question mark

One of the things I love about listening to Jillian Michaels’ podcasts is how she doesn’t let people get away with saying “I don’t know” for an answer to her questions. She’s totally right in that we do know the answer, it’s a matter of digging deep to get there and many of us aren’t willing to do that.

Jillian typically asks a caller why they aren’t comfortable going to the gym, or why they won’t look in the mirror, and often time the answer is “I don’t know.” But, deep down, they do know and after much prodding, she’ll usually pull the answer out of them and you can almost feel the ‘aha’ moment of the call.

Which brings me to my point. Have you ever had one of those days when you’re just grumpy and you can’t figure out why?

I had that day on Monday. I didn’t really understand why all I wanted to do was sit in my room in the quiet at the end of the day and have no one talk to me, except maybe a bag of chocolate chips cookies. After all the talking I do about needing more social interaction in my day, here I was hiding out from everyone.

I wasn’t even having a particularly bad day, I was just done with everyone by the end of it, I just couldn’t pinpoint why I was grumpy.

Everyone was bugging me, I just wanted to be left alone. I asked myself several times why I was so grumpy and I kept answering (to myself), “I don’t know.”

But, I did. It was there, I just chose not to acknowledge it.

Yesterday, I got up and got in my workout and then went to work. I was still anxious. And then I solved a looming problem I’d been working on at work and all of a sudden the cloud went away. I had let this stupid issue get to me. I knew if I had needed to spend a lot of time fixing the problem that my boss wasn’t going to be thrilled and I was worried that it was going to take a lot of time. Thankfully, I had the problem solved by 9:30.

So, two thoughts –

1) Why did I let it get to me? It’s really not a major issue, but I’ve had to be pretty self-taught in much of my job and I’m finally feeling like I’m getting the hang of some of the details and I hated that I was still fixing some things I screwed up on early on.

2) There was a reason for the grumpiness. I don’t know why I couldn’t or wouldn’t put my finger on it on Monday night. It was there once I admitted the source of my stress and dealt with it, I felt so much better.

This wasn’t really a big issue, but it did get me thinking about how I didn’t want to admit what the problem really was and then it got me thinking about Jillian’s responses to the “I don’t know” answer and then I felt like blogging about it. So there ya go, pulling back the curtain into my thought process.

What are your thoughts on the “I don’t know” answer to a deep question. Do you think people don’t know? Or do they just not want to say?

How do you break out of a bad mood? Do you need to find the source of the nagging or can you move on without finding it right away.

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