How often have you started working toward a new goal, full of determination and drive, only to give up when you encounter an obstacle or challenging circumstance?

This happened to me over and over when I was first starting my personal fitness journey. I’d commit to working out three times a week and vow to swap out junk food for healthier options. As long as everything went exactly as expected, I’d be fairly successful sticking to my plan.

But, of course, life never goes as planned. Inevitably, something would happen to throw me off course. Sooner or later, I’d give up on my goal altogether, lose my progress, then have to start all over again at a later date.

The more I went through this demoralizing cycle, the more I became convinced that I could never become fit or healthy. But it’s not that I was doing anything wrong or that I wasn’t capable of change in the first place: I just didn’t have any alternative arrangements to fall back on when I encountered challenging circumstances.

Whenever we are striving for a goal, whether fitness or health-related or otherwise, we will inevitably encounter obstacles.

Rather than being surprised by the hurdles life throws at us, we can learn to plan for them.

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What separates those who accomplish a lot in life from those who idol away their time? Largely your ability to set and achieve goals.

Goals give our lives direction, something to organize our thoughts and action around. Well-thought-out goals can direct our time and attention, help motivate us toward action, and even help give our lives meaning and purpose.

Goals can significantly increase our performance and productivity, too: in dozens of studies by goal-setting experts Gary Latham and Edwin Locke, setting challenging goals has been shown to increase performance and productivity by up to twenty-five percent.

If you find yourself hesitant to set goals, it may be because you’re worried about failure and thinking ahead to all the things that could possibly go wrong en route to your goal. People who don’t set goals are often “saving themselves” from failure and defeat.

If this is you at times, remind yourself that in order to invest in a goal fully, you first have to believe that your goal is possible. This is why having a growth mindset — or believing that your efforts will make a difference — is so important to achieving high, hard goals.

It may also be helpful to remind yourself that the pursuit of goals is not all about the outcome. Learn to enjoy the process and all the learning and growth that happens along the way.

But while studies by the U.S. News & World Report show as many as 80% of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions by February, this doesn’t have to be you. Goal setting isn’t just about making a checklist once a year. It’s actually a skill that you can get better at with time and practice.

Below is a four-step process to setting goals you’ll stick to this year:

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