1107 - The Hidden Cost of “Just One More Time”

Most men don't tell themselves they'll stay stuck forever, they tell themselves

something smaller, just one more time. One more night, one more stressful day, one

more rough week, and it feels harmless because nothing explodes. No crisis, no

confrontation, no consequences you can point to, but in this episode I want to

talk about the cost that most men never calculate. The hidden cost of just one

more time. My name is Cynthia Sam. Welcome to the man within podcast. I'm so

glad that you're here because I'm all about helping guys like you walk an

integrity, purpose, and identity, and truthfully that's what I've been doing for

the last seven years of my life. I've helped over a thousand guys quit

pornography and this podcast has been downloaded over a million times by men

who are serious about becoming the man that God has made them to be. I'm glad

you're here, and I'm glad that we're about to get into some really useful

content for you. Now before I do that very quickly, if you are struggling with

pornography and you want some help quitting, I have a book called The Last

Relapse in Details, my full system. All the way from A to Z, it's been read by

over 20,000 guys who rave about it. We get emails, messages, comments, all the

time about how much guys have been blessed by the book. You can get a free copy

at The Last Relapse Book.com, my gift to you as a listener of the show. Let's get

into the material today. So this whole one more time thing. I mean, I'm doing this

episode out of my own story, struggling with pornography for 15 years, very often

telling myself just one more time because it sounds measured. It sounds

controlled. It sounds mature. You know, it's just one more time. It's not rebellion.

It's just this small negotiation. And, you know, we frame it, right? We have

these logical justifications, stress relief for just a temporary exception.

These are extraneous circumstances. And the lack of immediate fallout reinforces

the lie, right? This is what actually keeps addictions thriving. They don't

thrive in these big defiances. And the fact that we go way, way off the handle,

I mean, maybe sometimes that happens, but typically addiction survive on small

compromises. Now, the real cost is not the act. Because like I said, the fallout

initially is almost nothing. At least that's the way it kind of seems. So the real

cost isn't the act itself. It's momentum. Because every one more time delays

clarity. It weakens your resolve. It trains postponement. It channels resources

for something poor and negative that could have been used for something that

would actually grow your life and develop it. The biggest loss here isn't

behaviorally. In fact, the biggest loss isn't things that happen. It's the

things that don't happen, right? It's that you don't get uninterrupted time of

focus. It's that you don't get honesty with where you're really at in your

life. And you don't get momentum towards change in a life of meaning and value

and purpose, right? And what you repeat, you reinforce even when it's small, right?

That's the key here is even when it's small, it is still repetitious in

reinforcing. And that's a problem. Now, here's the identity tax that most men

miss in all this. Because it's not just even the behavior, as I've said, and it's

not just even the momentum, there's a cost to your God-given identity.

Because here's how this works, right? If you keep making small promises to

yourself and then small compromises to yourself, over time, you have a

misalignment. You making these promises, maybe they're not small promises, maybe

they're big promises, but you made a promise and then now you are slowly falling

short of what you promised. And so this erodes yourself trust. It

erodes your integrity, right? Because integrity is, you know, when your lifestyle

matches your convictions. And so you don't have that internal alignment. And as a

result, you have no confidence, right? So you start stop believing your own

stuff, right? You stop believing your intentions. You stop believing your own

timelines. And a lot of the stuff that you say feels good and still sounds

right. But in your heart of hearts, you know, there's no substance because you

have this track record with all these small compromises. And so that begins to

plant self-doubt, right? You question yourself. It creates spiritual fatigue.

All all connections starts to feel exhausting when you don't believe in

yourself. And of course, you have diminished authority. If you're in a position

of leadership or someone somewhere else, you really don't lead the same way.

And you know, you don't even have to lead at work, even just at home, you're

not going to lead the same way when you are compromising. And telling yourself,

it's just one more time when you know it's not, right? The deepest cost of

this isn't the shame. It's the gradual loss of trust in self. Now, high-functioning

men pay this cost longer because life still works. The job's intact. The marriage

seems all right. I'm meeting my responsibilities, right? With people that are

high-functioning, no one intervenes because everything looks good from the

outside. And so delay feels safe and inconsequential and success starts to

become this cover for what is actually degradation of the inner life and then

eventually the outer life, right? And to somebody who is maybe in that situation

because I typically find myself here, it's rare that I'm rock bottom and

crashing down. What's more often the case is that I've plateaued. I'm in this

middle and I can't seem to kind of break past and really get back into

momentum. You don't have to crash to be stuck. You don't have to crash to be

stuck, right? If you're not moving forward in the things that God's called you to

and the promise is on on your life and if you're not stepping more into

Christ-like character, then you're falling away from it. There is no middle

ground. Now here's the good news. Freedom doesn't begin with outlandish rallies

and promises. It doesn't, it doesn't begin with big vows and it doesn't

necessarily begin with a rock bottom. In fact, people ask me, you know, what was

your rock bottom moment? And I don't, I have some really dark moments that I'm

not proud of, you know? But truthfully, those rock bottom moments aren't what

catapulted me into the 10 plus years of freedom that I have now. My rock bottom

moments were just moments along the way that caused me to reflect, to learn, to

heal, and to grow. Freedom doesn't begin with these things. It begins with

interruption, right? One honest pause can restore awareness, return agency

shift momentum. You have to start reframing how we see this thing because

typically the guys that are saying just one more time, just one more, often on

the flip side, almost to overcompensate, are trying to take drastic measures to

get this thing out of their life that they keep doing quote unquote one more

time. And I want to challenge you to actually be a little counterintuitive about

this and to go slow and to start small, small interruptions go a long way. So the

first thing we need to understand is that delay is directional, right? There is

no neutral, there is no middle ground. You are always moving towards something. And

so if you're delaying, you're moving backwards, right? So on the flip side, not

delaying or taking action is what moves us forward, specifically taking imperfect

action. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to get every single thing

right. You do need to move forward. Okay, refrain number two is we're not going

to wait for a breakdown. We don't need a breakdown. We need a break point. We

need to draw a line in the sand to say, all right, I'm going to shift directions.

That's enough. And just one moment where you interrupt the cycle, one moment where

you take a step in a new direction, that's all it takes to realign, to

reshift and reorganize things. Okay. And refrain number three is short

containers, catalyze momentum. Short containers catalyze momentum. You know,

the one of the, well, the ministry school that I went to, you know, to kind of

I guess update sort of our upgrade my past drain back in the day. That school was

five months long. Now, I wouldn't call that a short container. I would call that

some kind of midsize container. But in that environment is where I healed. It's

where I built community and vulnerable relationships. It's where I identified my

core wounds, my core lies. I mean, that short container that five months of

concentrated effort to better myself so that I could become more of the man

God made me to be. That beat any of the big promises, big vows that I made to God

in the past. Short containers go a long way. Now, it has to be a container. It's

got to be controlled environment. It's got to have a dedicated time. And when you

have something like, you know, even seven days, like for seven days, it's not like

I'm going to do something crazy. But for seven days, I'm going to go to bed at

nine o'clock every day. And for seven days, I'm going to put my phone down by nine

p.m. For seven days, I'm going to start the day 15 minutes in the Bible. For seven

days, when I look at somebody attractive and I catch myself, I'm just going to

say, thank you God for that person. And I'm going to recite my favorite Bible

verse. These are not long term solutions. Okay, these aren't the things that

actually get 10 plus years of freedom. But these are the things that sometimes

you need to get started. And that's okay. A couple other thoughts about this,

because I think this one's really important. It's okay to try something. Like, it's

okay if you're not 99.99% sure about it. Now, if you're 20% sure, okay, take a

little bit more time. But, you know, if once you're like 70, 80% sure, try it. Try

something. Don't just keep making the same vows and don't keep doing the same

things. It's okay to try something different. And find a way to do it. That's, you

know, relatively inexpensive. So that if it fails, you're okay, right? That you're

backed by something, something that catches you if it's a flaw. That's my, that's my preference.

If you're going to invest more, obviously, you want to make sure you can't just be 60%

sure. You got to be a lot more certain than that. One more thought is clarity is always

better than confidence. So you can beat your chest. You can do whatever you want. You can

rar rar. But if you have clarity, if you really, really know what's going on and what

your next step is, that's when you start to move forward. So freedom doesn't require

this epic dramatic moment. It just needs an honest interruption. So look, I get it. Just

one more time feels harmless because it's quiet. But over time, hopefully you can see

this. It trains you to postpone the life you actually want and to stop you from being

the man that God made you to be. And if this episode is exposing that pattern for you,

you don't need a dramatic vow or a life promise. You need an interruption. And so that's

why I've actually recently built something called the deep detox. And this is a guided

70 reset that's designed to help you slow the cycle down, see what's driving it and

stop granting permission on autopilot. Okay, there's no shame, no white knuckling, just

clarity structure and a little bit of momentum to shoehorn you in a new direction. You can

find more about it at deepcleancoaching.com slash detox. That's deepcleancoaching.com slash

detox. And the link is also in the show notes there. That's a great place to start because

freedom doesn't begin with everything changing at once. It really begins when the pattern

finally stops long enough to be seen. Rather, God bless you. Thank you for listening. I'll

see you in the next one.