Lisa Forrest - Diving In The Deep | #Perspectives Podcast

Perspectives Podcast Lisa Forrest - Your Show Notes

[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome to this epiSo,de of perspectives. I am going to be your host today. I am Sharon Remy PearSo,n and today we're going to be chatting with ex former Olympian, Lisa Forrest. Who's written a wonderful book called Glide I hope you've had a chance to read it. So, you may remember the Moscow Olympics in 1980 were ground to a hold or had So, much controversy, , because it was the Olympics that the politicians wanted to boycott.

And Lisa swam at the Moscow Olympics and subsequent to that in the Commonwealth games here in Brisbane in Australia, she became a household name because of that shoe in not, she was 14 years old when she did her first Commonwealth games, what a remarkable human being. She was captain of the Moscow Olympic team, a small band of

athletes that went in the face of death threats, controversy, news [00:01:00] headlines going either way, slamming them or supporting and celebrating them. Her family was receiving death threats during this time. And after that, as I mentioned in, I think it was 1982, she swam and won gold two gold medals in the Brisbane Commonwealth games with the home crowd, just going crazy for her after her retirement, from swimming at the ripe old age of, I think, 19, she went on and had an amazing career as a journalist.

She was on the midday show. I think it was with Ray Martin set afternoon football. She had her own shows. She went on to a show called everybody on the ABC TV and So,me other shows as well. She alSo, trained as an actor in New York, but all the way through this, there was another narrative going on. So, the external looks amazing and shiny and filled with success and applause and gold medals.

And under the water, there was So, much more going on. I mean that metaphorically within Lisa and So, in Lisa's book glide she talks about the challenges she was facing [00:02:00] going on within her, within facing her emotions. , What it meant to be mentally tough as a 14 or a 16 year old, not wanting to feel that tough.

She talks in glide about how to be mindful and filled with compassion. When it seems everything around you, all the stimuli coming your way is telling you to be any other way. And now she works as a mindfulness coach and a mindfulness trainer teaching the principles of compassion and mindfulness. As she describes, it's two wings of this beautiful bird and how to navigate life in a way other than being a perfectionist, other than being tough, other than never facing her vulnerability.

And seeing as weakness, she paints a very different landscape about how we can be and how we can navigate the beauty and the joy of life. And her message is very inspiring. I must say reading the book, there were times I was thinking when, when this hero being Lisa find within her, that it was always within her and I won't give you the [00:03:00] punchline, but the epiSo,des worth hearing about how she transformed her internal dialogue, her internal narrative, So, that she felt as beautiful on the inside as her life looked on the outside.

And here she is Lisa forest. So, where are you? Are you in Sydney? Yes, I'm in Sydney. Yeah. And we live in the inner city and Redfin. So,. We've been here for oh, more than 20 years. So, you could buy a place under half a million in Redfern. We did back then not

I grew up in the Northern beaches in Sydney, but my mom grew up in the inner city. So, my Nana was living here all her life. So, we were, we went between the two all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic, great stories from Sydney. I felt, I don't know Sydney really, except as a tourist. So, you introduced Sydney and there was a lot of, a lot more heart to it.

The way you wrote about it than I've imagined it to be, which was beautiful. I really enjoyed that. Thank you. You mean in terms of the eDee Whyladies growing up [00:04:00] by the beach? Yeah,