The New Year arrives and creates a natural opening to get reflective and many people use this time to think about upleveling their lives and improving themselves. As part of this process, many make New Year’s resolutions. This has been going on for thousands of years since the Babylonians made promises to their gods at their New Year to pay debts and return borrowed items in order to earn good favor.

There is nothing wrong with having goals and looking toward growth and change, but according to various studies, 80 to 92% of New Year’s resolutions fail. This is common knowledge and there are now a plethora of resources available to help people be part of that successful 20-8% through using strategies and techniques. The trouble is these techniques address challenges like not creating and maintaining a plan, not allocating time, not setting up a system of accountability, and not maintaining a schedule, but they don’t address the real issue is the resolutions themselves.

Most resolutions are held from the perspective that life would be better if I weighed less, exercised more, meditated some, ate healthier foods, saved more money, worried less etc… And the only thing getting in the way of you and that better life is effort. You just need to work harder and use better strategies to get the results you want then you will be happy or at least improving and moving toward happiness.

That is where we get ourselves into trouble by using effort and grit to create change. Willpower is not the way to create sustainable change. It may work for a while but at some point, we run out of steam. People then see this as their own failing and beat themselves up until they are willing to give it a go another time and usually experience the same disappointing results. This pattern is so widespread there is now a term for it called “False Hope Syndrome.”

Rather than come up with a better strategy to try and keep a resolution, why not skip the middleman and go straight for a better life. What if life is not better when those resolutions are achieved, but instead the experience of happiness, peace, and contentment is not dependent on anything outside of you? What if what you are looking for is who you are at your source. And what if working on changing yourself or your circumstances only creates a distraction from what you already have?

So instead of trying to keep a resolution through hard work and effort, what would happen if you looked to the source of who you are and experienced that first? What if you allowed yourself to relax, to let go and got filled up from the inside from the experience of surrendering into who you are? No strategy or technique required — just you!

And what if experiencing this place of inner contentment and peace is the source for change? Not because life would be better, but because the change just makes sense. 

Would you be willing then to let go of the effort and relax into who you are?

Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their full potential. She is a transformative coach, leadership consultant, regular blogger for Thrive Global, and author of the short-read Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1) available on Amazon. You can get her free ebook Relationships here. Rohini currently has an international coaching and consulting practice based in Los Angeles helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. She is also the founder of The Soul-Centered Series: Psychology, Spirituality, and the Teachings of Sydney Banks. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and watch her Vlogs with her husband. To learn more about her work go to her website, rohiniross.com.