Article first published as Book Review: ‘Trusting Your Inner Physician: Your RX for Success' by Drs. Ina and Glenn Nozek on Blogcritics.
November 11, 2016
Trusting Your Inner Physician
Your RX for Success
Drs. Ina and Glenn Nozek
Aviva Publishing (2016)
ISBN: 9781943164783
New Book Offers Self-Prescription for Greater Happiness and Success
In Trusting Your Inner Physician, one happily married couple, Drs. Ina and Glenn Nozek, offer their personal prescription, which is really a self-prescription, for success and happiness. Through a series of chapters and exercises, the Nozeks walk readers through how to improve their lives in numerous ways, and it all boils down to listening to what they call “your inner physician,” which might be interpreted as intuition or an inner knowing of what is right for you. Not everyone is the same, so not everyone will find that eating the same foods will make you healthier or that pursuing the same kind of career will make you successful. But with the tips the Nozeks provide in this book, you can figure out what you can do to make a better life for yourself.
Trusting Your Inner Physician takes a holistic approach to happiness by encouraging the reader to look at all aspects of his or her life and find balance among them. As retired chiropractors who also operated the Lifeline Center for Holistic Health in New Jersey and are now leaders in Isagenix International, a health product that they have found to have amazing results, the Nozeks feel that maintaining your physical health is a top priority, but they also understand that physical health is not just about nutrition and exercise; it must also encompass your emotional and mental health.
Just like all of us, the Nozeks have had their struggles. They’ve experienced the ups and downs of operating a business and raising a family, along with personal struggles. Ina is very forthright about her battles with her weight, and both Glenn and Ina struggled with quitting smoking—a habit they knew that, especially as future health experts, they had to break, difficult as it was. In short, they are human, and that makes them able to relate to the rest of us, and their warmth and desire to help others shines through in these pages.
The problem most people have in making realistic and lasting changes in their lives is knowing where to start. The Nozeks tackle that issue early in the book by talking about the importance of believing in yourself. It’s usually our fears and self-doubts that hold us back from pursuing our dreams and succeeding. The Nozeks share their own personal stories of how they and others learned to believe in themselves. One topic in these early chapters that I thought was especially effective was looking at the “Ladder of Commitment.” It helps you to understand how committed you are to making lasting changes, and it ultimately encourages you to make a promise to yourself to stay committed and succeed.
Another powerful chapter talks about the need to separate ourselves from negativity. I agree with the Nozeks in their advocating for not watching the news because almost all of it is irrelevant to our lives anyway, and most of it is driven to stir up fear in people. We need to separate ourselves from everything that causes us fear and anxiety or makes us negative and self-doubting, including what we read, watch, and listen to and the toxic people around us.
Another chapter focuses on the power of affirmations, something I’m a firm believer in. I loved Ina’s story of how she used affirmations not only to audition for Wheel of Fortune, but that she actually got on the show and won! Building on her own experiences, she teaches us how to create our own affirmations to develop a mindset that is ready to achieve whatever we choose to focus on.
Once we have worked through separating our true, powerful, and passionate selves from what holds us back in life, we are then ready to find out our “why.” The exercises following each chapter are especially helpful for figuring out what we truly want in life and for creating steps to work toward achieving it. The Nozeks guide us in how to learn to be honest with ourselves about what we want so we do not give up or compromise our dreams or our integrity.
Other chapters are focused on more traditional health matters, but even these chapters are relevant to trusting in your inner physician. The Nozeks make the point that we are all biochemically different, so while it’s important for us to eat nutritious foods, we also need to pay attention to how our bodies react to different foods. And just as we need to separate ourselves from negative and toxic people in our lives, we need to separate our bodies from the toxins in our foods and in our environment. One chapter of the book is devoted to the topic of cleansing—how to go about finding a reliable product to use, and the benefits to be achieved. Another chapter is devoted to stress management.
But perhaps best of all is the message of balance, which means that while we need to stop listening to the world and listen to ourselves, that doesn’t mean that we become self-absorbed, but that we become better people who will also help others down the same path to greater happiness. The Nozeks model that in their marriage by serving one another. They have made a commitment to be happily married, and it must be working because they’ve been married since 1988. I loved their advice on the importance of giving and how it relates to marriage:
“When it comes to relationships, being a giver is absolutely critical for success. On our wedding day, back in 1988, I’ll never forget what Glenn’s Dad said to us: ‘Marriage is not a 50/50 proposition. It’s a 70/30 proposition, and if you each give 70 percent, it will come out 50/50.’ What I’ve later learned as we continue to spend many successful married years together is that it’s not even 70/30 but rather 100/100. Each partner needs to give 100 percent. When each partner is a giver, that’s when the marriage can be truly successful. In any relationship, being a giver and giving 100 percent of yourself is what it takes. Whether it’s with your friends, business partners, family members, or any relationship in which you are wanting success, that is what it takes.”
Wherever you’re at in your life, whether you want to make drastic life changes, or you’re just looking for some tips on how to make small changes toward improvement, Trusting Your Inner Physician will give you numerous ideas to make your life better and it will provide you with the tools to transform those ideas into your reality. It’s time to start trusting the prescription your inner physician has been trying to give you all along. After all, if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?
For more information about Dr. Ina and Glenn Nozek and Trusting Your Inner Physician, visit www.TrustingYourInnerPhysician.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and Award-Winning Author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
