You know the usual advice for attaining physical fitness: “Eat nutritious food, and exercise.” It also includes a caution to avoid junk food, which is not only low in nutrition but high in calories, fat, salt, sugar and other potentially deadly ingredients.

Yet, like junk food for the mind, negative attitudes are readily available. They can also be palatable, easy to swallow, even fashionable.

But they slowly poison our systems. If we ingest them when we’re young, they have a long time to fester in our brains. They become addictive. We don’t see the effects on our personalities, on our physical health or on our families. We may notice that some friends and family members lose their affection for us or seem to avoid us, which tends to intensify the effects of the poison.

On the other hand, we don’t develop good attitudes by accident or osmosis. Much like going out of our way to shop for and store fresh vegetables, we must actively develop a good mental health regimen until positive attitudes become part of our character. Even then, because negative attitudes are so contagious, we have to consciously guard against them.

Here are some of the mindset junk foods I try to avoid. Your list may be different from mine. In this case, I suppose, you can pick your own poisons – to avoid.

• Fearfulness – comes from reading and listening very carefully and taking to heart all the warnings out there of war, polluted water, starvation, disease, etc., etc., etc. Fear can only immobilize you, preventing you from doing what you can do in your sphere of influence.
• Resentment – born of jealousy and regret, which serve only to eat away at your soul. Write about it, examine it, examine yourself, and uncover the source. Put your resentments in a cardboard box and toss it far, far away. The same thing can be said for worry.
• Complaining – usually a bad habit that you’ve caught from someone else. Listen to yourself, and in the middle of your complaint, bite your tongue – or less painful – press your lips together – tight! It gets easier with practice.
• Guilt – a close cousin of regret, the depth of which may be proportionate to the consequences of your actions. Feeling guilty about missing an appointment would not compare to being responsible for a loss of life. But even minor feelings of guilt can ruin your sense of worth. Listen to those who love you; see and accept your value to them and to God, if not to yourself.

Just as nutritional food just makes you feel better all around, so will these four nutrient-dense, non-fattening, low-fat, sugar- and salt-free attitudes. I am trying to keep them on hand at all times, ingest as much as I can any time of the day.

• Persistent Hope. American journalist Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) defined hope as “the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.” Hope brings us to the other side before we get there and thereby gives us not only comfort but encouragement.
• Generosity of Spirit. How I hate the spirit of meanness I see in myself at times, and how I admire those who always have their hands open – not to receive, but to give.
• A Desire to Understand. While we all seek to be understood, wouldn’t it be better if we sought rather to understand? Then in understanding we would become a little less self-centered.
• A Sense of Wonder. Consider what the world looks like through the eyes of a small child, who notices both the tiny ant and the giant oak, who asks questions without fear of sounding ignorant.

Attitudes of hope, generosity, understanding and wonder can be even more contagious than fear, resentment, complaint and guilt. They strengthen and invigorate us, giving us the energy to overcome not only our own negativity but to help others who are suffering its consequences.

Talk to me. What about you? What junk food attitudes do you notice that are destroying people around you? What nutritional attitudes are you developing to hold on to your own mental health?

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