Sometimes it happens for no reason and sometimes it happens because there are a million things piling up on you all at once. You open your eyes and you feel like you’ve already lost. You can’t convince yourself that there’s a point to getting out of bed today. The sound of your alarm clock going off is just about the ugliest thing you’ve ever heard. You hit the snooze button 11 times.

Maybe you hate your job. Maybe you’re five pounds heavier than you were last month. Maybe you just don’t feel anything and you hate being awake on the days when you don’t feel anything. In these moments, getting out of bed can seem nearly impossible. You can barely open your eyes, but in your head you’re already writing an email to your boss explaining that you’re sick and you can’t make it into work today. You hate yourself with each word that you come up with for this yet-to-be-written email. Your phone is just an inch away. You can type out the email and be back asleep in under 60 seconds. It’s so easy to not make yourself be a real person today.

Your bed is warm right now. The covers have engulfed you and you feel like you’re sleeping inside a marshmallow. Why on earth would you make yourself get out of bed and face another day when it’s so easy to avoid everything and become unconscious again?

But you have to suck it up.

Think about how you’ll feel when you wake back up in 5 hours from now and everyone else is outside living. They’re doing important things, like creating presentations at work or going to Dunkin’ Donuts. They hated waking up too, but they got through those first awful 7 minutes of being awake and now they are doing okay. You’re not doing okay, because you’re alone in your apartment feeling as worthless as Napoleon Dynamite’s fat lard of a llama.

Staying in bed and avoiding the day feels amazing in the moment. It’s like cheating on a diet, or watching a Lifetime movie. You enjoy it while it’s happening, but the minute it’s over, you hate yourself. What you have to remember on these days is that nothing good ever happened to the person that stayed in bed.

No matter where you’re looking to find success – your career, your love life, your friendship circle, your creative endeavors – you’re not going to get it by sticking your head under the pillow. Because you can’t have the great things unless you deal with the crappy things too.

You know that person that you hate-stalk on social media? The one who’s always doing the coolest things and loves their job and is just a horribly annoying giant walking ball of happiness? They might be obnoxious with their gratuitous hashtags (STOP WITH THE #BLESSED) but in fairness, they’re doing what you’re trying to avoid, which is living.

If you want to eventually get to a good place in your life, you have to pull the covers off. I mean physically, not metaphorically, so don’t punch me in the face. You’re not going to be happy all the time, because no one is happy all the time.

But if you keep forcing yourself to get up and put yourself out there, you will eventually reach a point of contentment. It might happen in 3 days or 4 years. But when it finally does, you will thank yourself for each one of those days that you got up even though you didn’t want to. Because whether your realize it or not, these insignificant days will pile up on top of each other, one by one, and eventually they will lead you to that day where you look around, and you’re proud of yourself. You’ve done something. You’ve made something. You’ve felt something.

So go ahead and roll out of that fantastic, tempting, wonderful bed. You’ll thank yourself later.