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

What happens when we make life so comfortable for kids that they never learn how to handle discomfort on their own? Between overprotective parenting, smartphones, and fewer opportunities for real independence, kids are getting fewer chances to build confidence, coping skills, and resilience. We dive deeper into this in Habits & Hustle with Dave Rubin. We also chat about how smartphones are changing childhood, why exercise builds confidence and mental toughness, and why discipline will take you further than motivation. Dave Rubin is the host of The Rubin Report, which has generated more than one billion views and built an audience of millions. He is also the founder of Locals.com and a two-time New York Times bestselling author. Listen to the full episode: How Parenting Mistakes Failed Gen Z & How to Fix It | Jennifer Cohen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPOVAHD_wOA What's Discussed: (02:57) Why letting kids fail is essential for building resilience. (05:01) How smartphones are replacing real-world experiences kids used to learn from. (06:47) Why "bubble wrapping" kids can make it harder for them to adapt to the real world. (23:44) How fitness teaches discipline, patience, consistency, and work ethic. (25:31) Why getting physically stronger can build confidence and mental toughness. (31:46) How social media and filters are changing our perception of normal beauty. (34:23) Why changing a habit is so difficult once a behavior becomes your new normal. (34:51) Why discipline will take you further than motivation. (48:19) How smartphone addiction is affecting our ability to connect with other people. (49:26) Why strong relationships and social connection matter for longevity. Thank You to Our Sponsors! Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen http://www.magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com http://livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% off your first subscription. Therasage: Visit therasage.com http://therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% off your order. Your skin Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits http://getkion.com/habits for 20% off. Tru Niagen®: For supplements that are rigorously tested, third-party verified, and actually deliver what's on the label, head to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  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. But 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

• 0:49Speaker 01

  a review of your own. I read every single one. So now, let's dive in.

• 1:00Speaker 01

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• 2:21Speaker 01

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• 2:37Speaker 01

  So my entire premise and what I'm really passionate about, because now I have two kids, you have kids, you under-- 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, we're 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

• 3:21Speaker 01

  and weaker children, which is not really good for anybody, not really good for them, not good for like the world, society, and it kind of is a ripple effect. And so, I guess my, 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,

• 4:04Speaker 01

  led to a lot of these other issues that we're dealing with. There's, of course, this coddle culture that's kind of happened with people and emotional triggers, and parents who have now been overprotective and safetyism. I 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--

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. Only so many people could start.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Only so many people can start. And if your, 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, there's now silent games where you're not allowed to cheer, because you may hurt the feelings of someone else on the team.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  I haven't even heard of that one.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  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, we don't start sentences here with 'don't.' We only start with positive, 'do.'" And so, like, this is the way, like, we've been trained, like, "We don't do this. You, 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.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  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, or--

• 5:51Speaker 01

  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. I 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 poo-poo and not really think about how it has been. Like, fitness to me was like a, a microcosm of, 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, teaches you patience, all of these things that I was learning while I was like on a fitness journey.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. Why, why were you into it when you--

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Well, in the--

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Like, how young do you mean, and why?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Not even that young. Like, I was, I didn't, you know how I got into fitness, funnily enough? I didn't get into on a dance team that I wanted to get on to. Like, all my friends got into, onto this like dance, like this dance team.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  This is high school, junior high?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  No, no, it was like a, it's actually, it's called CHI. 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. It 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 gonna do?" And so, I found like some women's gym down the street of my house, and I went in to think, "Okay, 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,

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I went back the next day to do another thing. And then, like, it kind of happened by accident. And 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 like get muscular and do all these things. But what was happening was, as I was becoming physically stronger, like my, my brain, like the, like the neuro, my, 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, get a goal, like have a goal in mind. And then,

• 8:12Speaker 01

  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?" It really started from, like, the, the, the, kind of the core and crux of it all, it 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 if you, 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, in all aspects

• 8:57Speaker 01

  of your life, like, it takes on a whole, like, world in itself, and, and it kind of leads, it's like, kind of like the gateway drug to all these other things that you can accomplish in your life.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  So which do you think is more important then? Is it the habit or is it the hustle? Is it just like the routine? Or is it like the relentlessness? It's fifty fifty?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Well, I think once you start building habits into your and a routine, the hustle, like 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 like work ethic, right? Because you need to, 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, you can go to a nice hair salon and get your hair done. But you can't fake a good body. Yeah, you can go to a plastic surgeon and get some tummy tuck, boob job, a nose, but you know what?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  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 eighteen, nineteen, twenty 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 what a different version of what beauty is now, right? Like 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 warped over all these years.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  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 right, 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, right?

• 11:13Speaker 00

  That's interesting, yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Which then creates the 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, eight thousand, ten thousand, it's now 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 the women, with women. Like their, their body image and their self-esteem is wrapped up in this like fake and phony, you know, world that's not even real in the first place, right? It's crazy.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  Do you find that people can't, they just can't seemingly start to fix themselves? I find that generally people can't really start.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  That's the hardest part is to, or start and stop, whatever. It's because it is the hardest part. Because whatever you become used to, that becomes your new normal and that becomes your, your habit, right? To 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. If you just want to have like a six pack, it may or may not last, right? Like, right, like.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  It will not last.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  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. So like certain things that you do set you up for success. And they can be like, for me, I'm a big, like I'm a big person in eating protein every morning, right?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  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 eat, 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, they're for your overall well being. 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, you do things for your health that help optimize you, that really has a ripple effect later on. And like you can do other things like reading ten pages and, you know, ten pages a day to help with your brain and for your memory

• 14:18Speaker 01

  and all these other things that to keep things like cognitively going well.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  I used to never have the phone in the room at night. Now because of 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, twenty minutes have gone by and then I'm like, whoa, where was I?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Isn't that insane? So to me, it's all been the demise of the smartphones is two thousand and twelve. 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, what do you expect a child to do that, right?

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  But that also is just sucking the, 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. It's at the end of the day, you know, the most, the number one key to longevity is?

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Well, I would, it's either like health, meaning, well, of course, health. That's what I'm saying. But I don't know, being around family, probably something like that.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  The number one key to longevity is relationships. Having a strong social connection to a community or at least one person.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  And if you don't have that, like your health will rapidly decline and you will die much younger than people who actually have a close, 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, it 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.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Like, oh yeah, like walking and like maybe exercising. 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.