WordPress Daily Writing Prompt #2833 for July 25, 2026
Today’s daily prompt was like a punch to my gut. It left me staring at my laptop, silently cursing the person who imagined this question: “What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?”
I debated with myself for a long time. Did I want to answer this question? More importantly, did I want to answer it truthfully?
I’ll get the obvious part over quickly: I can honestly admit that I have never kept a promise to myself. There is nothing to keep when you don’t make the commitment to begin with. I paid lip-service to promises to myself, but never followed through with the dedicated action required to fulfill it.
I turned 60 years old this year. When December rolls around, I will hit 36 years of marriage. Looking back, the closest thing I have ever come to keeping a promise is my vow of fidelity. I never explicitly promised to remain faithful to my husband. There was no undying declaration, no promise made verbally or in writing. I suppose a vow can be categorized as a type of promise, but a vow feels much more serious—perhaps even sacred. I have never considered it a “promise” in the standard sense. Faithfulness was just part of the marital package deal, an application of the Golden Rule we learned as children: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I chose to be faithful, hoping my husband would do the same, knowing I could not in good faith expect fidelity from him unless I demonstrated it first.
Aside from that, an honest inventory of promises made to myself reveals a long list of failures. Every New Year’s resolution to lose weight, get fit, start something new, or stop a bad habit ended unfulfilled long before January was over. Every time I promised to quit smoking, I fell off the tobacco-free wagon almost immediately. I didn’t finally quit until I developed COPD, when continuing would have meant an early death. In my 30s, I promised myself I would get a college degree. I didn’t achieve it, derailed by reasons that felt entirely justifiable at the time: life, a lack of money, and the exhausting time constraints of being a working adult. I walked away just one semester short of an Associate’s Degree.
For me, promises to myself always end in regret.
Even my history of promises to others falls short of my intentions. Commitments to do something, be something, or go somewhere regularly crashed and burned. Was it just self-perpetuated failure? I certainly meant well. I deeply desired to succeed. I wanted to be “that person” in someone’s life who is always true, always there. But my expectations for myself were unreasonably high. Looking through a candid lens, I now see a person who was desperate to be loved, accepted, and thought well of. Fear and desperation are terrible reasons to make a promise.
For me, promises to others were dramatic, and sometimes damaging, failures.
In 2019, I participated in a four-month residential PTSD program through the Department of Veterans Affairs. After decades of swirling in a private, agonizing circle of hell after leaving the military, I was finally ready to face the issues that had plagued me for so long. It was incredibly hard to be away from my husband, my home, and my cats, but I could have left at any time. I chose to stay because I was learning so much.
During that program, I was asked to write a personal mission statement—a concise declaration of my core values, purpose, and what I stand for. It is meant to serve as a “North Star” to guide daily actions and align them with long-term goals.
This was my statement, written on August 26, 2019:
I will endeavor to treat every living thing that crosses my path with respect and kindness.
I will remain open to learning new things, while honoring and practicing all the good things I’ve learned already.
I will be open to the giving and receiving of love.
I will forgive others to free myself from the chains of my past.
I will remember that to truly love others, I must love myself first.
Maybe it is time to honor this mission statement as the promise to myself it was always intended to be.
Still, I fear I will fail. The parts about “receiving love” and “loving myself first” remain uncomfortable, foreign concepts. How do I make a promise to myself that I am still so afraid to keep?
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Maria – if I may offer a slightly more logical lens on your post: I think you’re treating a vector like a binary switch.
You state you’ve never kept a promise to yourself, yet in 2019, you chose to remain in an intensely gruelling four-month residential PTSD programme. You didn’t walk away when it got difficult, despite being free to leave. That wasn’t a fluke; it was a conscious, repeated decision to invest in your own well-being. That looks remarkably like a kept promise.
As for your mission statement, note the word you chose back then: endeavour. Endeavouring isn’t a pass-or-fail test; it’s a framework for orientation. Loving yourself and receiving affection feel foreign simply because they’re unfamiliar data points, not because you’re fundamentally failing at them. Fear is just information pointing out where the frontier is.
You don’t need to guarantee flawless execution to honour that statement. You just have to keep orienting towards it. Given your proven ability to show up when the work truly counts, I’d say your odds are far better than you give yourself credit for.
Best wishes,
Bob
I don’t even know how to respond to your reply. It’s the kindest thing anyone has said to me in a very long time. I also see your assessment of how I see things as observation versus criticism. It suggests that I consider looking at things differently. I appreciate that. I have always struggled with an either/or kind of thinking for myself. It’s odd really, because I don’t limit others this way. It’s easy for me to see possibilities for others. I’m going to reread your words a few times, and take some time to consider them. To go from an idea to actionable change…..for me, this requires a plan. If that makes any sense. I’ve never done well when I go about things willy-nilly.
Maria – it makes complete sense. In fact, wanting a plan isn’t a drawback at all; it’s just smart strategy. Moving from abstract values to actionable change without a structure is usually where the “willy-nilly” approach falls apart.
That double standard you mentioned – holding yourself to a strict binary while offering flexibility and grace to everyone else – is a remarkably common cognitive glitch. We are often the most unreliable judges of our own progress because we measure ourselves against perfection, while measuring others against their efforts.
Taking time to absorb things and build a deliberate framework is a very sensible next step. A good plan doesn’t need to be grand or overwhelming, either. It just needs small, measurable experiments in treating yourself with the same basic fairness you extend to the rest of the world.
Take all the time you need with it. You’re already doing the work.
Best wishes,
Bob