whole world of itself. And it kind of leads, it's kind of like the gateway drug to all these other things that you can accomplish in your life. So which do you think is more important then? Is it the habit or is it the hustle?

9:13Is it just like the routine or is it like the relentlessness? It's 50-50? Well, I think once you start building habits and a routine, you then are someone who is much more committed to getting to the goal that you want, which means then you have to hustle to get it. And also, I think the exercise teaches you work ethic, right? Because that's one thing in the world and one thing in life that you can't buy, right? You can't buy a good physique. You can't buy a good body, right? You can buy everything else in life. You can make money and buy a car. You can buy a house. You can buy clothes. You can go to a nice hair salon and get your hair done.

9:52But you can't fake a good body. Yeah, you can go to a plastic surgeon and get a tummy tuck, a boob job, a nose. But you know what? Like a body is earned. And I think there's something that comes with that. Plastic surgery has become a massive business beyond just for the rich and famous. It's become, you know, very, very prevalent and popular for like 18, 19, 20 year old peak girls who are like going to Starbucks and they're like, yeah, I'm going to get my nose done tomorrow. Oh yeah, I'm going next week. I don't know what the word is, but I think we've all been so conditioned to believe a different version of what beauty is now, right?

10:27Like the beauty is, and maybe it's different. I live in LA, but fake lips, fake, you know, tons of filler, like a lower facelift. But what has been considered beautiful has like changed and morphed over all these years. And now I think that people, because of social media and Instagram and all of these like fake phony influencer, beauty influencers or just regular people who are now so full of plastic surgery, that has now become what people believe to be beautiful. And if you're natural and you're like normal, that's like considered ugly. And I think what's happened is COVID really fucked us up because what happened was people were looking at their natural, normal face on Zooms all day.

11:13Right. It's interesting. Yeah. And all they were noticing was all their imperfections. And when you're on Instagram, you're using a filter. Most people are using filters. So now you're not even seeing yourself as you really are. You're only seeing yourself with a filter. So when you don't look at yourself with a filter and you're only seeing yourself in natural form, like on a Zoom or just like in a mirror, you're horrified of how you look. which then creates a situation where why plastic surgery is up like a thousand percent you can't even get an appointment with these people and prices for plastic surgery has skyrocketed to like i don't know let's say a nose job used to be five thousand eight thousand ten thousand it's not like twenty five thousand and you can't even get in to see a doctor and i think it's it's become like it's become a real sad state of affairs and then that's what's kind of what's happening with women.

12:07Their body image and their self-esteem is wrapped up in this fake and phony world that's not even real in the first place. It's crazy. Do you find that people can't seemingly start to fix themselves? I find that generally people can't really start. That's the hardest part, or start and stop, whatever. It's because it is the hardest part. Because whenever you become used to, that becomes your new normal and that becomes your habit. right? So to start a new thing and be consistent with it is really, really difficult. That's why I tell people that you should never start anything. You should always have a bigger reason and a bigger why to why you're doing it.

12:47If you just want to have like a six pack, it may or may not last, right? Like, right, like your motivation will not. And you should never rely on motivation. You should only rely on discipline because this discipline will take you much further in life than motivation will ever. So to have a bigger why as to why you're doing it and then to also start with small things, right? Like make a commitment to yourself that you can do something small and then follow through. And I think what happens a lot of times, people don't follow through and then they become really shameful and ashamed that they didn't and then that takes them down a bad rabbit hole where they won't do it again.

13:25So like certain things that you do set you up for success and they can be like for me i'm a big but like i'm a big person in eating protein every morning right because it satiates me it satiates my it like balances my my blood sugar so then my brain works better i think another big one is like for like drinking i put like i i take a whole lemon and i not just squeeze the lemon i take the rind and i put that whole thing in water and i eat that in the morning. Again, it's just like a detoxifier. These are all things that like, they're, they're not just there for your overall wellbeing. It's not, it's not because I want to get abs or a great ass from it, but it like puts you in like, it, you do things for your health that help optimize you that really has a ripple effect later on.

14:11And like, you can do other things like reading 10 pages and you know, 10 pages a day, um, to help with your brain and for your memory and all these other things to keep things like cognitively going well. I used to never have the phone in the room at night now because the kids, I keep it. But like, I'll be like, all right, I'm not going to touch it. And the next thing I know, 20 minutes have gone by and then I'm like, whoa, where was I? Isn't that insane? So to me, it's all been the demise of the smartphone since 2012. Not to go back to the first part of this, but I think that imagine if you and I who are grown adults can't keep ourselves off the phone.

14:48Would you expect a child to do that, right? But that also is just sucking the life out of all of us. That's why if you haven't noticed, just even adults, forget about kids. Like people aren't even able to like connect and socialize because they are addicted to the phone and to the following count that they have and the engagement that they have. And everything now has become digitized and all about technology and it's ruining everything. At the end of the day, you know, the number one key to longevity is? Well, it's either like health, meaning, well, of course, health. No. I don't know, being around family.

15:31The number one key to longevity is relationships. Having a strong social connection to a community or at least one person. And if you don't have that, your health will rapidly decline and you will die much younger than people who actually have at least one person that they can connect to. Plus, like I was saying earlier, if you want to be young and want to stay young, create habits and rituals that keep you young. Exercise. Walk a lot. Walking is the number one exercise. People can laugh at me all they want. but I think walking a lot is so good, not just for your physical health, but for your mental health, for your mental health.

16:13It is, it helps you with being focused and thinking and being creative. And so all of these things, like these like healthy habits that they seem, like I said earlier, like these things seem very frivolous, you know, like, oh yeah, they're just stupid. Like, oh yeah, like walking and like maybe exercise. But the people who I see who've done these things, you know consistently over time have truly optimized their lives not just professionally but personally they're the most successful not just professionally but personally because they've trained themselves to like to to what is important in their lives and like figure out that if you want something bad enough you need to work for it you need to be consistent with it you need to practice it Thank you.