Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Along with Dr. Peter Weiss, I’ve just fin­ished co-teaching a course in pos­i­tive life change based on his book “More Health Less Care.” I’ve wanted to help peo­ple in our church learn how to cre­ate well­ness in their lives, and the prin­ci­ples expressed in this book have been excep­tion­ally help­ful to those who par­tic­i­pated in the course at Trin­ity Pres­by­ter­ian Church.

One issue that I expe­ri­ence in church life is that many peo­ple seem to believe that, if they become more spir­i­tual, all of their prob­lems will just go away. My per­sonal expe­ri­ence is that improv­ing in every aspect of my life requires a dili­gent coop­er­a­tion — me doing my part and God doing his part.

That’s why I like that this book talks about the impor­tance of devel­op­ing a plan. You don’t make pos­i­tive change through a mir­a­cle that hap­pens overnight, but rather through a plan that you imple­ment on a reg­u­lar basis.

The more that peo­ple in the church under­stand that they coop­er­ate with and par­tic­i­pate in God’s design for them, the bet­ter. Although God comes along­side us doing his part, there’s still a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ini­tia­tive that we as indi­vid­u­als must take to claim well­ness. This book really helps us to do that.

The prin­ci­ples taught in this book can be applied to any area of life; prin­ci­ples like hav­ing an open mind and an action atti­tude, devel­op­ing a team to help you in your jour­ney into well­ness, and under­stand­ing that over­com­ing habits that we’ve had in the past isn’t so much about willpower as it is about cre­at­ing envi­ron­ments that are healthy for us.

Per­son­ally, I have taken very seri­ously every step that’s sug­gested in this book. Prob­a­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant one for me was step­ping out of the “lone ranger” mode of think­ing that I must achieve well­ness pretty much on my own and solely through my own effort. Dr. Weiss’ coun­sel in this book is to rec­og­nize that most of us aren’t suc­cess­ful in any area of life with­out a team of peo­ple of whom we can ask, “Would you help me?”

It was a huge step for me to go sev­eral peo­ple in dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines of the Chris­t­ian life and say, “I need some help, would you come along­side and part­ner with me?” Hav­ing a life coach was impor­tant for me, and the impe­tus and the free­dom to ask for help came from the coun­sel that I received in “More Health Less Care.”

I’ve had a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence over the cou­ple of months pre­sent­ing the phi­los­o­phy con­tained in “More Health Less Care” and help­ing mem­bers of my con­gre­ga­tion to apply it in a vari­ety of areas their lives.

If you an inter­est in tak­ing Dr.Weiss’ book, “More Health, Less Care,” and using it in a church small group or class, I would be thrilled to share our expe­ri­ence with you and to help you in any way that I can. Con­tact me at hoytb@​cfl.​rr.​com.