W is for Work.
I'll keep this short because it's a topic that nobody wants to dwell on. However, sooner or later almost everything worth doing will involve some effort.

We've been conditioned by adverts that claim that we can have it all without having to do any work - we can get thin without exercising, get rich without lifting a finger - but they're all touting that tempting easy fix that deep-down we know won't work.

When he was talking about people who say that successful people are lucky to be where they are, Stephen Fry said...

If you tell someone "Yes, I can tell you where the golden palace is, and I can tell you how to get there. It's a very long, hard climb though, and you will blister your knees and you will hurt yourself, and you will fall down and have to start climbing again", they go "Oh, in that case, I don't want it... but you're so lucky to get there."

I think the sooner we realise that getting what we want is going to involve some work, it makes it easier to get started on the tasks that need to be completed to reach the goal. Whilst we kid ourselves that some inspiration, or simple solution will magically come to us then we'll never get started on the job at hand; I mean, why bother with all this work if a short-cut is going to appear in our minds like a lightbulb coming on if we just think about it long enough...

The flip-side of acknowledging the amount of work required is also true. We might all like to be as rich as Bill Gates, but once you factor in the cost of the amount of effort we'd have to put in to get there, maybe having enough to be comfortable is sufficient.

Achieving our goals requires work, but the work is usually less onerous in practice than it is in theory.