406. "Find Your Inner Warrior" | Overcoming Adversity with Wayne Forrest

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Wayne Forrest:
Because I had to reinvent myself. I went from this physical kid of 25 years of age who could shear sheep all day and run and climb hills and do all the farm work and was very independent to not having any movement.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. 

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host Dr. Richard. I am excited to share our guests with you today because if you've ever faced a challenge that felt impossible to overcome, our guest today, Wayne Forrest, is going to show you what's possible. After a rugby injury that left him paralyzed at 25, he transformed his life, became a certified mastery consultant, motivational speaker, award-winning transformational coach, TEDx speaker, and best selling author of his newest book, The Inner Warrior: The Power Within. 

Wayne helps people unlock their inner warrior, overcome obstacles and achieve their biggest goals all while living purpose and joy. So, in alignment with what we are trying to promote here at the Daily Helping Podcast. So, please welcome Wayne Forrest. Wayne, it is awesome to have you with us today.

Wayne Forrest:
Thank you, Dr. Richard for the lovely intro. And it's a pleasure to be with you.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
No pressure because that's a lot to live up to there. I don't usually tease, kind of, the inflection point in a person's life, but it was there in the bio and we read it. So, we're going to talk about that accident. So, when you were young, you were 25, you had that rugby accident. Was this professional rugby? Was that your career path at the time?

Wayne Forrest:
No, it was before professional rugby came in, actually. It was still just a game that people played. Yes, there was the All Blacks, which was our national team, but it wasn't professional at that stage. It became professional just after.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, what were you doing for a career at the time you were playing rugby and got that injury?

Wayne Forrest:
I had two businesses. I had a farming business that I was leasing a farm off my parents, and I used to shear sheep as a sideline. So, I don't know if you know what sheering sheep-

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I do. It's a side hustle, shearing sheep for the wool. Right.

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah, yeah. It's like a dance. They say it's probably the hardest job in the world physically because it's like running three marathons in one day. It's full on, and it's a dance between you and the sheep, pretty much cutting the wool off.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, I can say in over 400 episodes, you were the first guest who has ever sheared sheep in any capacity. So, congratulations for that. So, take us through the accident because that's where we need to be next.

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah. Well, the accident was like many other days. I had played a lot of rugby all the way through growing up from the age of five. It was a club game locally for my local club, and I was captain of the day, and we were playing another local team, and I got the ball in the last minutes of the game, and took it into contact with two of the opposition, and got held up, and looked like they were going to take the ball off me. And my mentality at that time was, "No, you're not going to take the ball off me." So, I threw myself into a position that put me in danger. 

And just as I did that, all things lined up, and someone hit me from behind, and all the weight of three or four people went over onto my neck, and I dislocated my neck, ended up with pretty much my head under my shoulder. And yeah, I've never felt pain like it. It was extrusive pain, felt like a hot poker in the back of the neck, and I couldn't breathe. I can remember just yelling out help but no one could hear me. And the game was obviously called off. And about an hour and a half later, because it was rural out in the country, the helicopter took about an hour and a half to get there.

And the doctor finally gave me some pain medicine, and I was very patchy for the next four or five days, until I woke up in the hospital bed, looking at the ceiling and thinking, "God, please let it be a bad dream." That went on for a few weeks actually, waking up thinking, "Oh, please, please, let it be a bad dream." I soon realized I couldn't move anything, not even my hands, arms. And doctor soon came in and I can remember, I just felt like I tore my heart out and said, "I got to walk again," pretty bluntly. And yeah. 

So, it was a pretty tough time. I can remember thinking to myself, "How am I going to survive this?" And that's when I first realized there's another power in us. There was this voice that just said, "You're going to do what you love." And that's what I call the inner warrior in the book. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, so many people, when they have an injury like that, they go one of two ways. They go into pills, they go into alcohol, deep depression that they never really come out of, anger and resentful for what had happened to them. And some people, they kind of go there but then they go a different way. How quickly from when you realized that you had a spinal injury that has you in a wheelchair to this day, how quickly did you realize that there is a different path? 

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah, it was definitely a road. I had my ups and downs. I think I was very lucky because I had that voice and my upbringing was to look forward, not back. My parents always taught us to look forward and move forward, which really helped me, I think. I had my bad days, don't get me wrong. I used to drink a lot of alcohol in those early days just to take away the reality of what I was dealing with, I suppose. 

So, to answer your question, it was a bit of a journey. It's now 30 years, coming up to 30 years, since that accident. So, yeah, it took a little while to really start to find who I was because I had to reinvent myself. I went from this physical kid of 25 years of age who could shear sheep all day, and run, and climb hills, and do all the farm work, and was very independent to not having any movement. So, all of a sudden, I had to rely on other people and I had to reinvent myself again. So, that definitely took some time, but I would say about five years that I really started to live a life again.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And when you mentioned that inner voice said to you that you need to do what you love, you weren't talking about sheep, I presume. No disrespect to the sheep. What was it that inherently got you excited about waking up in the morning? What do you love? Or what did you love?

Wayne Forrest:
It was farming. I loved farming. Right from an early age, I would have been, before I could walk, on the front of my grandfather's horse. In New Zealand, we used horse. Back in those days, used horse and dogs a lot. These days, it's dogs and motorbikes. But it was just my passion. I loved it. I loved being out working with animals. I liked that. And so, I didn't know how I was going to. And this is one of the secrets, really, is not needing to know how I was going to do it. I just knew what I wanted to do. And that was to go back to the farm. 

So, I decided on that, and that helped really pull me through my rehab, getting out. They told me I wouldn't push a wheelchair manually, I would have to be in an electric one. I pushed out of that hospital, and I've never been in an electric wheelchair in 30 years. So, yeah, it really helped me pull me forward. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
What did farming look like for you being paralyzed? To what degree were you involved with it and how did you find fulfillment from that shift?

Wayne Forrest:
Well, at the beginning it was daunting because I had to build my strength. But by making that decision, Dr. Richard, I reckon the universe puts things in place for you. There was a physio that was a neighbor, she had worked with spinal injuries when she was young, so she ended up coming in and working for me. And, you know, just things like that. And before I knew it, she had me transferring, she had more movement in my arms, strength. And so, I transferred into a car, started driving on my own, which then I could adapt to something if I'm up for the farm. So, once I did that, I could then have my dogs and I could get out there and whistle them and move stock.

I ended up running 1100 acres of sheep and beef farm with my now wife, who had come and worked for me as a gate opener, and helped me around the farm and stuff like that. But we literally ran that farm again. It was probably about five, six years later, after my accident.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So that puts you around the age of 30, 31, when you were doing that?

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And you dated your employee and it worked out, so good for you on that. That rarely does. But at the age of 31, this is still 25 years ago or so from that. So, working on a beef and sheep farm is a long way away from being a bestselling author and an internationally recognized coach and mentor. How did you get to there?

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah, great question. Once I achieved that, Dr. Richard, really, I wanted more. I just wanted more. I didn't know how I was going to achieve that goal. And that just blew my mind when I did. I just took steps towards it all the time. And so, that made me excited about what else could I do. And I ended up working for a charity, extreme outdoor activity charity called Backup New Zealand. I had a pilot course, and I went on all these extreme activities like paragliding, scuba diving, canoeing, all these different kinds of things. And that blew my mind again. I didn't realize that I'll be able to do these things.

But the biggest thing was I started to help people move through their fear on these courses and that made me feel really good about myself and my situation. So, I soon got into helping people, and worked with youth at a local college, mainly boys. And then, got into self-development. Found a lady called Mary Morrissey at the Brave Thinking Institute in LA, did a course with her online, and ended up in LA doing her three-day live weekend and loved it. And the rest is history. I became a coach, life master consultant. And for a boy that didn't really do too good at school because he was dyslexic and didn't know, ended up writing a book. It's an incredible journey if you just keep moving forward. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, the book in particular, you already were on this path, you were helping people, it's called The Inner Warrior: The Power Within. Tell us about why you specifically felt compelled to write that book. And then, I want to get into what the book's about. 

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah, it was because men, mainly, I feel that vulnerability, understanding that we've got this power that is around unconditional love, and we don't understand it. So, I wanted something small - it's only like 60-70 pages long - that is easy to read, that's a real beginner's book to help men, encourage men to step in that power. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, if somebody is listening to this, and ladies if you're listening to this, don't push stop because you can help your significant others and your brothers and your fathers with this too. So, how does somebody from your perspective step into their power?

Wayne Forrest:
Beautiful. I think the first tool that we need is a vision. We need something that's going to stretch us into the next version of us. So, that's the first thing. And then, we have to decide that we want to grow and become a better version of ourselves.

1. richard shuster
   I'm going to ask a question to that response because that was a great response, but there's many people that inherently know they need to make a change in their life. They don't. The analogy I have often used over the years is somebody who gets on the scale, it's not where it ought to be, their doctor hollers at them because their labs are all out of whack. So, they know they need to make a change, Wayne. But yet, they still go eat the McDonald's and they still will go binge watch something on Netflix mindless instead of starting to take steps to improve their health. And that's just a health example. There's countless examples in our work goals, our relationships with our spouses, our kids, our parents, etc. 

So, if somebody is kind of in that zone where they're stuck, they know that they need to make some kind of a shift, they know that they need to do things differently, but they've been in this loop, how do they get out of that? 

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah, I love that because it's perfect. It's awareness to start with, Dr. Richard. It's creating the awareness of, where does that loop comes from? Where does that programming comes from? So, understanding that we, as spiritual beings having a human experience, we've got two sides to our nature. The first side is the human experience, which is from when we're born to where we are right today. And there are things that have happened to us. There's beliefs that have come from family, from growing up, and a lot of these beliefs are stemming from trauma. So, people get stuck in that trauma, in that loop of feeling not good enough. 

That's what created my accident, was that I had to be better than everyone else. So, I put myself in danger to prove that to myself, right? That's the human experience. We have all these thoughts. Those same thoughts are keeping someone else stuck on the couch, eating the fries or the chippies or whatever it is, watching Netflix. There's a programming that is going on and that programming isn't necessarily them, it's just a program. 

The second part of our nature that I want to talk about is the spiritual side, and that's what I like to call the inner warrior. Some might say it's God within us or the universe in us but there's an intelligence in us. It's the same voice that said to me, "You're going to do what you love, Wayne." It didn't argue with me. It's just calm. It's just a nice smooth intuition sense of knowing in us. And that is the other side of the nature. 

That side is whole. It's not broken in any way. You and I aren't broken. We've had experiences that feel like we're broken but we're not. We're whole in essence. We're abundant in essence, just like nature. If you look at nature, it grows abundantly unless someone called a human plays with it. All right? It is genius. It's got all the answers to every question. It's got the solution to every problem if you get the right answer within us. 

So, there's this power that is breathing in us and is part of us. And so, what I do is help people step into that part of us, that side of our nature, understanding that, yes, we have to look at the trigger, we have to look at the trauma but we don't live there. We learn to step into the other side of our nature and grow into more of that, so we can have a life that we absolutely love. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And I think, Wayne, as I'm hearing you talking, many people listening to this, many people in society would agree that there's a human experience and some spiritual side to them, whatever they choose to identify with in terms of their religiosity. But you use very intentional language with the title of the book, The Warrior Within. And so, when we're talking about being a warrior that that imbues, to me, terms like strength and perseverance, a little different than this kind of universal essence of spirituality and knowledge. Like it's got more of a fierceness to it. So, tell us about the inner warrior piece of all of this.

Wayne Forrest:
Well, it's because there is a power. It doesn't matter what you've been through, that there's a power. There's a pool of life for all of us. And when we're in that trauma, I love going back to the basics, Dr. Richard, and that is there's two main energies that's pulling and pushing us. The longing for something even greater still in our life and the discontent with our current circumstances. You can't tell me that someone's sitting on their couch watching Netflix and hasn't got discontent with their life. 

So, there's two energies. It's understanding that that's the warrior in them trying to go, "Wake up, let's get off this couch. Let's create life." We are creative beings. You look at everything in our history, it's been created by a thought first, and then someone's taken action on that thought, and created the book, or the phone, or the cup, or the desk, or the house, or the community, or the village, or whatever.

We are creative beings, we're just like nature itself. Even think about how a baby is born and created. Two people come together, they fall in love, hopefully, and they have an accident or have a baby. It's the same for our life, right? It's this beautiful pull and push of creating something for our lives. And that's in every one of us. It just needs waking up, so that more people create love and things that they love for their life.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love this. I love everything you're saying. And what I like too is really for you, the warrior, it feels like is conceptualized as our ability to overcome whatever we're facing. But it sounds like where the book helps people is really driving them kind of towards accessing the inner warrior, to really be in touch with it and connect with it. So, let me put you on the spot and just ask you, if somebody's listening to this and they don't really feel like they've tapped into that, what are a couple of quick exercises somebody can do to start harnessing their inner warrior based on what we've talked about today?

Wayne Forrest:
First of all, understand that they've got an intuition. They've got a sense. It's like that sense of it's a beautiful blue sky day here in New Zealand, and the sun's beating down on us, and you go to leave the house, and something tells you, "Take the umbrella, it's going to rain," and you don't, I think we've all had this experience and we get to launch on and we go, "Damn, it's raining. I should have listened to my instinct," right? I think we've all had an experience like that. 

So, first of all, I think that's my first step is to recognize that there's something in you that has got all the answers. It's intelligence. It's your instincts. It's your intuition. Build on that. Start listening to it. And it's a simple process. And it's simply create a vision of what you would love. Listen to those two energies of the longing and the discontent within you. What would you love within that to create? And go out and start taking the steps you can from where you are to create that. 

That process alone has been the process that has taken me from, "Oh, my God. My life is over," to creating this amazing full life where I've done all these things even though I'm in a wheelchair. So, I think it's really simple. The challenge is fighting the human patterning and stepping into being a warrior. So, it's awareness of that human patterning. "Oh my god, I'm feeling like this. I'm feeling down. I feel like sitting on the couch. I feel like putting Netflix on and I just don't want to do anything." It's recognizing that that's just happening. And I choose to step out of that, and step into the inner warrior, and take a step towards my vision, which is what I would love from my long-hand discontent. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well said. Wayne, our time together has flown by. I've enjoyed talking about sheep. Nobody's ever used the word chippies on this show. So, this has been, as an American, lots of fun. In all seriousness, though, it's been a great chat. And as you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests a single question, and that is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Wayne Forrest:
Just know that if I can do it, anybody can do it. Literally, anybody can do it. So, go out there and just start simple. Create the vision of what you would love right here, right now, and step into it. And just take the steps that you can see. That's all you need to do.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well said. Wayne, tell us where people can learn about you online. 

Wayne Forrest:
Yeah, I've got a website, Dr. Richard, wayneforrest.com. Wayne, or one letter, Wayne Forrest. Forrest has got two R's, like "Run forest run." I reckon that's quite funny considering I'm in a wheelchair. If they feel like they really resonate with this stuff and they feel like they're stuck, I am willing to offer 10 complimentary one hour one-on-one sessions where we look at that struggle, that challenge, what might be blocking you from creating that life that you'd love. And then, we'll look at what it is that you would love to create. We call that the vision, the dream. And I will help you step into that dream by taking a step in the right direction to cross that gap.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Beautiful. And let's let's be clear too for everybody listening. That's not 10 free sessions for everybody who joins it. It's 10 people, first 10 in can spend an hour with Wayne, which is very generous of him to offer. But we will-

Wayne Forrest:
Like you said, Dr. Richard, I've only got 10 spots open. And there's a value to that too. It's $250 complimentary to your listeners. So, if you are really keen, then jump in there and get one of those 10 that are available. And I'd love to serve and help you step into your power.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Perfect. And for those of you in the car, we got you covered. Everything Wayne Forrest will be linked in the show notes for this episode at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Wayne, thank you for spending some time with me today. I loved our chat. Really enjoyed hearing your journey and appreciate everything you're doing in the world today.

Wayne Forrest:
Thank you, Dr. Richard. It's been a pleasure, mate.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And to each and every one of you who took time out of your day as well, thank you for listening to this. If you liked it, if you're inspired, if you're gonna go tap into your inner warrior, go give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice because this is what helps other people find this show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post it in your social media feeds using the hashtag, #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.