How To Be Your Own Dominatrix

by Lino M

How To Be Your Own Dominatrix: A Roadmap for Practicing Self-discipline:
By: Yaromil Fong-Olivares

Discipline will get you almost anything in life. Self-discipline is not a trait we are born with; it simply takes discipline to develop self-discipline. As adults, we no longer have the same accountability forces we had as children.  We can no longer rely on our mothers to remind us to clean our rooms, our teachers to remind us to do our homework, or our coaches to push us to develop our athletic skills.   Unfortunately, the best we can hope for is a supervisor that challenges us to develop as professionals. But rising to the rank of supervisor does not equate with good managerial skills, which means that we must be able to balance personal accountability and self-management with the responsibility of working for and with others.

Most of us have never had the opportunity to choose how we spend our “work time”, our 9-5 time that is.  All of our lives we are socialized to believe that listening to others and following directions means being good.  We follow what our mothers, teachers, bosses instruct us to do.  This is not intended as a personal judgment.  Rather it is a challenge to look within your lives and determine how much of your time is truly yours.  Also, use this opportunity to analyze how much of your time should be yours to manage but currently isn’t and whether or not you are allowing others to manage time that you should be managing.  Take inventory of those hours during the day when you wish you were doing something else.  Once you have determined how much of your time is yours or you have the power to make yours, choose an activity that you have been wanting to participate in.  This can be exercise, yoga, meditation, writing, painting or anything that you enjoy; then follow these steps.

A roadmap for practicing self-discipline:

• Evaluate your time. Figure out how much time you have available that is truly yours.  This means you are away from your children, partner, boss, friends, or anyone else you spend time with.  Even the television.

• Before choosing the activity make sure to brainstorm and allow yourself to pick something that you truly want to do.  If you pick something because it’s easy to accomplish or because someone else thinks you should be doing it, you are not likely to follow through.

• Make your goal visual.   Use magazines, internet, your own writing, painting or picture and place it in a place where you can see it right before engaging in the chosen activity.  The visual reminds you of what you are working towards and helps you get back on track whenever you have the urge to avoid the activity.

• Get a buddy, but make sure to get just one.  Ask your buddy to call you the day after you are scheduled to complete the activity.  Be honest when you do not follow through on your activity.  Having the encouragement of a buddy helps push you to follow through and helps you explore why you choose not to.  Make sure you establish agreements and expectations with your buddy before getting started. Your buddy’s role is not to berate you when you do not follow through.  Your buddy’s role is to listen and repeat back what he or she is hearing with the sole purpose of helping you figure out  the reasons you did not follow through.  If you begin to feel that your buddy is antagonistic and judgmental it’s time to get a new one.  Another variation of this is to start a blog or twitter account specifically for the purpose of sharing your progress.  This option is for the bolder types of course.

• Give yourself an end goal.  Self-discipline is an ongoing practice.  It always involves a goal because otherwise you are more likely to slack off.  The more goals you accomplish the less you’ll require the accountability of a buddy and the easier that it will be to follow through on future goals.

• Evaluate your progress each week and each month, depending on the activity.  Look at your own patterns of avoidance and accomplishment.  If you go to sleep at a set time each night are you more likely to get up for an activity that takes place first thing in the morning? If you adjust your meeting schedule do you have more time for you? These are the types of questions you should ask yourself once you start to carve out time for yourself.  The goal of progress evaluation is to make showing up for your chosen activity easier each time.

• When you are done, be done.  If you feel dissatisfied with your end result then start over with a new goal.  Do not extend the deadline.  This defeats the purpose of establishing an end goal.

• Celebrate. Remember how good it felt to get a gold star when you were in the first grade?  Take your buddy out to dinner.  Take yourself out to a movie.  Give yourself lots of positive reinforcement.

• Start over.  Don’t limit yourself.  Apply this roadmap to anything you want to develop self-discipline around.  Disciplining yourself to follow through on your attainable goals and wishes will get you almost anything you want in life.

What would you rather be doing with your time?  Write me back and let me know!