New Year’s Day is my favorite holiday. It is the most self-reflective of the holidays and gives me a chance to look back on the previous year and evaluate my life. Each year, I can see clearly where I went wrong and make the necessary corrections.

The New Year can be an excellent time to set goals for overcoming addiction. I am no expert in psychology or behavioral science, but I’ve had my fair share of bad habits and addictive indulgences. Whether your addiction is drugs, alcohol, codependency, video games, or simply a severe reliance on your smart phone, there are many ways you can start slaying the beast that has taken over your life.

I’d like to share a few tips I’ve learned over the years.

For …

Wilderness travel is a huge part of the experience at Turn-About Ranch and is an integral part of treatment. Sometimes a retreat into the landscape is all it takes to overcome a strong emotion like anger or sadness. Sometimes healing is about simply getting away from the everyday buzz and connectedness of daily life.

Luckily, our program operates within the 2.3 million acre Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument, a perfect place for wilderness therapy.

Here are five amazing places our teens may visit during their stay at Turn-About Ranch.

Covered Wagon Arch

Just a mile or so from Cedar Wash road, students walk a dry river bed to an Arch and a cave, where even on the hottest summer days, the shade provides a remedy to the heat.

Spooky Gulch

Carved …

Fall is my favorite season. The weather cools. The aspen leaves are reddening in the mountains. Farmers are harvesting their crops. Hunters are scoping out the deer for the hunt.

There’s a general buzz of excitement about the air that I can’t quite explain. But I love it.

Last weekend, I picked and canned my tomatoes. Over the summer, I had spent a lot of work watering, weeding, and caring for those plants, so it was rewarding to finally see it pay off.

Less visible than tomatoes, there’s a harvest that also takes place in one’s self. For example, a person can “harvest” things like integrity, patience, and love through hard work and community. For teens at Turn-About Ranch, their hard work transforms them into new beings—they …

Some of the wilderness surrounding Turn-About Ranch.

Throughout history, many philosophers, explorers, scientists, and even spiritual leaders have shared one common trait—for millennia, they have immersed themselves in nature to discover the unknown.

They saw the unknown as the door to education.

From the Vikings, who sailed the Atlantic seas to explore new lands, to today’s botanists, who study the flora and fauna of the desert, people tend to look toward the land to learn something new. Today, we can even look at the land and its metallic ores which we have mined and transformed into amazing educational technologies.

But one discovery that seems to be underestimated by society is the individual potential for self-discovery. Farmers and ranchers have worked the land for centuries and have …

Learn how our teen treatment facility helps teens succeed academically with this article by Hugh C. McBride.