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Through using a wheelchair, I’ve experienced lots of exclusion and prejudice. My mission is to see a world that’s inclusive for everyone. Not only for wheelchair users or disabled people. But for all excluded people.

On a personal level I’ve gone through a scary spinal operation, having strangers do my personal care, found accessible housing in London, been employed, started multiple businesses, travelled with all of my equipment, found love, and much more.

For you, I share these experiences for one reason. In the hope that even one sentence will spark an idea or motivate you in some way. Some way that helps you change the world. You might be disabled, you might work for inclusion, or you might just be interested in my world.

As long as my blog helps you, that’s fine by me.

Being a World Changer

I’m all about being a World Changer at the moment. But it isn’t as scary or exclusive as it might sound. We all change the world every day when we’re thoughtful, compassionate and helpful.

Some are World Changing entrepreneurs, some are World Changing employees, and some are World Changing humans. It doesn’t have to be a vocation.

For me I’m an entrepreneur that values societal values. Through running social businesses, I’ve learned as much about the importance of health, play and relationships. When naturally marketing, team management and product development are vital too.

I like to write, share pictures and make videos about this. Sometimes depending on my mood and sometimes depending on the above topic. All to create debate and spark new ideas.

If you follow me on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you’ll see my work and travels regularly. Whereas here I try to create longer form content as much as possible.

What’s your mission? 🙂

Martyn Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com.
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible’ (on Amazon).
– Inclusion Captain @ disabilityhorizons.com.
– Presenter and Speaker @ visablepeople.com.
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities.

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Skype.
Mobile @ +44 (0) 7798 746551.

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This week for World Changer Wednesday #WCW I wanted to touch upon the basics again. You’ll remember previously I talked about the importance of exercise and sleep.

Today’s video is all about nourishment and self care. When I hit 30 I started to feel the effects of my lifestyle. My diet has never been great. Whilst I looked after myself ok, I definitely neglected downtime. Needless to say I felt heavy and tired.

If we’re going to have bold visions and extravagant plans, we really need to be on top form. As with exercise and sleep, we’re the goose laying the golden eggs. Best look after the goose right 🙂

Tangible points from this video are on eating organic food and taking supplements.

What do you do for improved nourishment and self care?

Martyn Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com.
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible’ (on Amazon).
– Inclusion Captain @ disabilityhorizons.com.
– Presenter and Speaker @ visablepeople.com.
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities.

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Skype.
Mobile @ +44 (0) 7798 746551.

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Well it’s Wednesday again. I’m on a roll with this weekly posting idea. Twice in two weeks! 😉

Today’s thought, for anyone wanting to change the world, is a little less ‘dream life’. In fact it’s far less sexy. However it’s the most important thing a World Changer can do.

That is, to look after your health. In particular this week’s video (taken from my free YouTube course, called the good life) is on exercise and sleep.

Please watch this short message, let me know your thoughts, and share your experiences.

Maybe you have a cool work out routine, that fits in with your busy schedule. Maybe you’ve read a relevant book on wellbeing. Or maybe you have counter experiences, like that 4 hours sleep is plenty for you.

Whatever your input is, let’s share these ideas, to keep on changing the world a little bit more 🙂

Martyn Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com.
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible’ (on Amazon).
– Inclusion Captain @ disabilityhorizons.com.
– Presenter and Speaker @ visablepeople.com.
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities.

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Skype.
Mobile @ +44 (0) 7798 746551.

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I’m starting a new video series on what it takes to be a World Changer. Something I’m always learning and striving for. There’s going to be videos on a variety of subjects, that are actionable too. They will be streamed on LinkedIn first.

This week I’m in Lisbon, Portugal. I decided to share some thoughts on living your dream life, alongside your work/mission.

Hope you like the first one. They’ll evolve as we go. Most importantly please do get involved with what you do and what else you’d like me to discuss 🙂

Martyn Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com.
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible’ (on Amazon).
– Inclusion Captain @ disabilityhorizons.com.
– Presenter and Speaker @ visablepeople.com.
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities.

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Skype.
Mobile @ +44 (0) 7798 746551.

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It’s been a while since I last wrote an update. With so much going on this summer, it felt like the right time to share my latest news. As always I hope you find this interesting, will engage with your thoughts, and share your news too.

Health and Wellbeing

With my disability, summer is usually good health wise. Which is a relief this year after the terrible winter I had with colds. My relatively new morning routine has been a great positive factor.

Every morning I make sure I do my meditation and physio routine. I also make sure I drink lots of water and eat more healthily through the day. Something I was bad at doing previously.

If you are interested in more of this topic, watch out for my new video series. It’s called ‘The Good Life’. Recorded in Poland, the scenery is beautiful, and the content will help you with many aspects of living a fulfilled life.

The Foundations

There is a whole post to come about my new wheelchair. But otherwise my care, equipment, housing and general independence prerequisites have been behaving this summer. Long may this continue!

Eternal Student

When I was at school and university, I wasn’t the world’s most prolific reader. Then when I graduated and the lessons stopped, I just couldn’t stop reading books.

I’ve always enjoyed inspirational biographies of people past and present. Occasionally I will read the odd fiction book too. More recently I have read a lot on personal development. Which has taken me on an amazing journey. A journey that any protagonist in a fiction story would be proud of.

This journey particularly kicked off after reading ‘The code of the extraordinary mind’ by Vishen Lakhiani. His book and his words showed how important our beliefs and habits are in creating many parts of our life.

Coming from the traditional disability activist way, this would usually really grate. Simply because the social model explains how the barriers in society are the cause of being disabled. So self empowerment is irrelevant when the world disables us.

In reading this book, I believe the two can go together. With empowering beliefs and effective habits, there is more chance that we can tear down the barriers in our way.

Like Ghandi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world.

From Student to Teacher

It turned out that Vishen founded an education company called Mindvalley. After reading his book, I attended a few of their free online master classes. Then in Barcelona last May, I attended their experimental project called Mindvalley University. The speakers were leading experts in their field. The other students were awesome people from around the world. I just loved it.

Following on from this fantastic trip, I did a couple of the paid courses online. Particularly learning about nutrition, stress management and having a more powerful brain. The courses varied in length and in content. But they all gave me fantastic growth and progress in the rest of my life.

So when I found out that the University project was a runaway success, I signed up immediately. This is why back in June and July I was in Tallinn, Estonia. It was amazing catching up with old friends from Barcelona. Meeting new friends too. Plus the speakers and the topics were mind-blowing!

My last post covered Tallinn from a wheelchair accessible perspective.

This all made me realise and appreciate the power of constant education and learning. You’ll see later in this post how much of my work has progressed, in part because of my recent studies.

My new aim is to help my community embrace the benefits of everything I’ve learnt.

In feeling so excited about teaching from my experiences, not just from Mindvalley, but in life – I ran a workshop in Mindvalley University! It was on the topic of blogging to change the world. You can see here the cool group of people who attended my session.

Leisure and Social

Apart from that visit to Estonia, I’ve either been working from home or going to meetings relatively close by. For fun I’ve been playing battleships and chess with Kasia. Plus taking Sunny the Golden Retriever puppy for nice walks. And seeing family and friends for food and drink.

Excitedly I’m off to Portugal, Poland and Spain in the next couple of months. Lisbon is for a work project with Portugal for all Senses. You can see their first article here. Poland is to see Kasia’s family and we’ll be driving there with Sunny. Valencia is for another work trip 🙂

Work Work Work

I’ve always loved serving the disabled community. Obviously I have a personal vested interest in inclusion. However I get so much pleasure from supporting many other people in their day-to-day Pursuits.

My job has evolved a lot since leaving London a few years ago. I’m working more with organisations looking for help in how to be more accessible. This is where true change will occur.

I currently see three main areas in the business.

One is as a speaker and coach on ways to change the world. This took me to Glasgow last week, to deliver a keynote speech for the Archives and Records Association. I will share lots of content around the subject on my blog too.

The second is our new social media marketing agency. Where we help organisations with blog content and digital marketing. If you or anyone you know is interested in this, please do get in touch with us. We’re already working with some amazing clients.

The third is of course Disability Horizons. I’m really proud of the growth in our readership this year, and we’re working on some great plans at the moment with strategic partners. Particularly in the above-mentioned field of online education.

So watch this space…

Your World

I’d love to know how your summer has been. Particularly if any of the above is relevant. Of course I would love it if it benefits you. But most importantly I love conversations and learning from each other. So please do stay in touch with whatever is happening in your world.

I’ll be in touch soon with updates on health, foundations, leisure pursuits and world changer work stuff 🙂

Martyn Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com.
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible’ (on Amazon).
– Inclusion Captain @ disabilityhorizons.com.
– Presenter and Speaker @ visablepeople.com.
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities.

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Skype.
Mobile @ +44 (0) 7798 746551.

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I am just back from an amazing trip to Tallinn in Estonia. So I wanted to share a few thoughts and observations about the trip from an accessibility point of view.

First off you are probably wondering why I was in Tallinn. Which is a fair and reasonable question. Now it was actually nice to go to a new place in Europe. I was in Egypt back at new year, but generally I’ve been going to some of the more familiar and well trodden places. It was really nice to go somewhere a little bit different and new.

The reason that I was there was for Mindvalley University. Which is a chance to go away for about a month every year to a new city, and you get the chance to hear from all the worlds leading teachers and authors on personal development, and business and marketing too. So it’s a really good upskilling and learning and development opportunity, while you’re in a new place in the world. Plus you get to hang out with the other awesome students as well.

Once we decided that we would return, after going to the opening one in Barcelona last year, it was time to book the flight. Right, now they’ve got a bit of a bad press with disabled travelers, and for good reason. There’s been some bad stuff happened over the years. I’ve also had broken equipment and wheelchairs as well. But Ryanair fly to so many places and really they are the cheapest that you can get out on the market. I have flown many many many times with them and it’s always been okay.

When they have broken things like the wheelchair and the luggage they’ve always been quick to rectify it. I just want to clear that one up. For me they are fine for getting from A to B, as long as you do not expect any thrills. With their online booking form I’m able to say that I’ll need help getting on the aeroplane to be lifted, and also I need to take my equipment like the wheelchair, the hoist, and the shower chair.

Once that was all done it was time to sort out the accommodation. I really really would have preferred a private rental place. Specifically to have had a kitchen to buy food and cook up what we fancied for some dinners. I’m sure we would have eaten out as well but we were there for two and a half weeks. Which is quite a while. But in the end I had to book the Park Inn by Radisson simply because of the wheelchair access and particularly the roll in shower. Another downside of that is it was more expensive than a private rental, but you know, that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes when you’re a disabled tourist.

So once that was all booked and sorted I also needed to work out how I was going to get from the airport to the hotel. After asking around in the Accessible Travel Club on Facebook I was pointed in the direction of a company called Termak. They were able to come with an adapted vehicle with a ramp, well actually a lift. And 20 euros was a pretty reasonable price that got us from the airport to the hotel in about 15 minutes. Which was really really good.

Transport wise and getting around day to day. We wouldn’t have really needed taxis just to get us within the city. But there is public transport like buses and trams. From my understanding some are accessible, but not all of them. And because it’s such a small, quaint and lovely city it was fine getting around in the wheelchair. Kasia had the bicycle anyway. The old town, the medieval part, was very cobbly. The pavement didn’t always have drop curbs so that did cause me some troubles. It was still lovely to go back in time and enjoy all that culture and seeing how it would have been a long time ago. I’m a bit of a history geek.

 

We ate at some of the restaurants. One was called Scheeli and unfortunately I couldn’t get in the building or on the terrace. So they brought the tables just off the terrace and we sat on the pavement. It sounds worse but it was actually still a fantastic evening. Despite the bad access, the people and their attitude was second to none! So I do applaud them for making what could have been a bad situation better.

Another restaurant was Olde Hansa and that’s where it was really old-school. It was like Game of Thrones and the waiters and the waitresses dressed up in old clothes as well. It was an enjoyable meal. Then I had a shot or a schnapps called monks bride. It was named so because the monks didn’t have a bride so apparently they had this shot to get their kicks and their thrills. That was quite funny as well.

One of the other amazing memorable things we did was to see the sunrise over the Baltic Sea at about 3:00 in the morning. There’s only about three hours of night time at that time of year because it’s so far north. After a party we went off to the sea where it was blowing a gale. It was not quite cold cold, but definitely colder than the weather had been back home. Nonetheless it was a really special thing to see the sun come up over the Baltic Sea.

Obviously we were doing our lectures most weekdays as well, so there was not an abundance of time to be able to go and see everything that Tallinn had to offer, but we certainly made good use of our evenings and our weekends. To just go around the shops and get to know the people and the culture of what is a lovely place was great.

Particularly the food is all very fresh and organic and grown nearby. So if you ever go I’d recommend trying out the local foods. Whether it’s from the market or the restaurants doesn’t really matter.

Overall another successful trip. Definitely a place that I would love to go back to one day. I would urge you to check it out as well. If you have any questions about access please do shoot me a comment below. In the meantime I’ll see you again for the next update.

Bye bye for now 🙂

Martyn Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com.
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible’ (on Amazon).
– Inclusion Captain @ disabilityhorizons.com.
– Presenter and Speaker @ visablepeople.com.
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities.

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Skype.
Mobile @ +44 (0) 7798 746551.

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Mobility and the power to move freely has always been important to me. So naturally, I was excited to hear all about how The Toyota Mobility Foundation, a charity with a focus on mobility, have launched a $4m campaign to create the future of mobility products. The aim of this project is to spur innovation that supports social good. Achieved by us, the disabled community, helping to create a device that gives people their everyday mobility. There are always a load of channels for people regarding mobility. It might just be going to the shops, but luckily now most people have a stair lift with a modular structure to help us out. When that happens, it’s great. Shopping is easy. But other times it’s not always that easy.

In the first episode Julie Ann, the marketing manager of Toyota Mobility Foundation, explained about the market failure for products and services available for wheelchair users. She told me that the project hugely believes in the human-centred design process by allowing the end user to get involved.

The Toyota Mobility Foundation then brought Nesta in as partners for their expertise in designing and delivering challenges. The 5 finalists of this challenge will each receive a half million-dollar grant to help develop their ideas.

The winner will then receive $1 million.

Through supporting innovations that incorporate intelligent systems, The Toyota Mobility Foundation hope to change mobility forever.

In the second episode I spoke to members of our community. Christian, my disabled friend in Barcelona told me the wheelchair of the future needs to be ‘cool’ in order to attract and help young disabled people. DHorizons regular Mik Scarlet reminds us how important it is to include disabled people when designing new wheelchairs, and that designers need to think bigger than their own experience.

Kamran Malik, the CEO of Disability Rights UK, tells us how young people are expecting technology to be part of their mobility equipment that they use (which may not necessarily be a wheelchair). It’s clear there’s incredible scope for development in mobility, from improving the aesthetics, to creating modular solutions.

In the third and last episode I speak about innovation with the Global Disability Innovation (GDI) Hub . They are creating a movement to accelerate innovation for disabled people. Cathy, who is the academic director of the GDI Hub (as well as being a senior lecturer at University College London) tells us how a range of voices are needed for this project.

Cathy reckons that artificial intelligence will get smarter and more useful. She hopes this challenge will bring a device that isn’t necessarily a wheelchair, but something that really fits the users’ whole lifestyle. The issue here really is about mobility, not a wheelchair.

Finally we talked about intelligent systems, which design for the end users, and looks at the whole infrastructure within which the system is going to be placed. Intelligent systems also harness things such as big data and artificial intelligence in order to make the system smarter than traditional methods. An example Cathy gave me was if I were to put sensors on my wheelchair, I could make a ‘local map’, so my wheelchair could drive for me.

The winning team will decide the future of assistive mobility devices. They may even come up with something that hasn’t even yet been invented. These are exciting times for all things mobility!

To enter or to find out more information, please head to www.mobilityunlimited.org. Of course you can find the guys on social media too with a quick search for ‘Toyota Mobility Foundation challenge’.

Best wishes,

Martyn Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com.
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible’ (on Amazon).
– Inclusion Captain @ disabilityhorizons.com.
– Presenter and Speaker @ visablepeople.com.
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities.

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Skype.
Mobile @ +44 (0) 7798 746551.

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Having a disability feels like an eternal venture of educating people. Many people who haven’t come into contact with disability, have rather strange preconceptions of what my life is like.

Then there are the people who know me very well, but can never know some of the struggles I have to face. We can and should emphasise, but I find the people that truly understands how it feels are those with a similar condition to me.

This isn’t to say that people can’t grasp my life to a good extent. I suppose the point is that it takes time and effort on both sides of the coin. Time or energy that we don’t necessarily always have.

Meet Hannah Ensor

They say a picture paints a thousand words. Whilst on a public transport journey and unable to communicate the situation to fellow travellers. Hannah Ensor was struggling for energy and strength. If only she had a card that could explain what was going on, everything would have been easier.

So Hannah went home and drew one of the first stickman crips. Using that exact same notion of how a picture tells a thousand words. The Stickmen were the perfect tool to educate people should a similar circumstance arrive again.

Over time Hannah saw the need for other cards in her daily life. Then other disabled people explained the kind of messages they always have to explain to people. So Hannah drew stickmen for others too.

Now you can go on the website and buy a whole range of cards. It may not yet cover every single disability or societal barrier. But it certainly is getting close.

Listen, rate, share

As always I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Please do leave me a rating on the PodBean or iTunes platforms. Most importantly please share this episode and indeed the whole show with your friends and family. It’s the only way we can reach more people with these great guests.

Here’s the iTunes version (PodBean is embedded at the top of this page).

Thank you for listening!

Martyn ‘educating’ Sibley

– World Changer @ martynsibley.com
– Captain of Inclusion @ disabilityhorizons.com
– Author @ ‘Everything is Possible‘
– Motivational Speaker @ pro-motivate.com/speaker/martyn-sibley
– Adviser @ Governments/Businesses/Charities

Also @ Twitter | Facebook | Linked In | Google+