You can learn a lot about a person’s physical health by simply looking at their physical diet. Are they eating a variety of whole foods? Are they eating a lot of fast food? Is their diet full of foods that help them grow strong and have energy, or is the food they consume wearing them down?

The same is true spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. You can know a lot about your spiritual, mental, and emotional health by looking at your mental diet.

Hours of talk radio, cable news, soap operas, social media, and binge watching is the equivalent of mental junk food. It’s not healthy for you. In fact, it’s poison. It is wearing down your ability to live a life of purpose.

Proverbs 15:14 says, “A wise man is hungry for truth, while the mocker feeds on trash” (TLB).

You have a choice—and every day, you must choose to feed your mind with the best thoughts.

Philippians 4:8 gets specific about the kinds of thoughts that are best for your mental, emotional, and spiritual health: “Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (NIV).

Does that list of things describe what you think about most of the time? If you’re honest, the answer is “no.” We would all answer “no.” Our minds don’t naturally go to these things because we are human and sinful.

So you have to train your mind to think thoughts that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. How do you do that? By doing it! You have to practice filling your mind with these things by reading the Bible, meditating on it, and memorizing it. You have to hunger for it.

How you think determines how you live. What you put in your mind is going to affect every area of your life—so you need a steady diet of truth from God’s Word.