Sid Madge - Meee In A Minute: 60 Ways To Improve Your Life In 60 Seconds

FOR YOU :-)

Copyright 2018 Meeebooks

First published in 2018 by Meeebooks

www.meee.global

www.meeebooks.com

Email:

Twitter: @Meee_HQ

Facebook: Meee_HQ

Instagram: Meee_HQ

Paperback ISBN 978-1-9164134-0-5

.epub eBook ISBN 978-1-9164134-1-2

.mobi eBook ISBN 978-1-9164134-2-9

All rights reserved.

Sid Madge has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the copyright holder of this work.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, without the prior permission of the author.

Creative by SpiffingCovers.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I dedicate this book to everyone

I have ever known and met,

as you have made and shaped Meee.

Sid Madge

CONTENTS

MEEE AND YOU

Life is made up of a series of minutes, strung together into hours, days, weeks, months, years and, eventually, a lifetime. Some of those minutes are awesome, some are tough, some are thrilling and many are remarkably uneventful. But, some minutes can change the course of our lives. One such minute for me was when I was giving a talk to a class full of teenagers at a school in Wrexham, North Wales. I asked the class what one word they would use to describe themselves. As a brand consultant, I had used that question for over twenty years, and I was interested in their responses. The first response I heard was, weirdo. Initially, I thought the young man at the front of the class was being ironic or funny, but he wasnt. I asked him why hed chosen that word and he explained that he felt like an outsider, that he didnt fit in, was bullied and didnt know why he was in school. Talking to the group in more depth, I was shocked to discover that about 15 per cent of the class thought of themselves as weird, abnormal, freak or misfit. They felt anxious, insecure and self-conscious.

If only they knew. If only any of us knew.

The fact that you and I are even here right now, on this beautiful blue spinning marble in the universe, is astonishing. To create each of us, trillions of drifting atoms got together in an incredibly intricate and complex way. The arrangement of these atoms in this specific way the way that makes you, you and me and me has never happened before, and may never happen again. Each of us is a one-off, a one of a kind human being. During our lifetime, these tiny atoms will engage and cooperate with each other in a billion unappreciated miracles, allowing us to experience the adventure we call life. There are about 100 billion neurons in our brain making 100 trillion connections and it is these connections that define who we are. And yet, too many of us believe we are nothing special.

It was sad to realise that so many of these youngsters were unaware of their own worth or uniqueness and, for the rest of the session, we explored what makes us who we are. With a little encouragement, they all came to appreciate that the difference they perceived as a weakness, was the essence of their strength. Laughterlightened the atmosphere and their self-criticism seemed to lift as they embraced the concept that we are simply part of the diverse tapestry that makes the world so interesting. This session lit a fuse for me. Over the next year, I researched and developed tools to help people change their perspectives about the world around them, to better understand who they are and what they are capable of and it worked.

Based on the success of these tools, we started the Meee Programme a training and support network that encourages participants to recognise their own values and natural strengths, which almost never corresponds to the neat topic categories we cover in school. Not all of us will become rock stars, football strikers or Nobel Prize winning scientists, but we all have a purpose, a unique set of skills or capabilities that, when embraced and applied in the right way, can help us feel as though we are in the right place doing the right thing with the right people. We all fit in. We all have value and we are all special.

The Meee Programme focuses on the three es education, employment and enterprise. And, despite the play on words, it really is all aboutyou. The vision of Meee is to inspire each and every person to believing in themselves and what they can achieve.

This guide is, therefore, a celebration of what we have learned over the last few years to help people achieve this frame of mind. It is also a collection of life hacks, advice, insights, scientific facts, stories, short exercises or thought experiments and quotes that can help you improve your life in a minute. Sometimes, a shift in thinking is all we need to enable us to see things from a different perspective, shake off our funk and access a different option to spring into positive action. Many of us think of change as an endless, uphill battle but, sometimes, it can happen in a minute.

We work with people from all ages and backgrounds, empowering them to find a path in life that makes them happy. From young children to teenagers, who are confused about their next step, to those who have been excluded from school, the long-term unemployed and prisoners everyone deserves that. Without exception, those who found themselves in unexpected places or positions, or those who took a wrong turn, did so because they had been left behindand unsupported at critical stages in their life. A poor choice or bad decision made in a minute, changed everything.

Not everyone ends up behind bars, but we all have the potential to become prisoners of outdated thinking or limiting beliefs, which can hold us back. False ideas of who we are and what we are capable of can effortlessly derail our minutes, days or even our lives. Meee in a Minute is designed to be a permanent companion keep it with you at all times.

When you are having a wonderful minute jump into the book to see if there is any advice that could make it even better. If you, a friend or colleague are having a challenging minute, and these minutes have started to cluster together to form a bad day, open the book at a random page and see what you find.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoy knowing you are reading it.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Buddha

00:01

WORDS MATTER

Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.

Martina Navratilova

If I asked you to choose one word to best describe yourself what word would you choose? Is it a positive or negative word? Why did you choose this word?

How we see and describe ourselves can have a huge impact on who we believe we are and what we can achieve. Someone who thinks of themselves as smart, curious, funny, kind or strong is going to view and interact with the world very differently to someone who believes they are stupid, boring, angry or clumsy. Words can close us down and make us shrink back from our potential, or they can encourage us to open up to the world and try our best. Words have power they can either liberate us or imprison us. Use them wisely.

Take a minute to write down all the words that you believe describe you. Write P for positive or N for negative next to each word. Now, look at the negative words one by one and ask yourself why that word depicts you. What happened in your life to make you believe that its true? Currently, there are over 170,000 words in use in the English language. Actively select a different word to replace every negative word in your list, then practice demonstrating this new descriptor.