So … we’re two weeks into the new year. How’s it going?

That well? Uh-oh.

How many times have you planned to launch into a new project at work, make a serious commitment to your personal goals, renew a relationship with friends or family members, start losing weight, lay the foundation for starting your own business? You get off on the right foot with a lot of positive thinking and excited optimism.

Then reality sets in.

This is going to take time. This is going to take dedication. This is going to be tough. This isn’t going to happen overnight.

This is going to take work—maybe a lot more work than you thought.

Suddenly the glow wears off and you’re left wondering if you have what it takes to push your mountains aside. You do.

Here are a few quotations to remind you we’ve all questioned ourselves from time to time:

“That would be nice.” Charlie Brown’s response on hearing that in life you win some and lose some.

—Charles M. Schulz, cartoonist

“Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

—Samuel Butler, poet

“Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.”

—George Bernard Shaw, author and playwright

“Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect that’s glandular.”

—Gore Vidal, author and provocateur

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”

—Bertrand Russell, philosopher

“The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success.”

—Author unknown

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”

—James Thurber, author and cartoonist