Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Today I’d like to talk to you about per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and per­sonal empow­er­ment.

We see so much on TV these days, espe­cially on the polit­i­cal right, about per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity for health and well­ness; how we’ve got to get the gov­ern­ment out of health­care; how the gov­ern­ment isn’t going to help us; and how we’ve all got per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity. Actu­ally, I kind of agree with the idea that the gov­ern­ment isn’t going to help us and that less gov­ern­ment involve­ment in health care is prob­a­bly bet­ter.

But the prob­lem with this “per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity” talk is that it’s not really help­ing us. Don’t we already have per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity? Isn’t every Amer­i­can already respon­si­ble for what they eat, how they live, their lifestyle and the choices they make? I think we are already respon­si­ble, and talk­ing about it hasn’t really helped us.

We already have the respon­si­bil­ity, and we’ve worked our­selves into a health cri­sis in our nation through essen­tially bad lifestyle choices. So just say­ing, “get the gov­ern­ment out and every­body have per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity” prob­a­bly isn’t going to fix that much.

What we need to be doing is talk­ing about how to help peo­ple accept the respon­si­bil­ity. They already have it, but do they accept it? How do they work with it? What do they do to actu­ally be able to change their lives? So many peo­ple feel that they can’t change.

What I’d like to do is talk about per­sonal empow­er­ment. So all you folks that are talk­ing about per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity – fine, keep talk­ing about per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity, but lets also start talk­ing about per­sonal empow­er­ment.

Let’s have a national dia­logue on what it takes to really help some­one change; to lift them up; to encour­age them; to show them new ideas; to coach them to be able to han­dle the respon­si­bil­ity that they already have for their health.

Let’s start work­ing on per­sonal empow­er­ment. We can do it.