I think that acceptance of this is the first step to success. I have just pinned it up on my cork-board as a reminder that to achieve what I would like to achieve may not be easy!
There is a great post by Jess Constable at Make Under Your Life, in which she gives an example of this in action when Patrick Makau ran a world recording breaking marathon last weekend. To get to the finish line may literally not be a straight line.
[picture from Super Great]