I’m really not one to diet, but even if I were, I would not go for a cleanse or detox diet, as it is just way to extreme for me. However, the concept of the cleanse diet became useful to me recently.

Life is messy. We all make mistakes. We all have vices and weaknesses. Sometimes we just get into a little rut that is out of character with who we are regularly, or who we want to be. I got into just such a rut recently. It occurred to me that a spiritual “cleanse” – the spiritual equivalent of these diets – might be just what I needed to snap myself out of it.

The general idea of the diets are centered around cleansing all of the toxins out of your body by eating or drinking ONLY a particular food or beverage for a period of days. For my spiritual cleanse, I decided I needed to identify several things that I really wanted to do more consistently, and several things to avoid. I would do my best to stick to this plan for 7 days. Here was my list:

Do:

• Excercize
• Blog
• Church callings
• To bed by 11pm
• Read Book of Mormon

Do Not:

• Aimless web-browsing
• TV (except w/ family)
• Video games (except w/ family)

My main concern was to avoid idle diversions, but I also wanted to apply that time toward things that uplifted me. I needed to pull myself out of the rut I was in and determined this was how I was going to try to make that happen.

And it totally worked. I didn’t even hit all of my goals consistently, but I hit enough of them to keep me focused on the attempt. It got me out of the rut, and helped me improve incrementally beyond that. I didn’t get as much done from the “Do” list as I would have liked, but that was a secondary purpose anyway.

This process came to me in answer to a sincere, repentant prayer. I can’t tell you if this will help you with any rut you’re struggling to get out of, but I can tell you the principles are in-line with the Gospel, and that it worked for me in this situation. Our Savior wants to help us, but we need to do the work we can do in order to metaphorically take the offered hand.

I am truly grateful for the forgiveness available through our Savior’s atonement. Because of it, my rut was only a bump on my road, and not a wrong turn, and I can keep my focus on the road ahead.