The BraveHeart Story of Forbes Riley on The Secret to Living a Fulfilling Life PART 2

Forbes Riley: But, I'm mostly sad when I think about it that I didn't get to meet my kids. My son is the epitome of my dad and all the other good things that I have in life mixed with my ex-husband. He's a strong, amazing kid who's at university right now. And my daughter reminds me a lot of my mom, which is crazy that I have these beautiful twins that are okay. You want God and a fantastical seed for my mother's birthday, March 20th, the first year after she passed away. And they would do it on December 7th, which is my dad's birthday. Go look at that. Go figure look at that. I'm a big believer in signs literally signposts I can't express to you how clearly if you look the signs appear everywhere they're there. I know there it's not just it's I don't have A special connection to the universe, but I notice them and I've always noticed them and I love that Some people are very oblivious. They're very earthbound and they go about their daily life. But if you stop for a moment And say to yourself that magic's real. How do babies get born? How do trees come back? How do dogs know how to eat? It's all kind of magical to me. I know it's just kind of crazy. Right?

So for example, I grew up in a certain house, the number of my house. Well, if I just watched Splatter University, the first movie I starred in, turns out the number of my house is the number of the classroom that I teach in. When I noticed that, I thought. Wow. When I had my 50th birthday celebration out in Las Vegas, the room that I got booked in randomly was that same number, that number appeared on a clock. And so I look at those things. The other day, I had a couple of isms. I have a new book coming out about my isms. And one of them is Billy, you know, begin with the end in mind. It's a magician's ism. You have to know how the trick ends before you start or don't do the trick. So I've been teaching that and I'm driving in Utah, like two weeks ago. And it, we get to one of those churches with the has the kind of like, you know, the sign for the post for the day. And it said, thought for your day, begin with the end in mind. I thought I jumped out, took a photo, and thought this, because if the universe doesn't know how to connect to you, how many burning bushes have you talked to lately, but I hear God and I hear the universe through our voice.

Hopefully, people who are listening to this today, Don. Which is just a great name, by the way, are hearing something through the universe. It isn't necessarily about me, but for you.

Dawn Damon: Yes. That's why I just wanted my audience to get an opportunity to get a taste of Forbes Riley and Dawn Damon, if you will, too, because I believe, and shifting gears a little bit, women hit their fifties and they start. Believing a pack of vicious lies that start shredding their faith, their hope, and their belief that there's something still great in their future. Now I'm 62. So I'm right. Oh my God.

Forbes Riley: And you're gorgeous. This is a look at the two of us. We look like freaking Barbies. Right?

Dawn Damon: Yeah. I always wanted Barbie to have red hair. Doggone it. So I was kind of unfortunate when I was younger. I had brilliant red hair, and pure white skin in a land of blue-eyed Dutch girls with blonde hair. That silky wavy blonde hair and they get tanner than tan in the summer. I just got 17 more freckles and red burnt skin and peeled. It was horrific. Had I known, and I grasped it finally, but had I known that being a redhead was special and that there was something unique and beautiful, I wouldn't have done so much QT and self-tanning and oh my goodness, the stuff that I had to go through. But there was something about that, that made me also become very tenacious and very determined. I couldn't rely on looks. I had to, you know, utilize creativity in my brain. I'm kind of that big-picture person as well. But I wanted the women to know that you're not done when you're 50. Come on. What if you added the word just as I want it? After everything you say, Oh, my belly is so fat, just as I want it because you are going to read what you say, believe it or not, you're giving your brain a target, you're telling your body, your soul, your mind, what direction to go into. And so when I started adding that little tagline, just as I wanted it. I started changing what I was saying. I will be creative in my 60s. My most significant season of life is still yet ahead of me, just as I want it. My love life with my husband is amazing, just as I want it. What about you? How did you get to 50 years old? And I do want to ask you about your love life because you have an ex-husband who tells me, and I have an ex-husband, that we've overcome some pain and relationships. I want to hear about that too. If you share a little bit, how did you face becoming 50 and now 60, and what's on the horizon?

Forbes Riley: The universe blessed me with some great people in my life and mentors and thank God, my mentor, not my mom. Do you know who Jack LaLanne was? I do. Yeah. Jack LaLanne was one of the greatest fitness heroes of our time. He passed away about 10 years ago. I did an infomercial with him that grossed over a billion dollars selling juicers. And he had massive isms. My kids still talk about him, you know, if man made it, don't eat it. And he was just this precious man who married his beautiful bride, Elaine, for 50 years. And Elaine is now 97. I've spent a lot of time with Elaine Lalaine.

One of the things that she showed me, which just radically changed everything, was she showed me the cover of a book. She's a baby girl. She said this is me at 65 on the cover of a book and my leotard looks like the body of a 22-year-old. My 60s were my best. I said how dare I in my 40s and 50s think anything less. And now when I look at her at 97, she still laughs and loves me and I love her. She's, you know if you don't have a great mom in your life, go find one. They're out there. Some people lived spectacular lives.

At one point, I met one of the oldest burlesque strippers in my hometown here in St. Petersburg, and she was spunky as all get out. And I'm like, how dare you play small? So my advice to you in your fifties, find somebody 20 years older, who's living a great life and say, I haven't gotten to that yet because it is society does want to put you down and shame on them and menopause and all the other crazy things that we talk to each other. But again, Really glad I didn't have girlfriends back then. I do love women now, which is very interesting to watch. I was blessed with a boy and a girl twin and I watched my daughter get picked on little girls is horrific. If you're out there and you're a little girl, shame on you. Like you said, all the little blonde girls should be looking at you going, look at the redheaded princess. She's extraordinary. But they put you down because you were different. I don't know why we as girls inherently have that little thing, and maybe it's survival of the fittest, who knows, it's probably instinctual.

But as you get to a certain age, and you look around, you look at all the women, I look at women like Christy Brinkley, who I just thought was the epitome of like, gorgeous, blonde, perfect. I met Christy, she's lovely, but she also had four husbands. She had multiple kids, and she didn't live a life that I would have envied at the end of the day. I thought, isn't that interesting that I, you know, they say, be careful about meeting your heroes? We'll meet your heroes to realize that they're human and so are you. Yes, it's funny as you were saying that, I thought things that I wish I knew when I was younger, and here's the thing, don't age, don't buy into all of this. And so, and there are things out there, there are hair treatments and skin treatments and great food to eat and great vitamins to take.

Again, I didn't have a role model for this wish. I did. I fell in love with my first husband. We both were young. We went through a lot together. Not, we weren't very young. I married him. I was 35. I'd already been, you know, had lived a portion of a life, five years younger than me. And we raised a little boy. We couldn't get pregnant. And so we raised a little boy from South Central, big brother, little brother program. Tom, my ex is six foot six Notre Dame football player. He’s very smart, charismatic white as a sheet. He has white blonde hair and always has people would joke at the beach. They'd use him as a sunscreen. Dexter Rideout, who we raised, was blacker than my microphone, from South Central, and a spunky, not a-great kid when we got him, he had all these misconceptions about white people and privilege, and we shocked that out of him, and showed him a great humanity, and he was in my life for 12 years, best man at my wedding, loved this little boy so much. Then six months after my twins were born, Dexter was murdered. It was shot in the back by a kid who didn't have a mentor like us, not far from his home, right outside USC on a Sunday morning and our world stopped. But I had these two babies.

So now I'm working to raise two babies had just lost my parents. 9-11 it happened and Dexter's dead. My wedding photos are on the cover of the LA Times. It was a very traumatic five-year time. You know, you continue to do a little research on me and I won't share this now, but I'm going to share this in a summit you and I are going to do together. I ended up, in my property in Los Angeles, my house was too small to raise a family in, but it was on a very large property, we were going to knock it down. It was like 25,000 to knock it down, and I didn't have that kind of spare capital, and I said to my architect, why don't we just blow it up? He said, excuse me? I said, we live in Hollywood, Mel Gibson just blew up a house for a lethal weapon down the street. Let's blow it up. This is how, like you said, what do you do? That's solving problems.

Well, if you go to YouTube and type in diehard, literally the Bruce Willis movie Live Free or Die Harder blows up my house. You'll see the story of how I put it up on the market. I got some guys to knock on my door. They said, if you can be out of here, we're going to use it for the first scene in the movie to blow it up and life was different. It's like, wow, that's kind of a crazy thing!

Well, it was very hard. I think when people lose a kid or go through something traumatic, they decide together, we're going to raise our kids and we tolerated each other for a long time, but he needed to get happy on his own. I needed to get happy on my own. Then we started to live apart. I said to myself very consciously, I'm not going to fall in love. With someone else until my babies were grown, I probably missed out on 10 years of being in love, but I wanted my children It was so important to me to raise these kids. I didn't want them to have a step-parent and neither did my ex which is kind of crazy So we tolerated each other while we raised these beautiful kids. They knew there was some tension at the house It wasn't perfect.

But one day my kids were about 15 years old and somebody said, Forbes. Are you married? I'm like, yeah, why is it? Because I don't see any love in your work and I think I started to get a little brittle little angry. I discovered what a narcissist is and why the relationship was hurting me. I sat down with myself like I would train you or anyone else and I said, all right, let's knock this off.

What does it mean to be in love? Do you deserve to be happy and the answer is you do? You deserve to be married again, deserve to have a romance. Then I started to do some research and I tell you, make a list. I mean, you can share how you're with your husband, but of all the things that you need, because one, you get what you tolerate. I tolerated being unhappy every day for 10 years and I pretended it wasn't that, but it was eating away at me and had all kinds of ramifications on my health. I ended up in the hospital because of it.

Then one day I said, all right, here's my list universe. Two more things I want. I don't want just a guy. I want to be a power couple. I want to be like Randy Gerber and Cindy Crawford. I want to be like Gabrielle Reese and Laird Hamilton, or I want to be like Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen. I want to be on a red carpet. My ex would never walk with me, and would never enjoy some of the things I got to do. I want that.

Oh wait, one more thing, universe, while we're at it. I want him to look like he walked off the cover of a romance novel. So, if you give me permission to share my screen. Yes. I'm going to show you what the universe said. Okay, you paid your dues, you raised your kids. And you continue to think that you're special. I'm going to give you exactly what you want. I didn't go on Tinder. He actually came into my hotel room to model for my fitness product in Las Vegas. People say, how did you meet your husband? He was a gift in my hotel room in Vegas. Sounds kind of funny, right? But sounds like a story Forbes would tell. Then I say to people, when you see a picture of my husband if you don't say, wow, I'll give you a hundred dollars. I show them this picture. Okay. Can you see it?

Dawn Damon: Oh. Wow. Right.

Forbes Riley: That's the only, what else you said in that photo. That's your husband? And I'm like, yeah, that's absolutely, that's Joshua. He has won awards. He is a bodybuilder. He's a former Chippendale. He's the freaking cutest guy in the entire world. I don't care. I love other men, but no one looks like this man. And I will tell you, he not only fell in love with me but says things crazy. Like I was made for you. And he has his own crazy backstory. Where his dad was killed when he was two, his stepdad was killed in a car crash when he was 15 and he set out to be wildly determined to have a body, but also he's a 3d graphic artist. He is amazing. The universe has a little sense of humor.

nd,: 2020

Dawn Damon: Oh my goodness! What a story.

Forbes Riley: Right? As expected, as expected that is the man that loves me that I love because I said I want my story to be this spectacular and you need, and there's hundreds of photos of us on red carpets.

Dawn Damon: Wow! What if you would not have waited 10 years. What if you had not sacrificed your immediate need for something down the road, you knew? Instinctively, this is my goal right now is to raise two amazing children, give them attunement, and build that same foundation for them that I had of a parent paying attention to me, loving me so they could launch. Then God says, here you go because you put off the immediate gratification for the down the road, you got the gold. Good job. Awesome!

Forbes Riley: Now I just, there's a little caveat to this. Okay. I always say it when I talk about my babies, I ended up going through in vitro was very successful. I had twins. I pushed them out at 42 and they were very healthy babies. What do you say to somebody whose babies were not so healthy or didn't survive? Do you say that God wasn't watching them too? So I'm always a little cautious about not bragging or saying that, you know, you sacrificed and therefore God gave you something. I don't think it works that way. I do think that you write your story.

I have a lot of families who are single women or husbands recently, two of my friends, died. After COVID, they got a vaccine, and the next thing you know, they were gone, both of them. Well, God is not watching out for them? So I have to be very cautious when I say my story because it does sound a little bit fairy tale. I thank God every day and I am grateful, but I also went through a lot to get there.

So if you're listening to this and your life is not quite what you thought it was really examine it. Don't get mad because I'm going to tell you this crazy thing about God. I love it when people get up there, they win the award and go, or they win the Super Bowl. You know, God was on my side. No, God's on the side of the people who lose as well. He doesn't pick and choose like that. It's not how it works. It's just that maybe you had different lessons to learn and bring out to the world. And I cautious my tail by saying that life happens for you. It really does, but it's not, and not everything doesn't happen for a reason. Everything happens. I believe it's your responsibility to create the version

Dawn Damon: Thank you for saying that. It drives me nuts when people say everything happens for a reason. The reason could be, that I was dumb, that's why.

Forbes Riley: Yeah, the reason could be that you didn't structure it well. You didn't plan it right. You didn't ask for help. Those could be your lessons. The next thing too guys, be, do not be afraid of failure. Do not be afraid of success. Stop being afraid. I don't even know what that word means. People bandy about like, I have a fear of success. Bullshit. You don't. It's not nice to hold on to that. Cause if you're afraid of it, it won't find you. And when you fail, which I have done a lot, you learn lessons. Do you know what my job has become? Learn the lesson faster and don't make the same stupid mistake again. Cause I've done that one too. Like, didn't I learn that lesson? The answer was, I guess I didn't. So I got to get to do it again. Go around again.

Dawn Damon: Yeah. I agree with what you're saying. You know, I was in a marriage for 28 years and it was not a happy marriage, but I also wanted to keep my family unit together. I did not want my children to have a stepfather or a stepmother. We had a responsibility. We brought these children into the world and. We were going to raise them. So we did the best that we could. I thought I was in it for life. He decided to leave after 28 years and ran away from home. I had to get a private detective to even find him to serve him because he was gone for two years. It was just kind of a brutal ending. But what I often feel like is that it was worth the weight because I have an amazing husband as well I believe I would have missed him and I think that I still do because of the person that I am and what I've learned, I wouldn't have settled anyway so I know it would have been great whoever it was, but I'm very thankful that I have my husband Paul, and he's not as quite as big as your husband.

Forbes Riley: Come on! Show me. Share it! Come on and share this beautiful man, because beauty is on the inside.

Dawn Damon: Okay, but let's see if I can find a picture.

Forbes Riley: While you're looking for that, I'm going to just wrap up something.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, you please do.

Forbes Riley: When I look at you, to me, you're stunningly beautiful. You do look like the red-headed Barbie, and you're gorgeous. Then you go, wait a second, how is it possible that somebody would leave her? Kind of like the Christie Brinkley story. Don't covet what somebody else has, because you don't know and just because you look a certain way, it doesn't mean that you get certain things in life. And just because you appear a certain way, like you're always happy, it doesn't mean that life behind closed doors can be freaking miserable. So how did you meet your husband?

Dawn Damon: Well, I had to get some financial guidance and he was in wealth management and I went in one day to get some help on rolling over a 401 after my divorce. This beautiful man, this six-foot-five hunk of burning love walked in.

Forbes Riley: Come on, I got to see this.

Dawn Damon: I'm looking for a picture of him. He put out his hand. He said, hi, I'm Paul Damon. I said, hi. I was smitten right from the beginning. Let's see. I got to find a picture of him.

Forbes Riley: Oh, I think that is just precious. How old are your kids?

Dawn Damon: Well, this is the crazy thing. So my children are 42, 41, and 37. I have 12 grandchildren and I have two great-grandchildren.

Forbes Riley: Oh my gosh. Oh. And where do you live?

Dawn Damon: I live in Michigan.

Forbes Riley: All right. Very nice. And so that is just beautifully exciting.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, I say I live in Michigan where I walk on water from December to February because it's frozen.

Forbes Riley: Well, if you want to come down to Tampa, Florida, it's hot down here. I own a beautiful television studio and I run great live events and I would love to have you come down.

Dawn Damon: That would be awesome.

Forbes Riley: Oh, look at you. How long ago was that picture taken? Probably about eight years ago. Why do you look younger now?

Dawn Damon: Well, you know what? I lost weight since then, actually. So I started working out, too. Crazy. Like, I did the same thing, Forbes. Oh, we're gonna have to get you one of these.

Forbes Riley: You know about my spin gym, right? I know I don't have one, but I want one. Oh, my God. I want a video. For your audience, you need to go to ShopSpinGym. It is a great present for the holidays. It is not expensive. It's one of the coolest things ever. It's why I have a body and arms. Joshua uses it. Believe it or not. He does. It's how we met. I was shooting a spin gym commercial and he came in as my model. And by the way, the thing that I love about Paul is the way, Oh, you guys are absolutely stunning and he's beautiful. He's absolutely beautiful. Believe me, you don't want a bodybuilder. They spend a little too much time in the gym and I told my kids never to date bodybuilders. And look how much younger you look. You need to put that photo side by side. Because something magical has happened to you. Maybe it's about being in love for a period of time or being a grand And then, by the way, that's a grandma. Hello. I know, right? Like the sexiest grandma I've ever seen.

Dawn Damon: Thank you. Well, are you familiar with Joan MacDonald?

Forbes Riley: No, I'm not.

Dawn Damon: I think I've eaten in her restaurant though. Oh. No, it's a joke. I've never gone to McDonald's. Yeah, right. No. She is from the UK, but she's got quite a following. I think she's about 78 years old now. She went into bodybuilding. So there's a before and an after. I started following her, watching her. I said, that's where I'm going. Because I'm going to steward this body we get one body, and I am not letting it go, no way no how in fact my next book is just getting ready to launch today The Making of a BraveHearted Woman.

Forbes Riley: I love it.

Dawn Damon: Thank you.

Forbes Riley: Just another little side note. I have a book that came out two days ago for your grandkids.

Dawn Damon: Okay. Yes, tell us.

Forbes Riley: That took me 12 years to write. It's called The Candy Witch. If you go to Amazon, it's available there. What that is, talking about bodies, food, and nutrition, is that I have these beautiful twins. They're about three or four years old and man, those guys can knock on more doors at Halloween than you've ever seen. They were like speedboats. They come out with a bucket and two buckets of candy. I have a little bit of a candy issue, you know, I used to eat it as whatever, you know, I was overweight as a kid and now I'm looking like Unlimited, you know, what's funny? I could go to the dollar store, but now it's free It's in my house is unlimited Reese's pieces and Hershey bars and oh my god one, you know 100,000 that would live on my dining room table and I would eat it.

In fact, not only would I eat it, but when you're an overeater. I'd be in bed and I'd go, Reese's Pieces is calling, come get it. I'm like, no, wait, where, what do I, where? I realized I had to get it out of the house, like physically get it out of the house. I wrote this, this story came to me. It's a beautiful rhyming poem about Princess Dulce, who also indulged in it, she was a beautiful kingdom princess. She indulged in too much candy. What it says is that on Halloween. She gets her beauty back if she goes around and each kid can keep five pieces of candy. Then they put the rest of it outside and she scoops it up and gives it to whoever throws it down. I don't care what you do with it. But like the tooth fairy, it leaves money in exchange that you can go buy something really precious to you and not have your teeth fall out and it is called The Candy Witch by Forbes Riley. It's on Amazon. It just launched two days ago I have been telling this story for a decade and then I finally got somebody who could illustrate it I fell in love with the illustration and I just kept forgetting to get it published.

Today is the day. So you and I have two books: The Making of a BraveHearted Woman and The Candy Witch. How do we find your book?

Dawn Damon: We find my book on Amazon.com. I'm going to go ahead and put the link in the show notes. The link for your things will also be in the show notes. The Spin Jim and the Candywitch.

Forbes Riley: Then there's one more note if you would put it in there because I have a huge giveaway. I am a master when it comes to verbal communication and getting your message out very quickly. In my career as an infomercial host, I've grossed a little over two and a half billion dollars and what that allows me to do is go into major corporations. I redo their pitches, but now I've devoted the last three years to working with entrepreneurs to get them to say better words. I believe you're in one of my classes [and they're fun. So there's a FREE gift called FreeGiftfromForbes.com, where you can get the template.

But the big giveaway right now is at one minute to millions. com where you get the entire training, but you also get this super bonus in January. I'm doing a five-day live. I've done this many times bootcamp for one minute and you get a free ticket to that. So it's probably about 5,000 of stuff for one tiny little price. It's like, Oh, wow. Yeah. And I'm only doing that for a short period of time through the holidays. Because I'd love 10, 000 people to be in boot camp this time. Because when you can uplevel your communications, you get a podcast, you fall in love with the people that you want, you live in your dream, whatever it is that you want, you understand how to go for it.

You asked me at the very beginning of the interview, how do I figure out how to get what I want? This part of that system is doing a little bit of due diligence, quiet work to uncover what you want, why you want it, what your core values are, and what you're willing to do to get it. And what happens if you don't get it?

Dawn Damon: Beautiful. Well, this has been such a treat and I am so thankful that you took time out of your amazingly busy schedule or fully engaged life to spend a few moments with us in our audience.

Dawn Damon: Friends, you've heard it here today. You can live by default, or you can live by design. You can architect a future that is great and amazing. We might look at Forbes and say, Oh, she had a life. But Did she, or did she design a life and believe in the gifts that were inside of her and take the risk? I know many times we didn't get a chance to talk about it, but you even put up your own finances and you took those leaps of faith. And today you're sitting in the results of what a life can look like.

Friends, make sure you avail yourself of all the things that she has to offer. I'm so thankful you were with us. Just a final word. Goodbye.

Forbes Riley: Yeah, well never. Goodbye and see you soon. See you soon. Is that soon?

I would encourage all of you to take a quiet moment after listening to this. Look around your room. Look around your life. Look at yourself naked in the mirror and say, is this by default or by design? I love how you said that. If it's not a hundred percent by design, look and just see where can I make some changes. Who do I need to reach out to? How do I need to say I love you in the mirror? And one of my favorite phrases, and I'll leave you with this, is what we call granting yourself permission. I have a little permission card that I carry everywhere, and it simply says, I hear about you, it says your name, so Forbes Riley. Looking in the mirror, I'm going to ask you to do this. I hereby grant you permission to and then fill in the blanks.

So I hereby grant you permission to live an outrageously wonderful, creative, phenomenal, fulfilling life. I hereby grant you permission to star in a movie next week. I hereby grant you permission to spread love and light everywhere that you go. Whatever it is that you want to achieve, say your name so a subconscious knows you're talking to you and gives it permission.

Here's a big one. I hereby grant you permission to let go of the last 25 pounds. Or grant you permission to leave the abusive relationship. I hereby grant you permission to completely move out of the country. Whatever it is that you think you want to do. Through this process, that one word talking to your brain will change your actions, and then your actions become what you do, and then what you do becomes this wonderful life that I grant and wish to all of you.

Dawn Damon: Thank you. So beautifully said. Thank you.

Well, this is Dawn Damon, your Braveheart Activator, and I'm going to leave you like this. I hereby grant you, to find your brave and live your vision!