Your body is a good listener. It hears your thoughts and responds accordingly.

This mostly occurs on an unconscious level. Thoughts start in the mental and express themselves in the physical, manifested into reality. Mental maintenance is generally reflected in physical maintenance of your health.

Someone asks us if we've caught a cold yet this winter, and we say, "not yet!" which is really implying that we expect to be sick, right? We expect to be sick in the same way we expect a paycheck to come through!

I’ve said before that you attract the things you expect, so don’t be surprised when you fall sick while expecting sickness. Interestingly, it's been shown that mothers may unconsciously attract illness to their children by continually projecting thoughts of it and closely watching for symptoms. The point here is that the way you refer to disease can dictate your experience with it. Fearing and focusing on it doesn't necessarily keep it at bay.

"The sick man has pictured sickness, the poor man, poverty, the rich man, wealth." -Florence Shinn.

Bob Proctor breaks down the actual word disease into two parts: dis - ease. When your mind is not at ease, your body will not be at ease. Think about it outside of sickness for a moment - when your mind is active and thoughts are running, you can't seem to fall asleep. So we see that your mind affects your body, and in this case, your ability to sleep.

So many of us fall into this pattern of hypochondria, always looking for signs and symptoms of what might be wrong, convinced that something is off. The reality is that if you look hard enough, you're bound to find something. You might even create something. An interesting story I’ve read goes as follows:

Some time ago a soldier found guilty of desertion was to be beheaded and was taken to the guillotine. The army was low on men and could not afford to lose another. To spare his life and put a good scare in him, the men covered his eyes and instead of chopping him, they brought the blade down on a piece of wood next to his head, and cracked an egg over the back of his neck. Between the sound of the chop and what felt like blood on his neck, the man fell unconscious. When they checked, he had no pulse. He was dead. He had actually been convinced he'd been beheaded, so his brain shut down his body.

How's that for impact on health?

Most scientists agree that the there is a mental component that greatly contributes to suffering and/or surviving a disease. It's been shown that cancer patients who maintain a more positive attitude towards their diagnosis and treatment are more likely to respond well to the treatment. At any rate, it'd surely be time better spent than losing hope and spirit. Your body is a temple (duhh), and your mind oversees its upkeep.

We've looked at how negative thoughts can damage our health, but what about positive thoughts? How can we work to reverse this trend? Just as your body responds to damaging thoughts, it also responds to constructive ones. Since you know that your thoughts have an attractive quality, think only of your good health and long life. Express gratitude for them both. If this is what you send out, this is what you'll receive.

A leap in life requires a leap in awareness. In order for this to happen, we need our body running on all cylinders. It sounds simple, but most of us neglect this practice. The body houses the mind, and if we want to use our minds to the best of our ability, we need to keep the house clean. It's critical that we fuel ourselves both physically and spiritually with the right things.

Think healthy thoughts, build healthy habits, and live a better life.