How we can use Elul?

How we can utilize the time and not tumble in to the holy days like every year?

Elul is a time of awakening for Tshuva, and each person needs to fix himself. At "Orot Ha'Tshuva" Harav Kook wrote many times that there are people that tshuva discourages them and makes them weak when thinking, were am I, how much I have sinned and so forth. This is forbidden! One should know that even if he fell once, even if he behaved improperly, he always needs to strive forward. So if one knows that there is defined time for tshuva, and some of the Rishonim said that it is a mitzvah- to do tshuva, So of course this needs to give him the power and incentive to do tshuva, and not the opposite. Rabbi Dov Lior