How “Cleaning Your Room” May Change Your Life For The Better
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a clinical psychologist, often tells his listeners to “clean your room”. It doesn’t matter whether he was addressing topics of self-improvement or even politics, this suggestion could often be found. It may sound mundane to a lot of folks who have never listened to his lectures or interviews. How can such a simple everyday task be so relevant to modern problems we face every day, even though it may seem to be so detached from it in the first place?
What Does it Mean?
The idea of the “clean your room” argument is to — well, clean your room. Making our bed every morning and cleaning our room every now and then is (whether you like it or not) part of our responsibility. You can also view these tasks as an everyday ‘problem’ that we must solve. Completing simple tasks and figuring out basic problems may become building blocks for us to tackle bigger and heavier problems in our lives.
An Example
To illustrate this point a little further, here’s a hypothetical scenario to use as an example. Let’s say you wake up one morning to a messy bed. You glanced around your room and it appears to be messy. But you don’t clean it. Why? Well, you might not feel like doing it, you’re lazy about it. Plus, it has been like this since yesterday and the day before and before that and so on and so forth. This mere laziness in cleaning will create an environment that will negatively impact your daily life. The atmosphere of a dirty and unpleasant room alone may affect your mood and productivity. This then could eventually impact your relationship or even your performance at work.
Even though your experience may not be this extreme, but you have to admit that it may have a negative effect on your life, no matter how minuscule or different it is.
The Change
Now you see the problem. Little lazy habits may eventually build up and spread out to other aspects of our life. Say now you have the motivation to reverse that bad habit. “Alright. Today is going to be different, I’ll try to clean my room!” you thought to yourself. So you made your bed, did the laundry, organized your items, and swept the floor. As you open your curtains and windows, sunlight starts to shine through, slowly brightening your entire room. You can’t help but notice how different it feels. The atmosphere feels — great. A lot less dust, a lot less laziness, and a lot more lively environment.
Aside from mood and productivity, there will be a little but noticeable change in your personality and way of thinking. The “Clean Your Room” concept has a larger meaning beyond its literal definition. It proposes the idea that — before you attempt to tackle problems in society, you should solve your own first. If you can’t even do an easy everyday problem such as cleaning your own room, then why do you think you have the ability to solve society’s largest problems where it involves countless other people in which their livelihood may be at stake?
“Society is the main source of the problems in my life!” Well, unless you live in a third-world country with unstable politics, no it most likely isn’t. There are many reasons for many problems that we face in our lives, and we have the obligation to tackle them one by one, from smaller to bigger, from personal to societal. A good way of thinking about it is like levels in a video game. You don’t just skip to the boss fight because it’s more fun to do so. You will most likely mess up and fail. You have to climb the levels, steadily increasing your experience and knowledge. The same applies to this scenario. It may sound counter-intuitive, but solving your own personal problems and making yourself a better person may just be the key to improve society as a whole. If a good percentage of people in said society were shared, taught, read, or listened to this mindset, society by itself will be better for everyone.
So I Started to Clean My Room, What’s Next?
That’s great! At first, it might be hard for you to do this on a regular basis. Fret not, it’s perfectly normal! I myself struggle constantly with sticking to a habit I want to implement in my life. There might be days where you just don’t have the time, felt lazy, or simply forgot about it (sometimes, I do too!). But that shouldn’t define you. To me, even the mere intent of cleaning your room is already a good sign of improvement. Always strive to make yourself just a little bit better each day. Set your habits, schedules, and goals that you want for your life, stick to it. (I might talk about this topic in the future!)
“If you can’t even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world?” - Jordan Peterson
Thank you very much for taking your time to read my post, claps and follows are very much appreciated!
