Making a Comeback After a Fall
By Damodar Roe
Turning a Setback Into a Comeback
It might be drugs, alcohol, pornography, or something else, but falling back into old habits is one of the most discouraging and confusing experiences you can possibly have. I know what it feels like. You were confidently charging ahead, like an acrobat crossing a tightrope, expecting to gracefully reach the opposite side. But with a single wrong step, you fell on your face. The pain of impact on the unforgiving earth isn’t the worst part though. It’s your shattered pride and expectations after you thought you had finally reached the level of mastery. It seems like, in just a few moments, you’ve lost all the progress you that worked so hard for. You question everything you’ve been trying so far, wondering if it’s all wrong or just a waste of time. Otherwise, you don’t know what else to do. With the fear that nothing you do will ever be good enough, you start to doubt whether you can ever reach freedom through self-control.
You’re not alone in feeling this way. There are countless people who have overcame addiction, and if you ask them, they’ll tell you that they had many moments of despair. So what turns a setback into a comeback? It’s the realization that mistakes are never final. They only mean that you’ve discovered a weakness, and that’s the first step towards fixing it. Rather than doubting yourself, or feeling ashamed, embrace this moment as an opportunity to grow as a person. Then this mistake, that seemed like a complete dead end, can actually become part of your great comeback.
You Need reasons to be Hopeful
Life goes on even after you fall back into old habits. Eventually, you will start to settle into the reality of your situation. But the question remains: how you can progress further? When your approach is not working, you can only keep trying for so long. Eventually, it becomes so discouraging that you start to have doubts. Should you persevere until your fortune changes, change course, or just give up? What you really need isn’t just a fresh day, and another chance, but actual hope that things can be different this time.
Hope is an optimistic state of mind where you believe you can reach a desired outcome. You will have good reasons to feel this way when you have four things:
A worthy goal: You know where you’re going and why.
A winning strategy: You know what’s required to succeed.
Informed motivation: You’re ready and able to do what’s necessary.
Self-belief: You believe that you’re capable of more.
If you’re missing any of these four things, then don’t be so hard on yourself for faltering or making mistakes, beacuse you’re not actually equipped to achieve the results you want yet. It’s not fair to criticize yourself for falling short of expectations that are actually unrealistic. It’s understandable to falter when your goal is hazy, you don’t know the way to get there, and you’re not ready or able to meet the obstacles or requirments yet. Stop charging forward blindly, and punishing yourself when it predictably doesn’t work out. Instead, set your mind on trying smarter, with a worthy goal, a winning strategy, and personal motivations that are informed by foresight and preparation. Then you will have reasons to feel hopeful. This will translate into effective action, which is just what you need to make a real comeback.
Pride Comes Before the Fall
No one likes to feel ashamed of themselves. Even when we make terrible mistakes, we like to find reasons to justify them because it makes us feel less bad about ourselves. We blame circumstances or other people, claim we had no choice, or shift the focus to other peoples’ faults. Shame is a dark place that we try to avoid at all costs.
Often, before we do things we feel ashamed of, we make the mistake of overestimating our abilities out of pride. We start charging forward, without seeing the obstacles ahead. Then you trip and fall into a dark place. This experience brings our self-confidence into question. Without a realistic plan and reasons to be hopeful, we’re left with nothing but discouragement and confusion. Pride comes before the fall.
A Worthy Goal
The greatest damage of repeated failure comes in the form of self-limiting beliefs that are based on fear, and make you hold back from sincerely striving for complete success. When you start to assume that you can’t actually reach a worthy goal, you either give up completely, or settle for strange compromises and half-measures. You might try to enjoy a poor habit in a way that minimizes the consequences. For example, might try to taste junk food and then spit it out, instead of swallowing. You attempt to pause a habit that actually deserves to be eliminated altogether, like deciding to quit hard drugs… but only for a week. These losing strategies will leave you spiritually adrift—unable to fully commit to your values and also embarrassed by your compromises. Even though these attempts might seem rational to you, based on the assumptions you make from experience, they will appear strange to anyone who believes in you.
A Worthy Goal
In the Bhagavad-Gita (4.40b & 42), it is said:
“Self-doubting people will inevitably be lost. Therefore, the doubts which have arisen in your heart out of ignorance should be slashed by the weapon of knowledge. Armed with discipline, O Bharata, stand and fight.”
These verses assume that failure isn’t a permanent curse, but the result of ignorance and weakness. This is great news because they can be overcome by developing their opposites (knowledge and strength.) Therefore, instead of assuming that you’re incapable of reaching a worthy goal, assume that you simply don’t know how to get there yet, or you still need to develop the full strength that’s required. Then, select an ultimate goal that reflects your values and principles and figure out how to grow into it, assuming that it’s possible for you.
Everyone has reasons they want to change. You might want to be a more reliable person for the people you care about. You might want to have a healthy, happy life. You might want to achieve something amazing. Whatever it might be, when you deeply understand why the goals and standards you strive for are worthy and meaningful, it provides a sense of purpose that can’t be taken away by any temporary setbacks. This knowledge of your own values will give you clarity, so that you can then develop the inner strength for complete success.
Ask yourself:
“If I fully trusted my ability to follow through, what goals or standards would I set?”
“What makes these goals or standards ‘worthy’ for me personally?”
“How can I break this ultimate goal into achievable steps?”
Reflect on these deep questions and then put your answers into writing. Start with a rough draft and gradually develop your ideas until you have something coherent and compelling. Share this personal information with someone who can hold you accountable. Then you will feel motivated to straighten out your character to align with your values, rather than using excusing to justify remaining crooked. This path is the lifeline that will lift you out of the dark pit of shame and forge you into a new person.
Once you have a worthy goal, hold on to the reasons that make it worthy for you personally, and take lessons from both success and failure. Never assume that any setback is proof that your ultimate success is impossible. In the words of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, “If you cannot do something, but you simply think, ‘How can I do it? How can I do it? How can I do it?’ then you will also become liberated.”
Mistakes Are Part of the Journey
“Cheating and weakness are two separate things.” — Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati
Out of all the excuses in the book, the most dangerous one is thinking: “If I can’t be perfectly self-controlled, then it doesn’t matter what I do.” This all-or-nothing mindset makes you swing from one extreme to another—expecting complete success overnight, and then using the slightest mistake as as a license to jump off the cliff headfirst.
Self-control isn’t a switch that you simply turn on. It’s more like a muscle that you develop over time. Even with the best of intentions, it still takes practice to overcome any addiction. And just because you make some mistakes along the way doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re hopeless or insincere.
At the same time, you don’t want to postpone meaningful change to a future that will never come. So how can you tell whether you’re making progress despite a few stumbles, or hopelessly repeating the same tired mistakes?
To answer this question, you need to understand the difference between slipping accidently because of weakness, and crumbling because of dishonesty.
Slipping is a mistake that happens because of weakness. It’s not the result of any voluntary choices on your part. You’re sincerely trying, but you haven’t developed the strategy, strength, or support that you need yet. Just like it’s not possible for a baby to learn to how walk without sometimes falling, mistakes are inevitably part of your journey, too. As long as you’re giving your best effort and learning from your mistakes, these setbacks are only temporary. So don’t be discouraged. Get back up and keep trying. You’re meant to stand and walk.
Crumbling is when you make choices that contribute to the problem. You might be going through the motions and saying all the right things. But you’re not sincerely trying to reach the actual outcome of sobriety. Instead, you find excuses that soothe your ego while allowing you to make poor choices. The danger is that as soon as you allow yourself to accept just one excuse, it creates a cascade effect where your mind is in a condition to accept even more of them. Every new excuse creates a loophole you can exploit at any time. The exception becomes the rule.
On a behavioral level, slipping and crumbling look very similar. Both involve falling back into old habits. But no one “slips” on purpose. The difference depends on your intentions, choices, and mindset before the act. In Western Law, this is how you tell the difference between first, second, and third-degree offenses; Was it entirely accidental, a predictable outcome of reckless behavior, or something you planned in advance? The focus should be on the choices that led to the mistake, and not on the mistake itself. More important than flawless execution is making sure that you’re not complicit in your mistakes due to a ‘criminal mindset’.
Innocent mistakes happen because of weakness. But cheating is the result of choices which could have been avoided. Therefore, even though you can’t always avoid mistakes, cheating is always in your power to completely avoid. Likewise, giving your best effort doesn’t demand perfection, and therefore, it’s always in your capacity to achieve. So don’t be discouraged if your progress is gradual and imperfect.
The Opposite of Cheating
Temptations and excuses automatically come to your mind. Without a place inside yourself that can remain unmoved by these influences, the situation is truly hopeless. That’s why, as you sincerely look for the way out of addiction, you’ll yearn to find a place inside yourself that can stand strong against the onslaughts of bad desires.
The Bhagavad-Gita reveals how we can find this place. It’s nothing mystical or hard to understand, but an asset you use every day. It’s your intelligence. It allows you to choose what to say or do even when your impulses try to dictate otherwise. It also allows you to think twice before you accept something as true. By putting your intelligence to good use, you can make wise decisions, reject excuses, and give your best effort towards continual growth.
It’s not enough to merely stop cheating. Instead, you need to use your intelligence to do the opposite of cheating. Embrace challenges that are necessary for success, know your limits, don’t make excuses, and don’t give up. These four strategies are the opposite of cheating. Once you find yourself neglecting these counterstrategies, crumbling is not very far away. Rather than measuring the safety of your sobriety by how much you think about making these changes, measure it by the choices you make and the actions you take.
Now let’s explore these four counterstrategies in more detail, which lie at the heart of a successful comeback.
Embrace Challenges that are Necessary for Success
Imagine you’re stuck in a dark, cold well. If you don’t free yourself quickly, you will not survive. Luckily, there’s a sturdy ladder just tall enough to get you out. But before you do the hard work of climbing, you want to feel nice and warm while you “prepare”. So, you break the ladder into pieces to make a fire. It feels really nice for a few hours, but then you realize that you’re stuck.
The moral of the story: There will be times when you don’t feel like doing what you know is right. There will also be times when you crave what is wrong. If you only think about avoiding discomfort, it will lead to a lot embarrassing mistakes. Real intelligence is recognizing that when best interest is found on the difficult path, and too much concern for your immediate comfort will only worsen your suffering in the long-term.
Embracing challenges isn’t about punishing yourself or seeking out pointless suffering for its own sake. It’s about aligning your actions with your values and purpose, and making choices that are better for you in the long-term. Therefore, seek out challenges that are meaningful, or at least necessary for your well-being. The quality of your life is mostly determined by your attitude and the choices you make, rather than what happens to you. This makes you the most consequential person in your entire life. Therefore, seek out challenges, view them as opportunities, and encourage yourself along the way.
Know YOur Limits
Self-sabotage is when you make choices that incrementally lead to habits you’re trying to avoid. There are many ways to do this, but let’s look at the most common ones.
The slippery slope
One form of self-sabotage is when you push boundaries without fully acknowledging where your choices are leading. You lower your guard to seemingly harmless decisions that allow you to creep closer and closer to oblivion. You find exceptions to the rule, and overstimulate yourself with suggestive input until your willpower is overpowered. For example, you might watch sexually stimulating content on social media, (which isn’t technically pornography), knowing that enough exposure will spark powerful desires that are hard to resist.
You can overestimate your willpower once, but after that it’s self-deception to make the same mistake again and again. Be honest about your limits. Confess to a mentor the ways that you allow yourself to sabotage your own determination. Create barriers in your environment that keep you a safe. When it takes a deliberate choice to do something you shouldn’t, this intelligent choice will protect you from your own impulsive streak.
Neglecting support systems and helpful habits
One way to sabotage your attempts at habit change is by neglecting helpful practices and support systems. Imagine a mentor reaches out and you feel resistant. You allow that feeling to keep you from responding. Then, you quickly shift your attention elsewhere and say you “forgot to respond.” “Forgetting” becomes a habit. But there are plenty of other habits you don’t forget, like the ones you’re trying to quit.
There might be support programs or practices that don’t quite fit. The important thing is that as long as you’re needing support, you find something that you can work to your advantage. The system doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to agree with 100% of the practices or philosophy. Let your discomfort motivate you to graduate. Prove that you can handle freedom without compromising your integrity.
In the meantime, if you find yourself skipping sessions, ignoring a mentor, or abandoning helpful routines, it’s a sure sign that you’re sabotaging yourself. Don’t think that you have to figure everything out on your own before committing yourself to accountability. It’s very, very dangerous to prematurely seek out windows of time where you’re not accountable. Simply knowing that you can get away with cheating is a huge trigger. Humble yourself by reconnecting with support systems, committing to clear goals, and staying accountable. Then fight to reach the distant shore of self-reliance.
Disturbing your own mind
Sometimes, self-sabotage begins on a mental or emotional level—where you disturb your own mind on purpose, knowing it will trigger desires for “relief.” For example, you might dwell on anxious or resentful thoughts, escalate disturbing conflicts, or obsess over the “evilness” of the addiction in a way that keeps you focused on it. When you catch yourself doing this, you need to ground yourself in physical reality. Forget the past and put the future aside. Return to the present moment and the environment around you. Most likely, whatever disturbing memory you’re contemplating is not physically present with you. By recognizing that the disturbance is coming from your mind, rather than your environment, you can take control of yourself and snap out of unhealthy thought patterns. After all, you have more power over your mind than external events or other people’s choices.
Don’t Accept Excuses
We all want to be consistent in our beliefs and behavior, or at least feel like we are. That’s why, when you feel a temptation, you look for a reason to make it seem okay. You might tell yourself it’s not that bad, that it doesn’t count, or that you have no power to resist. There are infinite reasons you can come up with. But no matter how clever the reasoning, the purpose is to make you feel less bad about something that deep down, you know is a poor choice.
Excuses provide some temporary relief from guilt and shame. But it’s also a form of self-deception that degrades your intelligence. Your power of reasoning stops guiding your decisions and starts serving your impulses. This is an inversion of how things should be, since the intelligence is supposed to rule over the mind. It’s like a judge taking bribes from a defendant. This comes at the cost of undermining your own determination, accepting lies as truth, and making poor decisions with real consequences.
What makes something an excuse and not a valid reason to adjust your expectations? An excuse is strong enough to justify pulling the trigger, but not strong enough to hold up to real scrutiny. Therefore, if you wouldn’t be confident enough to give this explanation to a well-wishing mentor, don’t accept it for yourself. Write down any excuses you’ve used in the past, and point out the fallacies in them. Confess them to a someone who holds you accountable. This is more important than confessing your actual mistakes because those are in the past, while your mindset is what still needs fixing. Expose your tricks, and it will prevent you from using them again to fool yourself or others.
Most importantly, keep your head on straight during moments of intense craving. Rather than allowing yourself to accept excuses, recognize that you are experiencing a temporary state of insanity. Any thoughts that justify bad choices cannot be taken seriously. Invalidate them all. As long as you use your intelligence to avoid endorsing any of these cravings as worthy of action, there’s no need to try to make the storm go away. Just be patient and it will pass on its own.
Don’t Give Up
The final step in all relapses is giving up. At some point, you know that you’re reaching the point of no return. You could stop right there and turn around, but instead you say, “screw it” and impulsively keep going. Reaching this final step is the culmination of a slow drift that began with several moments of laziness and poor choices. You’ve given up way too much ground already and put yourself into a weak position. You’re selling yourself short when you could do much better.
It’s only by pushing past the limits of your current abilities that you grow stronger. Every time you hold strong against temptation, you prove that you are stronger than your impulses. To be sucesful you have to make do this during the most difficult moments, and not just when it’s easy or makes you look good. At the end of the day, you have to find a path forward and consistently stick with it, not faltering simply because it’s hard or unfamiliar territory. This mindset allows you to stay proactive and dynamic, recognizing that success is built one trial at a time.
Finding Your Way Out of the Maze of Addiction
“An enlightened person is not shaken by the movements of the mind. Rather, he is situated as if above it all.” — Bhagavad-Gita 14.23 a-b
Now that you know the four types of cheating to avoid, as well as the effective strategies to counteract them, it shouldn’t be a mystery anymore which choices are keeping you stuck. It’s like finding your way out of a winding maze. If you keep making impulsive and short-sighted choices, then you will remain trapped. But by climbing a ladder to look at the maze from above, you can see which choices will free you, and which ones will keep you stuck. Now you know exactly when you need to go straight, left, or right, to reach the exit to complete freedom.
When you can clearly see the path out of the maze of addiction, this moment is truly telling. It reveals the most fundamental question—are you willing to quit when given the chance? And if not, what would it take?
Some people think of quitting a habit as a loss. Others, however, see it as an opportunity. The difference between these two people lies in what they value. The person who refuses to quit when given the change is short-sighted. He only considers how addiction feels good, while self-control feel bad at first. The intelligent person realizes there are more important things in life than comfort, which when given too much importance, can actually interfere with your self-respect and well-being in the long-term. Therefore, he’s happy to embrace some challenges for the sake of his own self-interest.
So how do we shift from being guided by our impulses to prioritizing our values? Do we have to hit rock bottom before we gain enough motivation to try? The truth is that there is no such thing as “rock bottom”. As long as you’re still living, you can keep sinking to lower and lower levels of degradation. No external cause or mechanical process can make you choose the higher path. It has to come from your own heart, when you commit yourself to the journey, after understanding what’s required to be successful.
Even if you’re not there yet, the door is still open when you change your mind. And even after you commit to change, there will probably still be some setbacks. But once you start this path you will never crumble. And eventually, once you’ve developed the strength and strategy you need, you will stand, walk, run, jump, and fly — without ever slipping — just like you’re meant to. Remember: wherever you are on the path, whether you’ve failed repeatedly or you’re reaching new heights every day, this present moment is where the rest of the fight begins. Embrace your challenges, know your limits, don’t accept excuses, and don’t give up.
Open the door and walk outside to a brave new world of freedom.
Thanks for Reading!
Understanding this knowledge is step one. But you need to go a step further to see how it applies to you. Click the link below to fill out the Relapse Evaluation Form. It will help you to identify key mistakes you’re making that once eliminated, will place you safely on the path to complete freedom.
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