New Year, New You?

Rabbi Jack Riemer, from Machzor Chadash
It takes an act of will for us to make a turn.
It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong; and this is never easy. It means losing face; it means starting all over again; and this is painful.
It means saying: “I am sorry.” It means admitting that we have the ability to change; and this is embarrassing.
These things are terribly hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways.
Dear God, help us to turn – from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith. Turn us around, O God, and bring us back toward you. Revive our lives, as at the beginning.
And turn us toward each other, God, for in isolation there is no life.

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, The Eternal Journey: Meditations on the Jewish Year p.20
Am I more open or more closed as a result of my year? Do I listen, with head and heart, or have I no time for such things?
How we learn from life is a true measure of who we are. A tree has a ring for every year of its existence; is my life marked by new discoveries and developments? Or am I always going to remain the same old person with the same old limitations?

Rabbi Jill Hammer, Jewish Book of Days: 13 Elul - The Month of Deeds
The Hebrew root for “to be willing” is yud-alef-lamed יאל, a very similar combination of letters to Elul אלול. Elul is fundamentally about willingness: to work, to remember, to forgive, to act, to change. In talmudic language, ma’aseh [deed] can also mean “story.” In Elul, not only do we act but we construct a story about our actions.
Part of the work of Elul is to re-understand and reinvent ourselves. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote in Halakhic Man that teshuvah, “return" or "repentance,” is the greatest form of creativity, because through it we make ourselves into entirely new people. In that sense, even our inner work is the work of Creation.

Netivot Shalom on Teshuva (Month of Elul Aleph:5; in vol.Devarim)
These 40 days of teshuva from Rosh Chodesh Elul until Yom Kippur are days of personal renewal for every Jew; for just as a renewal is taking place in the physical world, renewal is also indicated at a soul level.
Thus this season is particularly appropriate and appointed for becoming like a new person, with a new nefesh [life-force soul], a new ruach [spirit] and a new neshama [consciousness], and being able to rise above our embedded nature and the unhelpful habituated patterns we have previously incorporated.
This renewal is the essential point of these days of teshuva... The purpose of this time is to be renewed in our spiritual lives - for over time even our spirituality can get bogged down under dense material influences.
This is why we say in the psalms: “Create a pure heart in me, Great Spirit - and renew a true soul within” (Ps 51) - the point is the newness. We are not seeking to mend or patch up the old; rather we are asking for a complete renewal, may God renew us for the good!
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Actually we have moments for teshuva every day in the evening, and every eve of Shabbat, and the day before each new moon, which is known as a Yom Kippur Katan [a miniature Yom Kippur].
Similarly these are times of renewal, as we say in the liturgy “who in His goodness renews creation each day,” Shabbat of course being a reconnection with original creation, and rosh chodesh being the rebirth of the moon...
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When we say, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains: from where will my help come?” (Ps 121:1) our sages teach that this can mean seeing all our flaws standing between us and God, as big as mountains, leaving as all stirred up as to how we can overcome them.
The answer is to remember that “My help is from the One, maker of heaven and earth” (Ps 121:2). Which is to say, God is re-making creation every day.
So even if you don’t have the power within yourself to rectify your shortcomings, which are as big as mountains, it is in your capacity to be completely remade, along with everything else which is being constantly remade, the new heavens and the new earth.
When a person says:
“I lift up my eyes and see all my shortcomings, and I don’t see the way to be able to surmount them and ascend to the Holy One of Blessing and attach myself to God’s nature while I still have such terrible character traits / habits / proclivities [midot], and I am confused and in chaos as to where my help will come from!”
The inner response should thus be:
“My help is from the One, maker of heaven and earth - for just as there is a constant renewal of the heavens and of the earth, so too we can tap into that renewing, and renew our midot and the patterning of our life-force.”
And since each year has its own unique purpose and character distinct within creation, being like a world unto itself, during the High Holy Days of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur the new character of this new year begins to develop. So at this season we are in this early-creation state, as it is written: “And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.” (Genesis 1:2)

I've started a Teshuvah and Transformation playlist on Spotify. I think you may even be able to add to it! Check it out... Spotify playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/34fEZCvdZbcL9phPneXOHW?si=adc931fe7ca04f3c&pt=a16da147d7344cae5fefb9192fbb3aa6