Repenting IS adopting Christ's Way. Come to the Cross with a humble contrite heart today. Total surrender to the love of Jesus is not an OT work. Come as you are. Only God can make you clean inside. Not by thine own effort, but by the soul cleansing power of the Blood.
So yes, *we* make the effort to repent. But the *work of redemption* belongs to Christ alone, and *we* must act *in partnership with his Spirit* in order to produce saving virtue, ie works that follow us after death.
You're exactly right, though. True repentance is giving up our own autonomous life for a life of dependence upon Christ. It is "Christ in me, the hope of glory."