Dream signs can vary, and for some people it's not that easy to spot them. If your recall isn't the best, there are some "universal" dream signs. I say universal because they are still cues that might indicate that you're dreaming, and they show up with high frequency. I personally don't put them in the same bag as the "personal" dream signs, I put them above because they're way reliable and consistent, due reasons I'll explain shortly.
First of all, you want to link your awareness primarily not to dream content, but to the dream cues. What are them? I put them in a short acronym which translated to english is
DIPE:
Deslocation Displacement (this translation makes more sense now :P)
Irregularities
People
Emotions
Displacement refers to one characteristic of the dream: the dream transitions. As you can see by reading dream journals, even people with great recall show dream reports of sudden dream transitions to a different plot or scenario. Now I won't bother you with the theories behind the "why does this happen?", but this is especially useful due lucidity coming more easily if you stop assuming you need to be lucid in your dreams, and act like you could be dreaming at
any time of the day/night. So, Displacement refers to the act of linking reality checks with physical
and mental displacements. I think you pretty much got the idea of what I mean by physical: they refer to leaving/arriving to new scenarios, like whenever you leave/arrive home and arrive/leave any other place. By mental deslocations, I refer simply to those "space-out moments" where you're distracted by some random thing. It's not easy to achieve continuous awareness, because we weren't made to be "aware" at all times, but you can take that to your advantage and do a reality check when you realize you aren't in "awareness" mode. Since DILDs come out of moments like this, is a pretty good dream cue. If you ever seen the movie "Waking Life", just recall the speech of the "boat" driver:
"The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. It saves on introductions and goodbyes. The ride does not require explanation - just occupants."
Irregularities refer to the simple sensorial or cognitive "errors". Dreams are all about the feeling, not so much about the details, and this is easily seen by the nature of the dream: is always a plot, and (almost) never a moment of passivity. Once you get lucid though, you become way more away of the incongruities in the dream: you notice how objects can float by themselves, how some parts of your fingers are gone, how you are surrounded by tv celebrities, etc etc. The trick is suspending your "analysis", which often leads in self-justification, especially in dreams ("that clock is showing letters instead of numbers! Oh wait, it's probably just broken...") and just perform a reality check. This may take a while to perfect, because we're so used to either dismiss an apparent incongruity or to quickly justify it. Before you find out why somethig feels wrong, do a reality check. Yes, even when you can't find your second shoe ;)
People refers to another quite basic concept: dream characters. They populate everyone's dreams, and can be quite remarkable in the sense that they help "form" the plot. And it's important to include yourself in the lot, as awareness of the self is very useful: how many dreams do people have where they can't recall their body? Loads. How many dreams people have with people they know? Loads. People they don't know? Loads.
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...dCibYHyOKnYBIA
And once again, it's not about dream content, but about constant questioning. Where's your mother right now? Why are you alone? Doesn't that man look like your old friend? Good questions that boost your awareness and work independently of your reocurring dream characters. If you have them though, use them by any means.
Emotions, the last point. Many dreams have explicit emotional messages, especially regarding the plot. For example, you can experience anxiety (quite a frequent one) due not finding someone, due having a bad "plot", as you can be very happy because you won the lottery, are having sexy times with an atractive woman/man, etc etc. The point is: you are (almost) never at a passive state. Even now, while reading this you can attribute your emotional state to something in the lines of: calm, bored, interested (you better choose the word interested, this is a lot of text! :D). Even though we may not be talking about strong emotions, once again, it's not about the content, it's about the cue. Whenever I find myself faced with a situation that I know it triggers an emotional response, even if I don't feel it right away, I do a reality check.
As you can guess,
DIPE translates in LOADS of reality checks, which not only strengthens the habits of each point, but shortly decreases the time between each questioning of reality. And unlike people might think, the more reality checks the less effort you are spending in doing them. I once accounted 2 days with an average of 1 reality checks every 15minutes during 16hours periods (the remaining 8 dedicated to sleep), and I certainly wouldn't be able to keep up if I wasn't so used to doing them, because there's many cues available. Also, none of these reality checks are "out of the blue" reality checks, because unless you're constantly reminding yourself to do a reality check, you're gonna take quite a while to get used to doing it. And if you are constantly reminding yourself to do one, then chances are you are going to get bored/annoyed/tired pretty fast, the so-called "overdrive", which as you remember, has negative consequences in your intent of lucid dreaming.
