Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Today I’d like to talk to you about not let­ting your­self be boxed-in by soci­ety or by your cir­cum­stances. What do I mean by that? I mean, that lots of peo­ple feel like their cir­cum­stances limit them — they want to be healthy but there’s an exter­nal rea­son why they can’t do what they need to do to be healthy.

Peo­ple say things to me like, “Dr. Pete I’d love to exer­cise, but I can’t afford to join the gym,” “Dr. Pete, I’d love to eat more healthy foods, but the rest of my fam­ily won’t do it, or  “Dr. Pete, mas­sage ther­apy really helps my back and legs but my insur­ance com­pany won’t cover it, so I can’t get it.” Well this is pretty com­mon. I do this too. I explain why I can’t get some­thing or do some­thing that would be good for me. But it’s not a great way to live. We need to try to break out of this think­ing.

The way to break out of this trap is to reframe the con­straint into a ques­tion. “So, how can I find the money to join the gym that I wanted to join?”  “Are there cheaper gyms in my town than the ones that I’ve been look­ing at?”  “Do I even really need to spend money to join the gym to do the kind of exer­cises that would lead to bet­ter health?” There’s lots of ways to exer­cise that don’t involve gyms.

“How can I eat bet­ter even if my fam­ily doesn’t want to eat more healthy food?” Lots of fam­i­lies don’t all eat the same meals. We’ve done that in my fam­ily for a while. We don’t all eat the same things at the same time. We don’t fight about it, but every­body does what they need to do to fos­ter their own per­sonal health.

“How can I get mas­sage ther­apy even if my insur­ance com­pany won’t pay for it?”  “How do I find the money to pay for it?” “Can I look at my house­hold bud­get?’ “Is there a mas­sage ther­apy school in my town where I can get it for free or at a very reduced rate?” Should I call up some mas­sage ther­a­pist and actu­ally nego­ti­ate rates with them? Or maybe I can barter with them, pro­vide a ser­vice for them and they can per­form a mas­sage for me, so that it doesn’t involve money that I don’t have.

These are the kind of ques­tions that can get you mov­ing again towards solv­ing your health prob­lems and get­ting the things that you need to be healthy. So when you feel stuck and you feel like you can’t do it, and that your cir­cum­stances are con­fin­ing you, try to reframe it in the form of a ques­tion.  Get some friends to help you.  Talk it over.  Answer your ques­tions, and you’ll be well on your way to achiev­ing your health goals