Reflecting on the last 12 months, have you lived everyday with unreasonable expectations to succeed? Have you moved past any obstacle that has stood in between you and your goal? Having the discipline to live like this can be hard, but I am going to share with you 7 practical steps for achieving a whole year of unreasonable expectations in 2014.

1. Act with UNREASONABLE Persistence

Hang on never give up. In 2014 act with UNREASONABLE persistence make a commitment to never give up and work to your strengths and be persistent on strengthening your weaknesses.

There may be times when wee are tempted to quit and often it may be for very good reasons – logical reasons, reasons that will let us off the hook, reasons that will absolve us from any blame and enable us to say, "I tried. I gave it my very best shot. What else could I do but to give up?" What we have to do is take the try out of our lives and replace the word try with can do so be a can do person in 2014.

2. Have Unreasonable Love for Life and Everyone you Meet

Love sustains us in tough situations. If we are fortunate to find someone and something to love, it will be much easier for us to hang on when the going gets tough. Which means we need to develop the capacity to love: to love ourselves; to love our relationships; to love our careers. Many people find the hardest part of that trifecta is to love their careers.

Many of us are not in the fortunate position where we are doing what we love to do. So how, then, do we learn to love what we are doing? By making the decision to become the very best at doing it, the very best in our field- which we do by getting really interested in our careers and in the nitty-gritty of our work. When we do that, when we get really interested, our competence flourishes and expands and our confidence builds.

3. Act with UNREASONABLE Speed

Move with a fast tempo and get things done on time. All of us are guilty of not acting as quickly as we could. We are even guiltier of not acting on our inner feelings: of not taking prompt and appropriate action at those times when out gut tells us that now is the time to act, when our inner self is insisting that there is something that we ought to do. Not acting on those feelings almost always gives us cause for regret.

4. Be UNREASONABLE and Have a Go

The world is full of people who will tell you why things won't work yet who have never given anything a go themselves. There will be occasions when you need to get unreasonable take charge and change the situation. Never let events dominate you without first trying to change them by having a go. You will be surprised how often you will succeed.

5. Be UNREASONABLE in Welcoming Positive Change

Its hard to adjust to change in our lives; even harder to actually welcome change. Most of us want to get to that perfect place in life where we can be happy and healthy and rich and live happily ever after, even though we know its a dream and not what actual living is all about. We need changes for without UNREASONABLE change we stagnate, just like water stagnates. Without change we become still and unhealthy - maybe even toxic. We need change to stay vibrant and alive and to be in the flow of life. Just like water, we are at our best when we are flowing. When we are flowing we can sweep over or around obstacles, just like a river flows over rocks. UNREASONABLE change prompts us to innovate.

6. Have UNREASONABLE Faith in yourself and everything you do

Act as if it were impossible to fail. When faith walks in, fear walks out. Fear can be a monster and, just like the kind of monster we remember from our childhood nightmares, it terrifies us so much that we can be frozen by it. In the face of fear many of us become completely immobile. We do nothing and because we do nothing the agony is prolonged.

It takes courage top let go of our fear; even more courage to have the sufficient faith to face the monster, to step up to whatever situation is frightening us and to say, I can beat this, I can work my way out of this awful dilemma or predicament and beat it. To hear someone say something like that - to hear someone say that they are faced with a terrifying situation and yet they are resolved to beat it is so refreshing. Such people have learned to overcome their fears, to eliminate all excuses and to attack the situation.

7. Be UNREASONABLE in Recognising your Turning Points

Recognising those times when we need to make important life choices. I believe that every day life gives us lessons and that its up to us to be aware of what those lessons are and to do something about them-namely, to put them into practice so that we may turn our lives around for the better. But first we have to recognise that sometimes there are special events or particular moments in our lives which are – or can be - our turning points to greatness.

These are our opportunities to grow and achieve great things or if not greatness, then certainly more wisdom or insight or happiness. But we need to be able to identify these events of moments, to see them for what they are.

So go on get UNREASONABLE in 2014 and have some great expectations for yourself.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.