Is anyone else getting tired of self-improvement? For the past few weeks, the New Year’s resolutions of celebrities have filled the pages of magazines, newspapers and e-news websites.

Jack Black intends to drop 50 pounds, or so he told ACCESS at the premiere of his latest movie, Gulliver’s Travels. “I’m gonna drop 200 quarter-pounders with cheese,” he added with a laugh.

Rapper, actress and singer Queen Latifah laid out her alternative to New Year’s resolutions in a Parade Magazine interview. She makes pre-resolutions in December and spreads them out over four months until her birthday on March 18. “If I want to trim down or something, I do a little bit here and there,” she says. “That way I don’t have to go cold turkey on New Year’s Day.”

This sounds sane, but it’s still about self-improvement. It’s still saying “I’m not okay the way I am, so I’m making a plan to get better.”

I’m a fool for self-improvement. Have a library full of self-help books. But this year I’ve taken my New Year’s cue from a celebrity of a different kind. Byron Katie is a big name on the consciousness circuit, not that she cares about how big her name is.

Katie, a renowned practitioner of self-inquiry, is the author of the bestseller Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life. My current favorite though is her more recent book–the one my husband gave me for Christmas–A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are.

Katie’s basic message: If you want to be free of suffering, stop arguing with reality.

Self-improvement is all about arguing with reality–that is, with the way things are right now. I’m too fat, I’m not smart enough, or I don’t know how to manage my money, thus I’m going to join Weight Watchers, or take a Great Books course, or listen to more CDs by Suze Orman. Then I’ll feel better about myself.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these activities, it’s the “then I’ll feel better about myself” part that is the recipe for suffering. What if you were to drop this story? Katie might ask. What if you turned it around and felt good about yourself as you are right now?

I tend to get on my own case about having a busy, worrying mind, even when meditating. “I’m in my head too much,” I tell myself over and over. So I was relieved to read what Katie has to say about thoughts on page 47 of her Joy book:

“You can’t empty your mind of thoughts. You might as well try to empty the ocean of its water. . . .”

“Why would you even want to empty your mind, unless you’re at war with reality? I love my thoughts. . . . You can have ten thousand thoughts a minute, and if you don’t believe them, your heart remains at peace.”

This is balm for born worriers like me. I don’t have to try to eliminate even one of those worry thoughts. I just love each mental concern as it passes through my mind. And if one of them persists, I ask, Byron Katie-style, “Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it’s true?”

Or, I ask one of my favorite questions,“What’s real?” Simply asking this deflates my worrying mind like a pinprick lets the air out of a balloon. My thoughts aren’t real. I know that. Instantly, I’m back in my body and the present moment.

What I love is the lack of striving and force in all of this. I’m not pushing for some intensely desired outcome or trying to rid myself of a deep-seated part of my persona.

Katie’s way—which is closely aligned with the ancient wisdom of the Tao–is very different from the energy behind standard first-of-the-year resolutions. There is no push to root out bad old patterns and make oneself change for the better. As Katie, and as every self-respecting Taoist, knows, such pushing is a sure-fire way to beef up internal resistance and start an unproductive civil war within.

For me, this unconventional approach is also a brilliant way to have my worry thoughts and be free of them at the same time.

Anything you want to add about self-improvement, New Year’s resolutions, and alternatives to such? I’m all ears.