Dr. Peter J. Weiss

One of my core beliefs is that, for the most part, we Amer­i­cans don’t need experts to help us become well, but that most of us could use some help — help from our friends, neigh­bors and loved ones.

Life isn’t easy to nav­i­gate on your own, and our health­care sys­tem isn’t very user friendly — espe­cially if you’re sick.

That’s why I was happy to see this New York Times online col­umn titled “The Health Coach You Know” by Tina Rosen­berg.

In her post Ms. Rosen­berg, talks a lit­tle about health coach­ing, and also pro­poses that we help each other to health.

She puts it this way, “… most of us have fam­ily, friends and neigh­bors, or other peers in our com­mu­ni­ties, who can help us stick to our health and med­ical reg­i­mens even if they have no med­ical train­ing at all.”  I com­pletely agree.

Appar­ently Ms. Rosen­berg, a Pulitzer Prize win­ning author, has a new book in the works titled, “Join the Club: How Peer Pres­sure Can Trans­form the World.”

Yes peer and cul­tural influ­ences are highly impor­tant deter­mi­nants of our behav­ior, but do any of us really want peer “pres­sure?”  I don’t know any­one who likes to be forced to change.

Per­son­ally, I like to invite my trusted friends to help me accom­plish my goals, not to pres­sure me into any­thing.  I think of it as “peer sup­port” or “peer encour­age­ment.”

Of course, it’s not always smooth sail­ing, because I do give my freinds per­mis­sion to “call me out” when I’m not walk­ing my talk.

The point is that hav­ing some­one to help you, be they a pro­fes­sional health coach or just a car­ing friend, can make all the dif­fer­ence in your abil­ity to get well.

That’s why I pro­mote both coach­ing and form­ing a team in my book, “More Health Less Care,” and that’s why I’m orga­niz­ing the Health Coach Alliance to edu­cate and sup­port pro­fes­sional health coaches.

I encour­age you to grab a copy of “More Health Less Care,” enlist some friends to help you (and per­haps a coach) and start get­ting well today.

You can do it!