I just had to pass this great article about healthy living, and Successful People on to you by Joe Abdo.

The beginning of all vibrant, healthy living starts with mental conditioning, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything else will proceed.”You have the kingdom right inside you, right inside your brain; it’s right inside the mentality of every person. I firmly believe that who you are today, how you look, how you feel, your status in life, your successes and your failures, have been from what you’ve thought. And what’s proceeded from that is what you’ve said, and then after that is what you’ve done, your actions that follow those thoughts. It comes down to thinking, saying, and doing.

So the objective is to get healthy thinking, healthy saying, and healthy doing all congruent with one another, and that’s how I believe great things are manifested in life. To think it, say it, and to become a doer. I’m a doer and you’re a doer, and this is what we want to accomplish.

When it comes to the power of the mind over the body, it’s literally incredible. The mind influences the entire body. In fact, every cell in the body has a connection to the mind and brain. What we’ve learned through science is that even our organs communicate with the brain. Some common phrases like “You broke my heart” or “That makes me sick to my stomach.” We have center organs and center cells in our bodies that hold emotion, that hold thought. Those phrases literally can come true.

But when you train your brain to clean up the negative emotions that aren’t just in your mind but that are being harbored throughout your entire body, you become healthy. I call it “the rotten apple analogy.” You could have an apple that was originally something that you thought was good get toxic inside your body. And when it gets toxic, it literally starts to play havoc with the whole system.

Thinking has to start with you. This is something that you do for yourself. And a lot of times we need to control our thinking because what we hear, what we see, what we experience, what we feel, controls how we think. So we are exposed to radio, TV, newspapers, websites, magazines, other people’s chatter, our own chatter. This is how we form our thoughts. And our thoughts form our beliefs, and our beliefs are who we say we are and who we eventually become.

So, how do healthy people think? First, healthy people think that they’re healthy. Healthy people love the world, love other people. Healthy people know that their brain is in control of their body, that their mind is in control of their matter. It’s mind over matter, and your body is that matter.

And what we have found, at least in the sporting industry, and even in the business industry, is that affirmations and meditations are so advantageous to allowing each individual — and then how it permeates into the whole team or corporation — to improve. Why? Because it all started in the kingdom, and the kingdom is in your brain.

Healthy people have a mindset that their days revolve around energy. We are energy individuals, energy organisms, if I may say. So each day is almost like you’re going to the bank, you’re going to make a deposit, and you want to yield a return. Everything that a healthy person does is for a return. Love, for instance: We give love; we’re supposed to give love back. The law of mutual exchange. “Cast out what ye shall receive.” It’s the law of cause and effect.

I mentioned earlier about “seeking first the kingdom of God.” My mentor, my idol, my big brother, my Master is Jesus Christ. He’s done some remarkable things with His thinking! And obviously what He said and what He did have been miraculous. Find someone who can become your mentor, that you know is a great, positive thinker, and pattern yourself after what that person does, how that person thinks, the fruit that person bears in his or her life. It certainly worked for me, and I’ve seen it work for many others.

When it comes to the human body, and you can read this in every religion around the world, we are spiritual beings. That our thoughts literally create our reality. And that’s what really the mind of God is all about, is that we can create something from nothing. That what we see comes from what we don’t see. And what we don’t see is what other people are thinking or what we’re thinking. But it’s amazing that something can come from what appears to be nothing. But to us, it’s not nothing, and now we know that. Thinking becomes saying, and saying becomes doing.

So my suggestion to you is find a spiritual mentor or a spiritual source who will allow you to be fed with spiritual energy and spiritual nutrition, and become a doer! That’s what my whole campaign is. Whether it’s a mantra, an affirmation, “I’m a doer, I’m a doer, I’m a doer.” If you say it, if you think it, and if you do it, people are going to look to you and say, “Wow, I want to be a doer, too. I want what you have.” And like a ripple effect, you start affecting others in a positive way. You want to hang around someone who does great things, someone who has accomplished great things. You want to be around the achievers. And guess what? Then you won’t have to look far for someone, because you’re going to be one yourself.

I have found successful mentors that already had what I was wanting, and that had already done what I was attempting to do in life, then I simply trusted them, followed their coaching and advise, then success started coming my way the same as it did with my mentors.

Successful people will guide you to success if you will latch onto them, then follow, and do what they are teaching you to do.