In a New York Times editorial, entitled “Live Bad, Go Green,” Thomas Friedman and his friends pondered the notion of people offsetting not only their environmental wrongdoings, but their real sins as well. In satirical style, Friedman proposed a website entitled GreenSinai.com. Every time you violate on one of God’s commandments, you could buy carbon credits to offset your sins.

We all know that even carbon offsetting cannot solve the problem of global warming. To heal our environment we need to truly change our energy sources and our energy consumption. We need to change our ways.

The same holds true with our “real sins,” as Thomas Friedman called them. Like carbon offsetting, simply observing the rituals of the High Holy Days do not clear us of our guilt, our wrongdoing, and our failing to meet our responsibilities. Just like with the environment, in order to right our behavioral, ethical, and spiritual wrongs, we need to truly change.

Maimonides offers us a seven-step process to help us sincerely move to a new place in our lives and in our relationships. We need to start not with others but with ourselves, focusing on internal changes rather than external: 1) we need to be aware of our wrongdoing, 2) we need to confess aloud what we have done, 3) we need to feel a true sense of remorse, 4) we need to seek forgiveness from those we have hurt, 5) we need to make restitution (make amends or give tzedakah), 6) we need to pray for atonement (or at-one-ment—that peace and renewal that can come when we are truly forgiven), and 7) we need to change, to be in the same place and not commit the same offense again. We need to break the cycle of those behaviors that bring out the worst in who we are.

Over the past year, I have spent many hours listening to stories of rifts in relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, colleagues and friends. All too often, people start their conversations and complaints not with themselves, but with others. Yet, the very first step to Maimonides’ path of teshuvah is perhaps the hardest: to look first inside ourselves, to recognize where we have fallen short and to take responsibility for our actions.

A story tells that a king held a contest to find out what was the most difficult thing in the world to look at. The winner was a rabbi who answered: “the hardest thing in the world to look at is a mirror.”

Now is our time to look into the mirror and be honest with who we are and determine who we want to become. The Days of Awe are our time to focus not on our housework, schoolwork or business, but on our selves, our souls, our relationships, and the ideals by which we want to live our lives.

May we offset our sins, not by counting our hours in shul or the pages that we have read in our prayer books; but, may we offset our sins by looking in the mirror, by being honest with ourselves, by forgiving and asking for forgiveness, and by becoming better human beings.