How do you con­trol your slave? Quite often that ques­tion is dis­cussed on vari­ous online for­ums and quite often will you find that con­trol should be achieved by tight feed­back loops, rules and reg­u­la­tions. I can agree to some extent, as we are always look­ing for a com­mon ground which is achieved ulti­mately by those tools men­tioned above; con­sist­ency.When think­ing about con­trolling my slave, I often come to think about how my cats con­trol me. Yes, you heard right, there is actu­ally one dom­in­ant force in my life and they are both tiny but very demand­ing. My cats man­age to con­trol me through many dif­fer­ent means, there are some con­sist­ent ones I have learned to recognise.

• They only demand things when they truly want or need them.
• They are always there for me when they think I am sick or not feel­ing well
• They will always respect my moods
• They demand more

Trans­la­tion

I know it still sounds very much like a bit of gib­ber­ish but bare with me for a moment. When you look at the things your slave expects from you, you will find that they are very sim­ilar to the ones my cats seem to exhibit in their nat­ural beha­viour towards me. So let us trans­late this to a rela­tion­ship which seems infin­itely more com­plex but turns out to be a lot easier.

• I only ask my slave to behave in a cer­tain way or push one of her lim­its when I can truly sup­port her and when I need her to it for me.
• I am always mind­ful of her state of mind and I will never pur­sue one of my fantas­ies when it is obvi­ous that the cur­rent situ­ation makes her feel uneasy or sick
• She is still a human being, I will respect her emo­tions and the way her body and brain feel
• I will always demand more of her. It is always good enough, but never per­fect. There is always some­thing more to learn

There is one last thing that I would like to add. I can­not add it to the list which is derived from my cat’s beha­viour as I simply do not know whether it is true for them, I know it is true when it comes to the rela­tion­ship my slave and I are having.

• I always care

Feed­back

As I men­tioned above, many believe that tight feed­back loops are a good way to con­trol someone. This is true for many reas­ons, but you need to approach the topic at hand with a grain of salt. Tight, or fre­quent, feed­back loops are good, because they give us a chance to intro­duce tiny, but fre­quent changes. Tiny and fre­quent changes are much bet­ter dealt with by our brain and our body. rather than intro­du­cing a massive change, we are just ask­ing for minor adjust­ment, but very often.To achieve that you will have to allow that per­son you are ask­ing for a change to embrace it. Here is where my degree comes to the res­cue. A well known little exer­cise can help you give proper feed­back to your slave. The for­mula com­mend — recom­mend — com­mend is often used with per­form­ance apprais­als. While you should read the link, here is a quick over­view for you.

1. Com­mend your slave on what she has done well, achieved so far for you, be specific
2. Recom­mend to her what she could have done bet­ter, where she did not please you
3. Com­mend your slave on a more gen­eral point, usu­ally her beha­viour in general

Once you have learned to use the CRC tech­nique you will be able to give good feed­back quickly. This is one essen­tial tool to con­trolling your slave well. If she is in a pos­i­tion to know or anti­cip­ate what you expect and you only need her to change slightly, you are on your way towards a con­sist­ent envir­on­ment, which only changes mar­gin­ally. Such little changes are easy to absorb and will not unsettle her too much. There are many other ways on com­mu­nic­at­ing effi­ciently with little emo­tion cloud­ing your judge­ment and the mes­sage which you actu­ally want to send. Think of your com­mu­nic­a­tions as a form of nego­ti­ation. If you are inter­ested in under­stand­ing the topic bet­ter I would sug­gest you read some of the books lis­ted by the Har­vard Nego­ti­ation Pro­ject.

Con­clu­sion

In con­clu­sion, think like a cat and con­trol through act­ing in a cer­tain man­ner, when enga­ging in con­ver­sa­tion or when need­ing to cor­rect your slave, I would sug­gest that you approach any form of com­mu­nic­a­tion in the fol­low­ing way:1. Approach any kind of con­ver­sa­tion as an oppor­tun­ity to learn and under­stand. Try to think of it as Why does she con­tinue to chal­lenge me? rather than I am sick of her chal­len­ging me and tonight we will stop it!2. Assume that you do not know what your slave’s motiv­a­tions are, because chances are you do not3. Learn to sep­ar­ate facts and feel­ings.4. Do not mix your feel­ings with inten­tions or facts, think of it as What you did was not a pleas­ure to me? rather than Why do you con­tinu­ously try to dis­please me?5. You should always try to find a solu­tion, not how to blame her.6. Be hon­est with her and your­self. 7.Com­mu­nic­a­tion is hard, nat­ural lan­guage is impre­cise. As you prac­tice more, you will get bet­ter at doing it.