Empower yourself to challenge difficulty

Whatever you are pursuing in life, in order to achieve and succeed in that pursuit, you must not let yourself get distracted from it. It is easy to say, surely. We all often say it, but hardly apply it only because we already have that idea in the backs of our heads. As you say, “I will achieve so and so,” in the back of your head, the thought “That’s what I said last time about that other goal I had, but then I slacked” gets triggered.
You here have allowed an internal struggle of yours to take over. The thought and fear of failure. But, my friend, these struggles are internal. They are your own. You must face them, embrace them, and understand them. Don’t fight them. Don’t ignore them. Don’t think of them as an enemy you must defeat. After all, they are your own emotions and thoughts. If you fight them, you fight yourself. If you aim to defeat them, you aim to defeat yourself. What should happen should you find yourself in such situation is think of how you can deal with them, whether through self-reflection and understanding, or even from a close friend or a family member whom you trust and think that they might even understand you better than you understand yourself.
But what about those external struggles? Those that are out of your hand. Well then, my friend, you have no options in dealing with those struggles. Stressing about them will only add on to the struggle. If you do have an option in dealing with them, then act and change their effects on you.

If you decide to let the externalities affects you, have a hold over you, and pull you down. And for your internal struggles to persist, without you facing them or acknowledging them, then you allow your failure to surface, to prevail, and you no longer have a dream or a pursuit. You’ve set yourself up for a downward spiral, because how can you lift yourself up when you can’t face the challenges and difficulties of any journey? Just because you fall, it shouldn’t mean you stay there. If you stay, then you’ve already registered and reaffirmed the thought that you keep making goals but slack in achieving them. But if you pull yourself up, and persist, you are making a commitment to yourself to not fail again. That this will not be like the last time. That this time, you will make it and that you will achieve it better than anyone ever has before you.