Independence first, handicapped second | Floris Meijer | TEDxVenlo

Apart from being an athlete, Floris is a professional wheelchair trainer, helping children with a disability and their parents to overcome their interdependency. Teaching them how to physically and mentally cope with their daily struggles while improving the wheelchair skills of the children. Improving your abilities and skills on how to use your wheelchair will help you to become more independent. Unsolicited help and advice given with the best intentions is appreciated but most of the time it is counter-productive. Especially if one is ignored and people start a conversation above your head to the one behind the wheelchair. Having the right mindset, becoming independent and improving ones wheelchair skills is what people with a disability can do themselves. A change in how society acts and reacts to people in a wheelchair is a challenge that needs more awareness. That is what inspired Floris to become a top teacher and trainer improving the lives of many. Listen how Floris becomes a top TEDxVenlo speaker and learn how he will reach the top while skiing downhill, teaching us how to “Be Brave” from the bottom up! While Floris’ life was going downhill, it’s just that what made him reach the top. While actually going downhill as a professional free style skier, Floris Meijer (30) broke his back about seven years ago. “While flying mid-air taking a risky free style ski jump, I knew I was flying too high and too far to execute the jump and land it to perfection. Now paralyzed from the waist down, Floris, a paralympic athlete, is on route to the Beijing 2022 Paralympics. Being a professional skier before his accident, getting all the help an athlete needs, he states: “my perseverance to become as independent as possible is what makes me feel like a human being again. A person first, handicapped for sure, but with the ability to reach the top.” This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx