Slide 15 of 15
This step relates to the spiritual side of health; the less tangible and less fact-related side if you will. Take measures to play and laugh regularly. Feel happy, grateful, and positive about your life and yourself. Why do we need to laugh? What is the good thing about laughter? It makes you feel good. It keeps you from being depressed. It actually helps your immune system. It keeps you from getting sick. It may cure cancer. If you want positivity in your life, you have to be a positive person. Your consciousness brings reality to your life. Reality is only how our mind filters and perceives reality.

Help others and practice the Golden Rule. The great spiritual mystics and sages of history are people who gave of themselves to others. Not only is that good for yourself, it's good for the world. I'm pretty sure our life's purpose is not about focusing entirely on us. That just doesn't sound right. Life cannot be about the car I drive, or how big the house I live in is. I also believe that there is not anything inherently wrong with material things. I say that in part to maintain popularity. For me, I am a minimalist. I can put pretty much everything I need in a backpack. But really, there is not anything inherently wrong, per se, with having things, it is just what your perspective and modus operandi is with those things.

This world is changing, as it always is. I don't even know that it is changing for the more negative now than ever. It is easy to say that and feel that, but again, that might be our perspective or maybe newscasters' perspective. If you get your perspective of the world from the news, that's not a very happy perspective. Let's assume the world is changing, and that there is at least as much if not a different type of negativity to deal with than in the past. For instance, I am pretty sure road rage, people getting shot for honking at somebody, is a new phenomena, not something that happened 15 or 20 years ago. The point is that there might be a current that takes us in a certain direction that we never experienced before. We have to make a conscious decision to say, "Okay, there are aspects of life today that weren't present in the past." We need to make a conscious effort to avoid these things.

I want to share some my personal experiences with respect to "the meaning of life" as it relates to our human purpose as part of optimal health and existence. On one given day not too long ago I asked myself , "How can I fulfill my human purpose? How can I best help the world?" I decided that my professional life was not being allowed to fulfill my personal mission in life. It led me to ask "What am I doing here? What is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of life?" When you are a practicing doctor, unfortunately, a lot of times that comes down to how much money you are making, if that is the reward given to doctors in practice. Doctors in academics (as I was) are not rewarded with money as much as by prestige, fame. How do you get fame as an academician? Publication, mainly, as well as professorial rank. Speeches, professional society recognition and awards; it's a very competitive, compulsive activity. It dawned on me that a lot of male species in the animal kingdom die from male competition. Competition is mostly a male trait. It's not exclusively so. But in the natural world, the animal world, the males are always competing for the females, and willing to die in the competition to win. There are a few exceptions.

Anyway, I decided that what I was doing was not fulfilling my purpose enough, and that it had to be more about helping others. Plus, as far as I know, every wise, spiritual sage through the eons have taught us this. That is why I jumped off the traditional "ladder of success", and how my current public service entities, FinerHealth and Nutrition, EnteroLab, and the Intestinal Health Institute, were born.

What should our life be about? Restlessness, struggle, egotism, complication, hate, rejection of G-d? No, of course not. The opposite: calm, peace, humility, simplicity, love, and having G-d's will in our life rather than "my" will in my life. As an aside, you might wonder why I write "G-d" with a hyphen. As far as I know, that is a mainly a Jewish tradition. I am Jewish. It symbolizes that G-d is so infinite that he cannot be boiled down to one word. To put the dash is to say you are not confining him to a word.

Spiritual issues don't necessarily mean religion. It doesn't mean it's got to be the way this church describes it or defines it, or any church or synagogue or mosque. As I've said, every civilization has found ways to alter their minds. Many times, that's in pursuit of spiritual matters. It's usually in their spiritual ceremonies or spiritual practice. While this can be done with mind-altering substances, meditation and prayer can also bring this about. Every civilization has had some concept of something above or outside of themselves. Some form of religion and G-d is in every civilization. So that's either one heck of a coincidence or that is innate to us being humans.

It sometimes boils down to this: "Is it all about us? or Is it all about a greater good? - self-will or G-d's will. Every day I pray that G-d's will exert "His Will" in my life and that I will easily accept it, because when I am trying to do my will, things don't go as smoothly. I'm more apt to screw it up. I read recently that every frustration, every bit of anger, and, sometimes, even every bit of excitement, comes out of our will. In other words, if I'm frustrated, somehow I'm not getting my way, the way I think it should be.

I don't want this to sound religious, even though I consider what I do a little bit of a ministry. I'm really a health practitioner and not a religious practitioner. But if I can share my experience: the more you include these spiritual issues in your life, not only will your health be better, but the more peaceful and successful this life experience will be. We've talked about how prayer and meditation and positivity and how all these things benefit you physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

I want to end with some helpful cliches: "What goes around comes around." "You reap what you sow." "You are what you think." I hope these and all of what I have shared today helps you achieve FinerHealth and Nutrition.

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