My learnings from financial domination and slavery

I've been submissive all my life, and have served several dommes during that time. I've been into financial domination for about three years, around 1 and a half of those being devoted to Goddess Tierra. From my time serving Goddess Tierra I learned a lot about serving a Domme, a lot about myself, human nature, and the world. This will be the last post I make in this blog as I have now overcome my association with BDSM (not just financial domination) and I'm looking forward to the new year where I can put all this behind me, and pursue a life of freedom, mutual love and joy.

Before I go though, I thought I'd write a little post about my experiences, how to be a good slave, my mistakes, and how to overcome financial domination should you choose to.

10 keys to being a good financial slave (and any slave/submissive for that matter):

1. Every decision you make, think how will your Goddess benefit?
   
   It's human nature to think Whats in it for me? But as a slave, you should think Whats in it for my Goddess. I think this shift in thinking is one of the most important you can do as a slave. Constantly think about pleasing your Goddess/Princess/Domme/Owner. As an example, when your at work, and your hungry, at break time you might think about going to the vending machines for a chocolate bar. Ask yourself, do I REALLY NEED that chocolate bar, or do I just want it? Stop, hold back, and save that 50p for your Goddess. It may seem small but added up over the course of a year those 50p chocolate bars will add up.
    

2. Do NOT be clingy/needy
   
   Dommes HATE needy, clingy guys. If you email/message/contact a Domme, wait patiently for Her to reply. Don't send her hundreds of emails/IMs/messages begging or whining or whatever if she doesn't respond. If She doesn't respond She is busy doing something more important. Respect that. If She wants to contact You back She will do that in HER own time. Don't beg/whine/be clingy.

3. Give your Goddess every penny you possibly can each month, but DO NOT overspend.
   
   Look at your income and expenditure figures, cut down on all the non-essentials, and give your owner the rest. It's a simple principle to grasp but it's harder to execute. If your new to findom, it's best to take it in small steps rather than jumping straight into total financial control. Start with say 50% of your disposable income, then 75% then 90% and so on.
   It's critical you do not overspend. It's so hard to not over-exert yourself when your in that 'financial domination emotional state' where your weak and just can't say no, but if you want a sustainable long term D/s relationship with your domme, its one thing you'll have to do. Overspending was the main contributing factor that caused me to leave money slavery. Set a spending limit that you can't go beyond. If you have a good Domme, She will respect it. If not you need a new Domme. If a Domme is just interested in extracting as much money as She can from her slave, even if he can't afford it and she knows it, it's a big red flag – it indicates she is not really into the 'fetish' and 'control' aspects, but into selfish financial gain. There is a difference between a domme pushing so it stings a little, and ruthlessly demanding the slave spend way beyond his means.
    

4. It's Your Goddess' money - If you need (or want) to buy yourself something, always ask permission first!
   
   As an owned slave, Your Goddess owns you and everything you own and have. Every penny in your account is HERs not yours. As such you should ALWAYS ask your owner permission before you spend HER money.
   
   

5. Never disobey your Domme
   
   If She says no cumming, then don't cum. If She says buy x, y, z, DO IT! Don't whine or complain, just do it.
   
   

6. What can you do to cut costs?
   
   Back in July 2008 I used to get a bus to work. I had to get on two busses. It cost around $8 a day to get to work and back. That equates to $40 per week, $160 per month, and almost $2000 per year! To cut costs I decided to cycle to work. I cycled the 13 miles to work and back each day every day in all weathers. I hated it when it rained and everyone at work thought I was crazy, but it was something I did for my Goddess, and it let me spend even more on Her. I didn't own a car, but I would have sold it for Her if I had one. That would have released a lot of cash in a short time, meaning a large high value wishlist item could have been bought for my owner.
   
   

7. What can you sell to raise more money for your Goddess?
   
   I had an old laptop that I didn't use that I sold for a few hundred dollars. I also sold my old university books. What can you sell that will enable you to spend more on Your owner?
   
   

8. What skills do you have that can help your Domme?
   
   Do you know how to program computers? HTML? Flash? Marketing/advertising? What can your domme use you for? There is nothing more fulfilling as a slave than to finish a long full time shift at work earning Your Goddess money, than to get home and get back to work for Her in Your spare time too.
   
   

9. Set goals
   
   You don't accomplish anything in life without written goals. Set a goal, and write it out each morning in a spiral notebook. Goals must be specific and time bound. For example a goal I wrote was 'I will give Goddess Tierra $25,000 by 31^st December 2009'. I wrote that goal out each day every day for all of 2009, and I achieved it. Goal setting is amazing, it works.
   
   

10. Maintain a detailed blog about your life as a slave.
    
    This serves to show others how devoted you are, as an example of how other slaves can serve their dommes, and also gives Your domme free advertising and boosts their position in search engine rankings. If you have a blog be sure to put as many links to Your domme's blog/website as possible. The more links to a website/blog, the higher they are ranked in search engines.

If you put these ten points into action you will be respected as a slave and will maintain a good relationship with Your Domme. An 11^th point, would be to be a 'settler'. See the section on overcoming findom about this. If your a 'settler' you will be a slave for life, and very valuable to Your domme.
 

Overcoming financial domination

I believe there are two types of financial slaves – settlers and fighters.

Settlers are content with their position in life, understand they are a slave and always will be, and know their life purpose is to serve their owner and devote their entire life to them.

Fighters know there is more to life than financial domination, they realize that by continuing serving their domme they are making a huge sacrifice. They resolve to do whatever it takes to overcome financial domination and to reclaim the life they were meant to live. Their life purpose is NOT to serve their owner.

The fundamental difference is life purpose. Settlers life purpose is to serve their domme. Fighters life purpose is something else.

At one point I was a settler, but I now believe I was a pseudo-settler. It was a mindset I had acquired that I thought was my life purpose, but I later woke up and realized I was heading down the wrong path - A path, laden with financial ruination, social isolation and a wasted life of regret.

This section is intended for the fighters (or pseudo-settlers) who want to stand tall and once and for all overcome their affiliation with financial domination!

There is very little information on financial domination around. No books, no support groups, and psycho-therapists have never heard of it before. There is another blog on LJ, http://findom-help.livejournal.com. This has some valuable information, but it's not all that helpful. I've taken some ideas from there, and also some from my own ideas to overcome financial domination.

The first step

I think the first step to overcoming financial domination is to accept 100% responsibility for your actions and situation. At the end of the day, your domme INFLUENCED you, she did not FORCE you to spend what you spent or do what you did. This is great news because if you chose to act, you can also chose to correct what you did, by controlling your thoughts and emotions to prevent you from relapsing, and by clearing your debts so any damage done by findom is reversed. Brian Tracy, in his audio program the Psychology of Achievement talked about thoughts being causes, and conditions being effects. This is very true, especially with regard to financial domination. The thoughts you think result in all the actions you do, which is why its critical you learn to control your thoughts (and emotions). There is more specific information as to how to control your thoughts later.

After you have accepted total responsibility for your situation, the next step is to set goals.

Set a goal to resolve to maintain control of your thought processes and emotions at all times and in all situations (info on how to do this specifically is later in the post). It's essential to set a goal of controlling your thoughts and emotions (or something to that effect) rather than 'overcome financial domination'. This is because the subconscious mind cannot process negatives. If I say do NOT think of a pink elephant, that is what you think about. It's impossible for you to NOT think of it. If you even mention what you want to avoid you are actually programming yourself to do it as it is subconsciously being embedded in your mind! (read any books on NLP, e.g. Frogs into princes by Bandler and Grinder for more on this). When you set goals it should always be towards motivated – about what you want, not about what you want to avoid. So thats why you should set a goal to maintain control of your thought processes and emotions at all times and in all situations.

Another goal to set is to clear all your debts by a certain date, then put a plan into action to accomplish this. Determine how much you will have to pay each month to clear your debt, and follow through. Pay as much as possible to clear the debt in the shortest period of time. The idea is to limit the amount of disposable income you have so you won't have enough to spend on findom. It also encourages you to NOT go back to financial domination so you won't add to the debt on the credit card!

Now you've set your goals, write them down in a spiral notebook every single day. This pushes them into your subconscious mind, and will help you bring them into being.

The process of emotional control – the key to overcoming financial domination

It's important to rethink the whole concept of financial domination being an 'addiction'. If you study NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) you learn some words have strong meanings and connotations attached. For example, someone may say someone 'passed away' rather than died, there was 'collateral damage' rather than civilian deaths, or fornication rather than sex outside marriage. These emotionally charged words are often used in persuasion and influence - the last example being a favourite used by the church to promote monogamy!

Now, many dommes want you to believe financial domination is an 'addiction'. What connotations are attached to the word addiction? We think its hard to break, we imagine drug addicts, alcoholics, relapses, etc. Addiction is NOT something you want to associate with financial domination! Its far better to see it as a neutral term. I like to think of financial domination as a 'dis-empowering thought process'.

This is all financial domination is at the end of the day – a dis-empowering thought process! If you study how the brain works, you find that the subconscious mind links information together. The brain effectively is a pattern recognizing system. It links incoming sensory stimuli (e.g. sights/sounds, etc) to ideas already contained within the mind that are similar to the stimuli. The mind also links feelings to the stimuli and creates meaning. For example if a domme shakes her ass to get you horny, while commanding you to buy her stuff from her wishlist or send her a tribute, etc your mind links arousal with sending the Domme money! When you get off on this, it creates the belief that you are into financial domination. Overtime this strengthens and results in you getting deeper into financial domination, as more beliefs are attracted and connected together. Combine this with having your orgasm being controlled by your Domme and it really does get wired into your subconscious mind on a very deep level. It can get to the point where it is very hard for you to have an orgasm without serving your domme.

As the mind links stimuli, emotions and thoughts together, it develops pathways in the brain. As an analogy, we can think of well used pathways as being like motorways. Lesser used pathways are like dual carriageways, lesser used pathways than that are like roads, and lesser used pathways than that are like dirt tracks. When your so deeply into financial domination that its hard to have an orgasm without serving your Domme, it's because the arousal/orgasm pathway is like a motorway linked to your domme. What you need to do is create an exit route so you don't go to financial domination, but an alternative route (e.g. vanilla sex) as this little diagram I did in MS paint shows:

The thick lines represent 'motorways' and the thin line represents 'dirt tracks' in the mind.

The way you condition your mind to use the alternative pathway is because, as a human, we have a choice as to how to respond to any stimuli. This is one thing that differentiates humans from insects and animals. Insects and animals just RESPOND to stimuli. Humans on the other hand have a choice as to how to respond.

By detecting stimuli, pausing, and choosing an alternative course of action, you can condition your mind to use the alternative pathway rather than financial domination. Over time, this will strengthen the alternative pathway into a 'motorway' while the financial domination pathway degrades into a 'dirt track'. This will mean that whenever you want an orgasm, you can achieve it through the alternative pathway!

This pathway metaphor is also useful for when your thinking about your domme. In many cases you think/obsess about visiting her blog/website/twitter. This usually prompts you to visit her clips4sale store, which usually prompts you to buy some clips. Those clips then prompt you to go crazy and splurge. The key is to find the start of this pathway, which is usually the urge to check her blog/website/twitter/clips4sale store, and chose to do something else before the momentum is gained. When I start thinking about Goddess Tierra I do 10 press ups. My muscles ache, but it soon clears the mind! From doing this my thoughts about Goddess Tierra have decreased considerably, to about 1 thought a day, and my desire/craving has reduced considerably, it's just a little thought now not a powerful compulsion and it can be easily dismissed.

Leaving your Domme

Now you've set your goals, and know the 'how to' of emotional control, it's time to leave your domme. I've left Goddess Tierra many, many times, only to return weeks later to serve Her again. If you 'leave' your Domme, then have a relapse, she will write about it in her blog/twitter/email you or whatever to try to make you return. She'll see you buying her clips and put it on her twitter, then instruct you to hit her wishlist. Dommes know the thought processes we have as submissives and exactly what to do to get us back.

What I've learned is not to leave your domme, but to prompt your domme to expel you! It sounds scary, but if your a fighter and your serious about overcoming financial domination it's what you have to do. What I suggest is to do something that irritates your domme. You'll know your domme so you'll know what you need to do. I prompted Goddess Tierra to expel me by saying I'd buy her the iMac. I got her hopes up, then shattered them. Dommes are used to getting what they want - when that doesn't happen they DO NOT like it! So like clockwork my ass was expelled from Goddess Tierra's club. Now I know I'm not allowed back, I haven't constantly checked her clipstores/twitter/blog like I did before, and I can move on to clearing the debts I have, finding a girlfriend who loves me for who I am, enjoying vanilla sex without having to imagine giving her my months wage, and having a fuller, more sociable and exciting life.


Summary

I hope this post has been of use to both slaves who want to become even better and serve their Goddess/Domme/Princess to the very best they can, and also to give motivation and advice to those slaves who want to leave financial domination. I'm not a psycho-therapist, so what I suggest is only theory I've picked up from the books and CD/DVD courses listed below. If you choose to follow my advice, it's your responsibility how things turn out and I can't be responsible for what you do. There is nothing dangerous here but I've got to cover myself!

Have a great new year and accomplish all your goals and resolutions!

http://findom-help.livejournal.com
Martial Mastery and Mental Warfare Secrets by Scott Bolan www.scottbolan.com

• These programs are HIGHLY recommended! They sound like they were designed especially for financial domination. Findoms are masters of mental warfare. But with the info contained in those courses you can defeat them!

Psychology of Achievement by Brain Tracy
Frogs Into Princes by Bandler and Grinder
Introducing NLP by O'Connor and Seymour

The Mechanism of Mind by Edward DeBono
The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior by Craig Nakken

Carlos Xuma's Secrets of the Alpha Man (Audio CD and eBook)
Speed Seduction Home Study Course by Ross Jeffries (Audio CD and workbook)