NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JEWISH ECHO MAGAZINE'S COLUMN ASK-THE-THERAPIST

Question: Every year around Rosh Hashonah time, I make resolutions to try and improve and become a better person. The resolutions usually last a few weeks or months, and then I find myself slipping. Eventually they are forgotten about. What can I do to make my resolutions last?

 Answer:

Ahhhh.

The good ol' New Year's Resolutions.

We start off with such firm resolve, determined this year to make them stick, and they usually go where the leftovers go, as long as we try hard to hang on to them—into the garbage.

There are so many ways to approach this problem.

If I would be a rebbetzin, I would direct you to mussar sefarim, to find a chavrusah and partner who has similar goals of self-improvement as you do, and to commit to a year's long journey together. Actually, even if I weren't a rebbetzin (which I am not), it would be a great piece of advice.

If I would be your spouse, I would help you identify the pitfalls and why it's hard to stay on track. As a spouse, the person who lives with you and loves you, there's no one better to keep you on track because you have a built-in LIVE smart phone (tell me; which husband is not a camera, audio recording, memory, and know-it-all Google rolled into one? I know, I know, so you could have married his i-phone instead of him—but he also has a sense of humor, doesn't he?)

But I am only a therapist by nature (and nurture!), so I will take that road to help you.

You realize that you did not identify the specific nature of you resolutions, only that you seek to become a better person through them.

And usually becoming a better person entails improving your capacity for relationships. Getting along with other people at home, at work, and at the check-out line in Home Depot. It means improving the relationships you already have, and fostering the ability to create new meaningful relationships in your life. I say all this because I doubt anyone marooned on a desert island is thinking about how they can improve themselves as people. If there is nobody around, chances are your middos are intact. Maybe you may have phrased your question differently if you were stuck on a desert island for Rosh Hashonah, something along the lines of wanting to to figure out how you can be a better Jew and improve your relationship with Hashem. Even though, who are we kidding, being a better person to our spouses, children, workmates, and the space-out cashier in Home Depot is all part of being a better Jew.

But still.

My gut tells me that the personal growth you strive for has to do with your interactions with other people. And somehow, every year, your good intentions don't stick.

So here is where the therapist part of me kicks in.

There are many angles to approach the problem of resolutions, and I will choose one for this article that I hope will help you understand how you tick so you can choose to tock instead. And it will stick this time.

We are born innately with certain personality traits, with specific strengths and weaknesses. There are extroverts and introverts, those who are bubbly or solemn, loud or serious, dreamy or down-to-earth. There are those who are naturally intelligent, charismatic, athletic, organized, detail-oriented, or have a creative flair.

And then there are those who have been nurtured in ways that brought out their natural strengths. They lived in homes, with nurturers who had—what therapists call it—a goodness of fit. The kid with the math head grew up with an accountant for a father. Numbers was how they communicated. The kid budgeted his allowance naturally, and was already selling lemonade at 5 years old on his corner. He was Treasurer in eighth grade and planned the bein hazmanim events with such precision that his friends had a great time on their perfectly orchestrated trip.

Or, she was artistic. Didn't do well in school academically, but neither had her mother who was a successful home decorator. So she didn't care much, but instead entertained her friends with caricatures of teachers, and was available to draw the banners in camp and posters for the G.O presidents of school, endearing her to a wide assortment of people.

Put the artistic child with the accountant father and you may create a situation where the natural talents and personality traits of one cannot tolerate the natural talents and personality traits of the other. And all of childhood may be a struggle as a child seeks to conform to the expectations that do not come naturally. And suddenly what would have seemed effortless, is devalued, ignored, and repressed.

I have given two extreme examples to bring out my point.

But really, the childhoods we grow up in are much more subtle than that.

If you would examine how you grew up, the values instilled in you, and your natural talents and personality traits, you may be surprised to discover that they were not congruous. Maybe not congruous to your parents', community, school, or even camp.

And you did not blossom into the person you were meant to be. And now comes Rosh Hashonah, you struggle with relationships, with interactions that you wish desperately to have, and just don't work well.

Take a step back. Pick up one resolution from the garbage you still haven't taken out since last year. Let's say you want to have more patience with you mother when she calls.

You know why the resolution can't hold. Because your mother's value is a perfectly clean house that fits with her organizational skills, while you just want the kids to be able to paint, color, and bake to their heart's content. You can't stand her constant disapproval and how she manages to insert into every conversation some critique or helpful advice.

Understanding your innate talents and personality traits can help you accept yourself and not need to apologize or be on the defensive. Your lack of defensiveness changes the charge of those conversations. Once the charge is gone, you can keep your resolution for patience with mother because she no longer annoys you to begin with.

And what about not yelling at your daughter in the morning?

You have no idea why she needs to put all her pencils neatly in her drawer before she leaves, for goodness sake. She cries if her bed is not made with hospital corners. You know who she reminds you of? Your mother!

Her organizational skills and natural ability to be clean and neat is what she needs from you, despite your directly opposed values, in order for her childhood to have that goodness of fit you lost out on with a mother who could not accept your artistic bent, your attention to detail in nature while totally missing the macaroni that missed your mouth and fell on the floor. And while your second daughter has that perfect goodness of fit with you, and both of you don't care about the dishes in the sink while you work endlessly on school projects, your older daughter finds the disarray in the house unsettling and cannot study properly in that setting.

So here's the thing.

First, choose resolutions that fit you and are not overgrown or too-tight coats that belong to someone else.

Second, understand your own strengths and personality versus the strengths and personality traits of your loved ones so that you can understand the WHY's of your behavior, of their behavior. With that kind of understanding, the offensive behaviors will disappear—or be significantly reduced—without the need for those ongoing efforts.

Simply, put your efforts in understanding, versus doing, because your perception of things is what drives your behavior. Towards your mother. Towards your kid, your husband, and the cashier at Wal-Mart.

And if you can't do that by yourself, therapy helps!

My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online