Thought, emotion, and action must be unified in purpose and intent. There must be no conflict between them, or we will find ourselves in a position where one will negate the good in the others. We must intellectually accept the truth of our affirmations of good, we must emotionally embody and feel them, live them right now, and our every act must demonstrate that we know that they are actualities. It makes no difference if they are on the spiritual level at the present moment---they have to be there first in order to ever be any place else. -- Ernest Holmes on "Avoid Civil War"
Everything starts with thought.
Revisiting familiar thoughts and feelings creates a loop that we spin in. Our memories make up our internal environment. When we think from our past memories, we can only think from our past experiences. What we've memorized becomes our future experience, and so our environment ends up controlling our minds. We are creators of the loop, but we can practice the art of being greater than our environment, body, and time.
Greatness is holding fast to a dream without regard to the environment. We change our brains when we start to think differently. When we are single-minded, the brain doesn't know the difference between the internal and the external.