Here’s Your ‘Get Out Of Bed’ Pep Talk

canipel
canipel

Getting out of bed doesn’t just happen in the morning, when you literally have to get out of bed. It happens at all hours of the day, in any daunting situation where it’d be so much easier to just crawl back under the metaphorical covers. It happens when you’re at a job you don’t care about, when you’re apathetic about trying. Or when it’s something you do care about, and you’re utterly terrified of failing. It happens when you’re faced with a sudden challenge, when your only company is the feelings of inadequacy that are shouting loudly at the front of your brain.

It’s easier to just imagine not going into work, not going to that audition, not showing up for that interview.

Because at the end of the day, what’s actually stopping you from packing up your bags, moving to a ranch in Montana, and never again having to answer to your intimidating boss or your competitive coworker? Never again having to answer to rejection, judgement, stress, pressure? Sure, there’s rent, bills, and other logistics, but those could technically be sorted out.

But you still stay right where you are, you don’t run away. Why? Because some part of you, even if you don’t like it, knows that hiding is not going to make you feel better in the long run. Some part of you, even if you’re scared or frustrated or lost, knows that you still want to try.

Laying in your bed is comfortable, safe, warm – whether it means literally laying in your bed, or it’s more of a figurative representation of staying put at your easy, dead-end, mediocre job because you’re afraid to try something harder. For a while, staying put can seem fun. It’s low-pressure. No one is asking anything of you. There’s no possibility of failing, because you’re not actually doing anything. It’s safe, secure, sheltered.

But in due course, an uncomfortable restlessness always creeps up. Because we were not made to settle for ‘good enough,’ for mediocrity, for ‘just okay.’

We are programmed to strive for improvement, prosperity, success, growth. Challenge, possibility, knowledge, enlightenment. And it’s not even the end goal that actually, truly satisfies us. It’s the experience that our minds and bodies go through in the process that brings us such joy and satisfaction.

But eventually, some people get used to ‘good enough.’ They get used to mediocrity. And they don’t feel as strong of an urge to try, because they think that this is the best it will be. But you feel it, even if you hate it: that desire to do more, to be more, to feel more. It’s why you’re even wrestling with the idea of getting out of bed in the first place, whatever getting out of bed means to you. It’s why you clicked on this link. It’s why you have so much anxiety and fear – because you know yourself, and you know you’ve got to try, and you know it’s going to be scary.

There’s nothing that I can say, or that anyone can say, that will save you from fear, struggle, and the potential for failure. But I can at least remind you of this: nothing will drive you crazier than your own wonder of what could have been, than your own regrets of never trying, than the infinite number of possibilities of where your life could be right now that you will never know because you never tried.

Getting out of bed sucks. It’s the worst. A lot of amazing, life-changing, incredible things can, and will, happen to you. But getting out of bed also means you’re going to endure constant rejection, embarrassment, self-doubt, ever-changing self esteem, fear, feelings of inadequacy, stress, pressure, judgment, mistakes. But at the end of each day, when the world is quiet, and you’re reunited with your truest, most genuine self – the one who shows up once your phone is away and you’re free from distractions and there is no one in the room you have to put on a show for – you will feel a sense of peace. It might be a sense of peace that comes out of success, or it may be a sense of peace that emerges out of failure. But either way, your mind, your heart, and your soul will be happy at the purest, most fundamental level. Because you tried. You pushed yourself a little further. You got out of bed. You went after ‘more.’ Thought Catalog Logo Mark

I’m a staff writer for Thought Catalog. I like comedy and improv. I live in Chicago. My Uber rating is just okay.

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