It is best not to promise something that you cannot come through and fulfill. It may be better to be more cautious with what you promise, because the results of not following through will be self-hatred towards yourself and feelings of regret. It is very helpful to bring some Wisdom towards your Compassion and Equanimity, and support your Compassion with Wisdom and Equanimity, so that we can discriminate between what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot give. In this way, we have Wisdom supporting our Generosity and Wisdom supporting our Compassion. Wisdom supports everything because Wisdom and Right View come first. If we don't put Right View and Wisdom first, then we will find ourselves getting into these situations that we then later have to regret.
Sometimes, because we are not totally wise, we find ourselves getting into these situations and going over our limits. Then we have to try to bring forth the Effort to Prevent in the future. This ties in with the Four Great Efforts. The Efforts to Prevent, Let Go, Develop and Maintain. So if we have this situation arising, it is very helpful to reflect on it, to see what causes and conditions help to bring it about so that we can prevent it arising in the future. This is using the Four Noble Truths and applying them to our life. Whenever we have a difficulty, whenever we have a problem, we can apply the Four Noble Truths to that particular problem. We can see how it arose and the conditions that brought it to arise, so that we can be more cautious, vigilant and wise when we see these causes and conditions arising in the future.
This is based in Mindfulness, the stages of mindfulness, so we need awareness of what is happening. It is not helpful to just beat ourselves up for our inabilities or our failures; we have to learn how to forgive ourselves. And how do we do that? We have to be able to see and investigate into the person we were at that particular time, see what we were influenced by. Perhaps we were influenced by the wish to please someone; perhaps we were influenced by the wish to have praise from someone instead of getting blame. It is sometimes very difficult to say no, or to admit our limitations in some areas, or to politely say, "No", to the expectations of others if we perceive that we do not have the time or the resources to fulfill what they want from us. So this needs a certain amount of self-awareness, which we all are trying to develop here, and Compassion for ourselves.
"Keeping my own promise" - be cautious about making promises, because we don't know what is going to happen in the future. Only make promises that you feel you can fulfill, and also with the understanding that things may change. If you make a commitment to do something and it is a good thing to do, then that brings up the Parami of Determination to fulfill your commitment. But also understand that we have to be flexible, and if there is anything that prevents you from fulfilling your promise, then you should let it be known what has occurred to prevent you and make sure that it is actually a good reason to not be able to fulfill that promise, and that it is not just that we don't feel like we want to do it any more.
So I am very cautious about making promises I can't fulfill, because if we don't fulfill our promises, what happens? People start to not trust us. And once trust is lost, it is very difficult to regain. So if we value people trusting us, we have to be careful about making promises that we can't fulfill.
It is okay to admit your limitations and say, "I am sorry, I can't do that. I don't have the time or the capacity or the resources to be able to do that." We don't live in this world just to fulfill other people's expectations. We have to learn to reflect wisely and to see whether what we are going to do has benefits for ourselves or others or both. And if we see that something else is more important to do in our life at that time, then we have to be able to say, "No" politely and be open to being blamed, perhaps.