Keeping Promises to Myself

The other day, I was digging through a box of old notebooks, looking for something I could no longer remember. My fingers brushed against the worn, faux-leather cover of a journal I hadn’t seen in years. The spine was soft, the pages slightly warped. The date on the first page read: October 2018.

My breath caught in my chest. It felt like unearthing a time capsule, a ghost from a life I barely recognised.

I sat down on the floor, the dust motes dancing in the afternoon light, and opened it. The ink felt charged with a frantic, hopeful energy. This was the journal of a woman on the precipice. The 2018 version of me was in the middle of a seismic life shift—packing up her life in Ecuador to move back home to Jamaica, betting everything on a fledgling online business. She was chasing freedom, the kind that meant choosing her own hours and her own address. She feared failure with an intensity that kept her up at night. And more than anything, she longed for a life that felt slower, richer, and more intentional than the one she was living.

Flipping through those pages in 2025, after everything I’ve lived, lost, and painstakingly rebuilt, felt like meeting my younger self for coffee. She had so many questions, and finally, I had some answers.

The List from 2018: A Portrait of a Dreamer

Tucked into the back of the journal was a single, folded page titled, “Promises.” It wasn’t just a list of goals; it was a manifesto for a new life. Reading it felt both tender and revealing.

Some of the promises were intensely practical, the architecture of a life she was trying to build from scratch:

• “Make a consistent $5,000 USD per month.” (This felt like an impossible, life-altering sum at the time).
• “Shift my business from EVA & OBM work to high-level Project Management.”
• “Build at least three other streams of income.”
• “Finally get my driver’s license and feel confident on the road.”

Others were softer, speaking to the deep-seated longings she rarely said out loud:

• “Travel. See the world on my own terms.”
• “Be able to go to the supermarket and buy the good olive oil, the fresh salmon, the expensive cheese, without checking my bank account first.”
• “Learn to swim. Learn to ride a bicycle.”
• “Create a home I truly love, with a small garden.”
• “Date more. Connect with people. Don’t hide in the house.”
• “Move my body because I love it. Start Pilates.”
• “Build a real, present relationship with my family.”

Journal Prompt for You: Find a quiet moment and think back 5 or 10 years. What was the one promise you whispered to yourself more than any other? What did you long for then? Write it down without judgment.

What Still Holds True (and Why It Matters More Than Ever)

Looking at that list from the vantage point of 2025, it’s not the checked-off items that move me. It’s the essence behind them. The promises that still resonate are the ones that weren’t about a destination, but a direction.

The promise to travel wasn’t just about stamps in a passport. It was about liberation. And it has shown up, but in ways 2018-me could never have predicted. She thought it meant being a full-time nomad. 2025-me knows it means having a home base I love, a sanctuary to return to after two months on the road, realising with a jolt of surprise that I actually miss my own bed.

The promise of financial freedom wasn’t about a number in a bank account. It was about peace. It was about the quiet luxury of a full fridge, of being able to support my family without a knot of anxiety in my stomach.

And the promise to live more slowly and intentionally—that’s the one that has become the cornerstone of my entire existence. It’s the thread that connects everything. It’s in the decision to take a real lunch break, away from my desk. It’s in the joy of tending to the small garden on my apartment balcony. It’s in the therapy sessions that helped me heal from old traumas, making space for a more present version of me to emerge.

These promises have deepened. They are less about achieving and more about embodying.

What I’ve Outgrown (and Why Letting Go is an Act of Love)

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about making promises to yourself: the most loving thing you can do is give yourself permission to break some of them.

The promise to constantly be achieving more, to always be climbing—I’ve outgrown that. I’ve had to. Burnout taught me that my peace is not worth the price of another milestone.

I’ve also outgrown the idea that my life had to fit into a specific box. For a while, I thought that to be a “real” traveller, I had to sell everything. The version of me who wrote that list couldn’t imagine being able to afford both a home and a plane ticket. She thought she had to choose.

Letting go of that black-and-white thinking has been the greatest gift. It’s okay to rewrite the dream as you grow. In fact, it’s essential. You are not failing the person you were five years ago by evolving beyond their vision. You are honouring the journey that got you here.

Lessons From Between the Lines

The years between 2018 and 2025 were not a straight line. They were messy, painful, beautiful, and transformative. They were the soil in which the real growth happened. Here’s what I learned in the space between the promises:

1. Resilience is Quiet. It’s not about bouncing back. It’s about the quiet, unglamorous work of starting over after a massive business loss, of getting up day after day when you feel like you’ve lost everything. It’s learning to trust yourself again, one small step at a time.
2. Peace is a Better Metric than Performance. For so long, I contorted myself to be the person I thought others wanted me to be. I was a chronic people-pleaser. Learning to accept myself—quirks and all—has been revolutionary. I like waking up early, not because a guru told me to, but because it makes me feel good. I don’t like small talk. I love people, but I don’t like to be touched unless I trust you. Accepting these things and choosing what brings me peace over what looks impressive has changed the game.
3. Trust Your Own Timing (and a Little Bit of Faith). My timeline doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and that’s more than okay. I had to stop measuring my life against someone else’s highlight reel and start trusting that my journey is unfolding exactly as it’s meant to. For me, a big part of this has been trusting God.
4. This Isn’t a Reset — It’s a Relaunch. After my burnout, it felt like I had to start from scratch. But I wasn’t at zero. I was starting from experience. I was taking all the lessons, all the heartbreak, all the wisdom, and channelling it into something new. I wasn’t resetting my life; I was relaunching it, on my own terms.

The Promises I’m Keeping Now (2025 and Beyond)

My new list of promises isn’t written on a frantic, folded-up piece of paper. It’s written on my heart. It’s lived every day. It’s less of a to-do list and more of a to-be list.

• I promise to keep choosing travel that heals, not travel that performs. To travel slower and live deeper.
• I promise to fiercely protect my peace fiercely, even if it means disappointing others.
• I promise to keep showing up for myself—in my work, in love, in my purpose—with honesty and courage.
• I promise to find joy in the small things: the taste of my morning coffee, a good conversation with my mom, the feeling of the sun on my skin.
• I promise to love hard, live fully, and laugh loudly. To ride this bicycle of life until the wheels fall right off.
• I promise to keep choosing me, over and over and over again.

The Share on X

It’s not always easy. The guilt of not being “productive” still creeps in. My nervous system, so long wired for survival, sometimes screams in protest when I choose to rest. But every day, I make the choice.

A Mirror Moment for You

Now, I want to turn this back to you. Think about the promises you’ve made to yourself over the years—the ones whispered in the dark, the ones scrawled in the back of a notebook, the ones you declared on New Year’s Eve.

• What promises have you kept, perhaps without even realising it?
• Which ones have you outgrown? What would it feel like to release them gently?
• If you were to write a new list of promises today, what would be at the very top?

Take some real time with this. Pour a cup of tea, put your phone away, and just sit with these questions. Let whatever comes up come up. This is your story. You have permission to rewrite it at any time.

A Letter to Myself (and to You)

To the girl who wrote that list in 2018,

Thank you. Thank you for your courage, for your wild hope, for believing in a future you couldn’t yet see. You got us here. We did it. Not in the way you planned, but in a way that was so much more real, so much more true.

And to the woman I am becoming,

Let’s keep going. Let’s keep choosing the quiet path, the deeper joy, the slower journey. Let’s not forget the lessons learned in the fire. Let’s keep our hearts soft and our spines strong.

A few months ago, my coach, the brilliant Glow Amo, asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks: “How do you want to be remembered when you die?”

Not what you accomplished. But who you were. What was your character? How did you show up in the world? How did you make people feel?

Thinking about my own eulogy gave me my life’s purpose. I want to be remembered as a woman who was kind, who loved deeply, who lived fully, and who wasn’t afraid to be herself. And so, every day, I try to live in a way that honours that legacy. I try to keep the most important promise of all: the promise to live a life that is truly my own.

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Are You Planning Your Next Trip? Here’s What I Use

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1. Learn the Local Language

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For unique local tours and must-see experiences, I use:
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I use Tripsy to plan and store my itineraries, documents, and bookings in one clean app. It’s perfect for keeping track of everything in one place.

Until next time, travel softly,

Destiny 💜