It’s one of the most-used phrases in the world:
Clean your room.
We hear it from our parents or those that help raise us. We hear it in the movies from the classic parents as they’re portrayed by actors.
So for generations the idea of cleaning up after yourself has been nearly universal. So there must be a reason for this advice. There must be a reason that we teach the younger generations to do this from a very young age.
Maybe one reason is that the parents or the older generations have grown to appreciate clean, orderly environments. They’ve been through stress and anxiety so they want to relieve as much of that as possible. And it probably makes annoyed or angry when others don’t keep things clean.
But maybe there are other reasons…
Feeling Lost, Without Direction
Many of us feel lost at certain times in our lives.
Not sure what to do next. Not sure what the right way to go is. Or maybe just a feeling that what we’re doing now isn’t really the right thing.
And there are certainly varying degrees of these feelings, but most of us feel this way at some point.
Some of the best advice if you feel this way is to focus on doing something simple, like cleaning your room.
It seems a little foolish or silly on the surface. But think about a person that is lost in the world. No direction. They probably have poor habits that aren’t leading to growth.
Their room is probably messy, unorganized and chaotic. Just like their life.
In this sense, the idea of cleaning your room makes perfect sense. When you want to make a change in the world, start with yourself. If you’re feeling out of control, focus on something small that you can control.
A Messy Past
We all make mistakes.
One of the difficult things about life is making a mistake, or multiple, and feeling regret. Feeling shame. Just thinking about it all the time and that ruminating keeps us from moving forward.
That reminds me of the scene in Bruce Almighty where Bruce reaches a climax in his power and he feels incredible regret. He sees all the bad that he has done in the world.
God comes to him and gives him a mop. They’re in an empty room. They begin mopping the floor. Just cleaning the room.
It’s just a metaphor for getting things back to normal. For Bruce, he had been living a chaotic and messy life. He had tried to fix things with grand gestures. He had been trying to manipulate others to change the world around him.
But really he needed to look at himself. He needed to clean his room.
There’s another item out there. A country song from Miranda Lambert called, It All Comes Out In The Wash.
It’s the same lesson. We’re all going to get our goals dirty. But we don’t have to let those mistakes define us. We can clean them up. We can wash our own clothes and become a better person.
Final Thought
If you’re feeling lost, the first place to start is with yourself and with the little things in your life. The little things you can control. The little things you can clean, organize and get into place. You can even create a checklist. Start cleaning things. Set a schedule to keep them clean.
This gets you into a healthy routine. It also cleans your environment. It also gets you focusing on yourself and not others.
All of this clears your brain so that eventually, probably sooner than you think, you can start to focus on things like long-term goals and plans and things that will lead to success in life.
But it all starts with getting your own house in order.