Dr. John Inzerillo’s second book, “Discover the Joy of Good Health,” provides readers a way to reconnect with their childhoods in an effort to help them use compassion and grace to avoid stumbling blocks they face in adulthood.

Inzerillo is a medical oncologist at the Marion L. Shepard Cancer Center in Washington. He’s been there about seven years. He is also the author of “Passion Beyond Pain, A Mindful Approach to Living a Life of Balance.”

Inzerillo said his second book is meant to be an easy read and to “bring hope, health and peace and joy to readers.

“The goal here is to make it as pleasant as possible, a very easy read and no hard work to get through the book,” he said. His first book included a lot of exercises — “breathing, more like internal work.”

“This is one just for pleasure, where you will gently look at how to develop compassion for other people. I’ve made like a 10-point questionnaire for chapter 5. The chapter’s called ‘How to Study Compassion.’”

Inzerillo believes his second book offers insight into how simple things can help solve major issues.

“This is one way folks can learn to develop compassion for themselves. Once they’re able to do that, they can develop compassion for others. What is compassion? It’s the willingness to recognize the suffering on another and you couple that with the desire to help relieve the suffering,” Inzerillo said. “That’s very important in the health world and in medicine, but it’s also very important in daily life.”

He said there is a need for people to develop compassion.

“What’s the gist for developing compassion? Well, frustration and anger are kind of like the opposites of compassion. So, if you’re frustrated about anything or angry about anything, when you work toward developing compassion you’re actually transforming those emotions to the positive emotion of compassion,” he said.

Inzerillo knows what he wants his second book to accomplish.

“I’d like readers to walk away with the idea they are in control of their lives. That every moment they experience they have a choice in a moment to go either toward the negative or the positive,” he said. “If you get trapped in that cycle of being a victim or feeling like someone else has power over you, when you realize that you’re in charge of your own destiny and your life, along with God’s will, you can decide right now this is going to be a good day or this is going to be a difficult day.”

Inzerillo believes the book will help people put their minds, bodies and spirits in balance.

“You know one of the things is that when we go through life, we have to be willing to change our views. We grow up with an idea that life is supposed to be one way, and when it’s not that’s when we get upset,” he said. “If we are willing to adapt, adjust, we will find we are more comfortable in our own bodies. We won’t be fighting ourselves. We won’t be looking for drama everyday. We’ll learn how to develop peace.”

Inzerillo is working on a third book.

“It’s about end-of-life issues and accepting our own mortality,” he said.

“Discover the Joy of Good Health” is published in paperback. It has 152 pages and a retail price of $18.95. Copies are available online, at Barnes & Noble in Greenville and independent bookstores.