Accountability and Self Compassion
The main difference between you as a submissive and someone who is traditionally goal setting is how desperately you need to be held accountable. Actually accountable, not sort of accountable when it's convenient. You need to believe that real impactful consequences exist. You revert to an "age" in your development that is full of dependency and longing where you feel incapable of holding yourself accountable. You need to believe that someone else believes in you enough to uphold this for you. It's quite possible that no one in your life ever has or that you want to mirror a brief time when someone did.
Every submissive who has ever been given an instruction from their Dominant always has a choice: to obey or not to. And depending on your dynamic, if you are lucky, when you disobey you are quickly shown the error of your ways.
For the slave obeying and structure bring fulfillment and peace allowing their lives to click into place. For the submissive it becomes more complicated depending on the wildness of their heart.
The key that is always missing is that the submissive needs to believe in their own self worth in order to thrive under the conditions of structure provided by the Dominant. Otherwise meeting the goal will not be possible. This is the piece that is chronically ignored.
When self worth is not instilled by the Dominant the submissive may obey but will fail when alone or will require such close monitoring that even the strongest of dynamics will break down and fatigue eventually. Teaching your submissive the fundamentals of self compassion, potentially as ritual, and giving them accountability is how to provide structure without codependency. It is how your submissive finds blissful freedom under the delicious confines of your control.
