The Rinse Cycle

Doing laundry has always been one of my least favorite chores. The process of sorting out the clothes in the beginning to folding them and putting them away at the end, has always caused me to procrastinate this dreadful task. That’s why I was so surprised when I experienced the most profound epiphany during the rinse cycle of my second load of laundry last week. As I proceeded to add my fabric softener it dawned on me that this very important step in the cleaning process is in direct correlation to many of life’s issues. As I watched my clothes spin vigorously in preparation for rinsing, I realized many of our problems are spinning cycles of our past “dirty laundry”. Our personal issues and challenges affecting our relationships, livelihood and overall well-being are usually the result of a cycle we either have no idea exists or one that we have identified but fear breaking it because of the uncertainty it brings.

No matter how many times we try to wash the problem away in the attempt to disguise or get rid of it, we somehow still attract more dirt and begin the “wash” cycle again.

Our detrimental cycles are the driving force behind our poor decisions, generational curses, dysfunctional relationships, addictions and toxic thinking. We are mostly unaware of these cycles because our focus is on treating the symptoms of our problems instead of curing the disease. Identifying the origin of our “dirty laundry” and why we seem to always have loads of it takes a lot of sorting and shifting within ourselves in order to dig deep to the root of it with hopes of identifying the seed in which it grows from. Usually, our cycles are inadvertently passed down to us from family making it harder to break and easier to ignore. The fear of exposing our families’ “dirt laundry” and our flaws is the number one reason why the cycle continues. No matter how many times we try to wash the problem away in the attempt to disguise or get rid of it, we somehow still attract more dirt and begin the “wash” cycle again.

The unwanted chore of doing laundry is just how many of us treat our issues. We repeatedly wait until we run out of clean clothes before we find time to wash them. Then when we finally do the laundry, we are frustrated by the amount we have to wash and the money and time we have to spend. Similarly, when we don’t work to correct our issues at the beginning they only accumulate and cause us pain, heartache and disappointment. The only way to break this debilitating cycle is to face our issues without fear of change. Because it is change and the fear of trying something new that holds us back from bettering our lives. We are so afraid of starting over and re-building ourselves that we prevent true happiness from entering. Once we begin to understand that, we realize that in order to get something we never had, we must do something we’ve never did. This philosophy has been proven, tried and true. So start working on breaking your cycle today, your next load of laundry will thank you for it.