This is not a catastrophic failure. In fact the law of karma emphasizes that our actions and the results of our actions follow pretty clean laws. Getting stuck and realizing it is part of the path. So many people don't honestly realize it. So, give yourself credit for the awareness.
One of those laws of karma is that habits can be broken but they are very hard to break. It takes time to create a new habit that takes the place of the old habit.
So with this, it really emphasizes the paramita of persistence. Of meeting setbacks with renewed sense of purpose. We want to be careful not to grit our teeth and force something, because we can create a new habit of forcing without having much impact on the old habit of our wandering mind. It's nice to just notice when I have fallen off the horse. Sometimes I'll just say oops. Or say "look, I fell off the horse." Or say the classic, "I see you Mara I see you Mara."
Keep getting back up on the horse. There's no other way to learn to ride.
With that said, there's an important sense for me to remember the middle way. The middle way here is to be between forcing things and making too many excuses. There is one friend of mine who has great earnestness for this journey of Buddhism and calming the mind. But they also have a lot of habits. And I see them making a lot of excuses for why they can't take a moment to follow the breath or making other excuses of why they don't practice consistently. I've advised them not to push too far, but to set very very simple goals for consistency. Maybe just a phrase to be repeated once a day. Maybe just reading the same passage before bed.
And they don't have to do it consistently. What I mean by that is it's okay to mess up and skip a day. But the thing to be very careful about is to make excuses about skipping a day and then skipping another day and then another day. Because that reinforces the old habit that the spiritual path and the path of calming the mind is not that important. It reinforces the old habit that dealing with the world is the most important thing, so important that you can't take 2 minutes a day to work on your mind.
I feel like it's one of those friendships. The friend keeps complaining about something, maybe drinking too much. And they asked for help. But then they just never follow through with even the smallest steps.* There is some attribution of their failure to their lack of will. But I also understand that willpower is a finite resource, and the poll of our addictions is very very strong. But the second or third or 15th time they say I'm going to do better next time... At some point The helpful thing to do is to point out the pattern period and it's important to do so not from a I'm telling you so kind of mentality. But to do it with a really genuine open desire to help the other person. To do it with care and right timing so that it can actually be heard.
Sometimes people just like to wish for things and not put in effort. And that's fine but those are not people I like to be around, because they create problems for themselves and other people. I want to help people wish for things that they can achieve, to put in the effort to achieve them, and to achieve them.
And in Buddhism, amazingly, calming the mind completely is possible to achieve.
*I don't live near them, and they aren't very good at communicating. So I don't know if they are being consistent or not. But when I ask them to tell me about their practice, it doesn't sound consistent. I hope I am wrong. Ultimately, their practice benefits or hampers only themselves, not me.
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