Acharya Prashant explains that the cycle of making resolutions and then falling back into old habits is natural. He states that you notice a flaw in your condition either because it is causing you some loss or because people are taunting you. To change this, you think of an alternative. You think, "If my condition is not like this, then how should it be?" You search for an alternative. You say, "Right now I am like this, I shouldn't be like this." So you create an alternative in your mind, through imagination, and then try to move towards that alternative. Most of the time, you are unable to stick to that alternative and you return to your current state. This happens because in your mind, your current state and all other possible states already exist. He illustrates this with an example: suppose you have five options for how to be. Your current state is that you wake up late, eat too much, and work less. Other options could be to be a person who wakes up early and runs, or one who has chosen a meaningful job and dedicated their life to it, or one who doesn't care about results and speaks their mind. These options already exist in your mind. After weighing all these options, you have chosen your current one. The criterion for this choice is where you will get the most pleasure. We are born this way; we want pleasure more than consciousness or progress. It's like a child who finds more pleasure in splashing in dirty water than in learning to write. We are born to find more pleasure in dirty things, and we run away from things that enhance knowledge and consciousness. So, out of all the available options, you have already chosen the one that gives you the most pleasure. In your view, this is the best option. When someone taunts you, you get hurt and temporarily try another option, but that option is already inferior according to your own chosen criterion of pleasure. He uses another analogy: if you enjoy going into a dirty alley to tease someone, a scooter is more useful than a BMW. You already have the scooter. If someone taunts you for not having a BMW, you might rent an Alto for a while, but it's not useful for your primary pleasure-seeking activity, so you go back to the scooter. Your pattern won't change because your criterion for life is pleasure, and your current pattern is already number one on that criterion. Why would you want to go down from number one? The way to change is not by trying to change the pattern, but by changing your central desire. Until your central desire changes, your current circumstances will not change. You cannot want the same old things and expect your life to change. You have to see that what you have wanted so far was worthless and not worth wanting. You have to spit on your past. Only then will life change. Progress happens not when your dreams come true, but when your dreams become a joke to you.