“If you were to make and keep a few promises, at least make sure most of those would be promises to yourself.”

Before I left for Japan, I said that I wouldn’t get a haircut for [two] years. I’m almost there and it’s been a nice surprise finding my hair cooperative. It hasn’t gone the high school route, rowdy and all. It has curls in the right places and I’m glad it turned out alright.

Another promise I made was that I would go on and see the Northern Lights. I did that in March 2017. It took waking up the next day to wrap my head around that. The aurora danced in the sky and I just took crappy photos of it. Haters gonna hate but I saw the lights. (mic drop)

The third almost-promise I made was to go bungy jumping. I had planned to do it in Korea, around my 28th birthday. But that trip fell through and I waited a while to instead start 2017 with a literal and figurative big leap.

I would often say that I have so little of things – patience, attention span, money, time – so I want to direct these towards what would make me happy for the moment or for a while. But even more, what has given me lasting satisfaction is the fact that I made promises and stayed true to those promises, at least to those I made to myself.

While I believe I have some sort of obligation to the world or some people around me, I also like to aim for my own happiness and satisfaction. Nothing has beaten prioritizing myself so far. What I set out to do, achieve and learn, they have kept me happy and have likewise fueled me.

When I take care of myself, I am less inclined to look to others for what I seem to need. And if I can take care of myself, I know I can take care of others. If I can keep to the few and special commitments I make to myself, I know I have it to stay true to others.

While self-centric, this principle is essentially outward-looking. I am what I share with others. So that when I keep to my nature, I am better off and so is everyone else (better off when I’m better).

The promises I chose to keep were promises with which I would’ve become broken if I broke them myself. Their hold on me was that strong. And therefore, keeping them has made me stronger. While they are few, keeping them has given me more – a lot more.