Whatever your goals are for this year, don’t expect it to be easy. This time of year, it’s so easy to make goals when we’re feeling motivated, thinking that our motivation is going to make it easy to resist the temptation to fall back into our old habits of behavior.

I think this is why so many people give up on their New Year’s resolutions before the end of January even gets here.

We spend so much time looking for the easy path to success thinking our motivation will make it easy to maintain discipline. But we’ve all probably experienced the opposite.

It’s when our motivation is gone that we discover who we truly are–how much discipline we actually have.

It’s when that alarm goes off in the early morning hours or we desire the tasty dessert after dinner or when we have to make that call we don’t feel like making or read that book we don’t feel like reading or do that exercise we don’t feel like doing–when there’s nothing left but to choose between staying comfortable or doing what we said we were going to do.

Bestselling author Tim Grover says “winning requires your mind to be stronger than your feelings.”

We spend so much time looking for the shortcut to success, but the reality is that hard work IS THE SHORTCUT to success (as Joshua Medcalf would say), because without it, you won’t reach your goals. It is THE ONLY WAY it’s going to happen.

So EXPECT it to be hard. Expect there to be setbacks. Visualize being in those moments when you so desperately want to do what you would have done before, but making the decision to stay disciplined. You have to visualize overcoming the obstacles you will face.

There’s no better feeling than knowing you followed through on what you promised yourself you would do, especially when it got hard.

You can do it! You don’t have to be special. You just have to be consistent.