Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Have you ever tried to help some­one else change, or learn some­thing new, and real­ized that he or she just wasn’t ready?

An exam­ple might be teach­ing your son to ride a bike.  If he’s too young, and there­fore “not ready,” it’s just not going to work.  When he’s a lit­tle older, it will seem effort­less, but not today.  His bal­ance and coor­di­na­tion must develop a lit­tle more before he’s ready to ride off on a two-wheeler.

In adults, the body isn’t the prob­lem.  It’s the mind.  An inflex­i­ble mind pre­vents change.  We see a lot of this in life.

Peo­ple caught in self-destructive or self-limiting behav­ior and ideas who resist all attempts to help them — addicts “not ready” for rehab; angry spouses “not ready” for cou­ples ther­apy; young adults “not ready” to take respon­si­bil­ity for their lives.   You know what I’m talk­ing about here.

Yet, being ready isn’t com­plex.  It just means under­stand­ing that what you’re doing isn’t work­ing, and being teach­able or will­ing to learn — so sim­ple and also so dif­fi­cult for many of us.

It’s hard to say, “I’m strug­gling,” “I need to change,” “I need help,” or any of the other admis­sions that would show that all is not in order in our lives.  But with­out readi­ness there is no chance for improve­ment.

As a coun­try, Amer­ica is not yet ready to be healthy and well.

Despite our epi­demics of obe­sity, dia­betes and other pre­ventable ill­nesses, we’re just not ready to admit that what we’re doing isn’t work­ing — that more health­care isn’t our answer.

We’re not ready to admit that we’ve lost con­trol of our col­lec­tive lifestyle, that we can’t han­dle our choices.

Instead we cling to old excuses and hope for sal­va­tion from a new pill or advanced oper­a­tion.  We have too much col­lec­tive ego at risk, and too much money invested in the health­care and food indus­tries.

As Upton Sin­clair put it, “It is dif­fi­cult to get a man to under­stand some­thing, when his salary depends upon his not under­stand­ing it!”   And very many salaries, large and small, depend on Amer­ica not wak­ing up to this real­ity.

Of course, our coun­try is made up of many indi­vid­u­als, and all of us don’t have our heads in the sand.  Some peo­ple are ready to change for the bet­ter.  They are wak­ing up to fresh ideas and begin­ning to try on new atti­tudes and new behav­iors.

Yes, get­ting healthy would be eas­ier if all of Amer­ica was work­ing on it, but it’s just not hap­pen­ing.  Maybe we’ll get there some­day and maybe we won’t.  Per­son­ally, I’m not wait­ing.

How about you?