Elul

Just an idea that I heard about in shul last week. The Rabbi was speaking about Elul and although this wasn't the point of his talk it was certainly something which I got out of it. He said that you should try to take on something throughout Elul that you know you can keep up for the month and throughout the yamim norahim. You don't necessarily have to do a complete 180 in these next few weeks, but just make it something so that when you get to Rosh Hashana you can say that you have grown. You can say that you have worked on yourself and you have made a difference. If you can do that, you can look towards HaShem and legitimately ask for another year to work on yourself. You can say, "Look at what I did. I accomplished something during this last month. And if You are gracious enough to give me more time and more months, I can use those too to work on myself further." I think this is a great idea for us going into yemai hadin. We will be judged based on how we used our time, and if we can't necessarily show that we used the entire past year wisely, at least we can say we used the last month.