Regarding teshuva on Rosh haShanah:
Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro, zt”l said the following. The Gemara in Kiddushin says that if someone is mekadesh a woman on the condition that he is a tzaddik gamur, it is a good kiddushin, even if the man is a pure Rasha. Why? Because maybe in his heart he was thinking about teshuva. The Minchas Chinuch is bothered by this. Teshuva isn’t an instant thing, it’s a 4-step process which can taker a lot of time! So how can this rasha become a tzaddik gamur just by thinking it in his heart?
R’ Shapiro explained that taking the first step to turn your life around is an important step in repentance. Just making that commitment is the first step, and when you follow it through, you are considered to have been a tzaddik from the starting point, even though there was no teshuva for a specific sin at that point.
So too, on Rosh haShanah, the shofar is there to wake us up and tell us it’s time to do teshuva. We don’t do teshuva for specific sins. There is no vidui said, there is almost no mention at all of repentance on Rosh haShanah. But we take that first step, and heed the call of the shofar to turn ourselves around. After Rosh haShanah, we begin the actual teshuva process, with the 4 steps it requires. But on Rosh haShanah itself, we need to make that commitment to correct ourselves.
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