Lucid Living Tutorial

Several posts recently made me think that a tutorial in lucid living techniques could be desirable. I hope that others will feel free to comment and add your own advice as well.


I mean how do we live our lives in a way that is empowering, where we feel in control not just of our dreams but of waking life as well.

Many of the techniques for lucid dreaming can be applied to waking life.


Just like expectations are fundamental for lucid dreaming, expectations are important in waking life as well. Be confident, expect to succeed.


The mantra is an important part of lucid dream induction techniques, and it can be equally effective in waking life. Tell yourself: "I can do it!" and "I am confident!"

Just like for dream work you want to remind yourself of your mantras especially before falling asleep, make sure to remind yourself of your mantras and expectations for waking life especially upon first waking up.


Practice awareness in your life not only for the sake of lucid dreaming as a goal, but for the sake of becoming more aware of waking life as well. Focus especially on your own thoughts, emotions, attitude. What are their causes and effects? You can use a technique like All Day Awareness (ADA) or other mindfulness techniques, but instead of focusing awareness just for the sake of achieving lucid dreaming, increase your awareness with the goal of improving waking life.


Start a waking life diary much like a dream journal. Keep track especially of important details such as how you felt, how successful you were, what your issues were, and why

Signs/Patterns

Much like watching out for dream signs, review your journal watching out for signs and patterns, especially focusing on issues and successes


Short Term Goals

Much like dream goals come up with short term goals that will make your life more fun and/or more successful. The goals need to be doable within the next week. Have some simple goals and some more advanced.

Long Term Goals

Set yourself longterm goals as well. These techniques are especially good for breaking a bad habit or forming a new good habit.


If you are in the habit of doing Reality Checks, combine them with checks of how you are doing on your waking life goals. The two can be done around the same time, and equally regularly.


While you may not be able to control gravity and such in waking life, the amount of control you can exercise is amazing. You can control your own feelings and thoughts and reactions. You can control the reactions of others to some extent.


Simple Task 1: For the next day or hour or whatever time period make people smile by smiling at as many people as you can and watch them smile back. Practice until you get better at it.

Simple Task 2: Change your posture. Imagine that you are full of confidence and determination. Every time you walk into a room or any new place, walk in confidently, with purpose, oozing confidence. Convince yourself and others that you mean it.

Medium Level Task 3: Focus on observing your inner monologue. Keep track of what you tell yourself about yourself. Do you see any negative statements like "I am too tired" or "My memory is not what it used to be", for example. If so, for two weeks avoid saying these negative things to yourself, and change them into more positive or more constructive statements. Keep track of your progress in your journal. Did changing your internal monologue help you feel better about yourself?

Advanced Task 4: Use the methods described in this tutorial to either kick a bad habit (smoking, too much caffeine, etc) or to acquire a good habit. Keep track of your progress in a journal for example for six months - so this is a long term goal. For example, if you want to improve your exercising habits, set short term and long term goals, mantra to yourself "I want to exercise", expect regular exercising from yourself. Set short term and long term goals. Keep track of these goals in your waking journal. Combine reality checks with checks on how you are doing on exercising and how strong your intentions are to meet those goals. If you fall behind in exercising, look in your journal for patterns/signs that might be related - why did you fall short of your goals at this time, what else was happening then, and try to work on avoiding the related issues to improve your chance of achieving your goals.


If you have any suggestions along these lines, please let me know. :)