Thread: Big problems with motivation

I have had problems with actually feeling motivated to lucid dream my past 2-3 months, and although I have had temporary bursts of excitement (which have sometimes even resulted in instant lucid dreams) that interest dies away very quickly.
I know I really want to frequently experience lucid dreams, and the fact that I have been a member both here and on LD4All for a couple years and frequents a lot of lucid dreaming videos on YouTube proves that I am serious about it.
But for some reason I just cannot seem to "get" that excitement.
I can sometimes vividly pretend that I am dreaming during waking life and get those moments when I feel "wow... it would be so cool if this was a dream, with this vividness!", but I forget about it almost at once and then my excitement dies again.

The best way for me to rekindle my motivation seems to be watching lucid dreaming videos on YouTube, especially Tim Post's tutorial videos and the two "Lucid Dreaming: How To Control Your Dreams" videos - but that doesn't always work either, although it's good that it at least increases my enthusiasm.

Yup, me too. Well, it is because you don't have an important goal in your mind, a specific one(or do you?). I noticed that when you burn yourself wanting to experience that, you will get excited, but not quite. You need to actually experience it, intensely, if you want to really be enthusiastic for it. Well, for now, I would seriously recommend buying the REM Dreamer and using MILD with it. Using that machine, you don't really need to be excited, just motivated( take note that motivation in this case means wanting to have a LD, not being excited or pumped up for it).

The biggest thing that motivates me to lucid dream is that there's something I can do with the 1/3rd of my life I spend resting and recovering from the day's tasks. The fact that there are huge worlds that I can access from the safety of my own bed and home? Kickass!

Also, the human mind is a large interest to me. I've not taken any psychology classes, but it's interesting how our minds work. They can create worlds upon worlds in whatever image we can imagine. The only limit to our dreams is the limit to our imagination - if you can imagine it, your dreams can do it.

Hope you get motivated soon - we'd love to hear of your lucid dream and normal dream stories!

Originally Posted by DreamscapeGoat

The biggest thing that motivates me to lucid dream is that there's something I can do with the 1/3rd of my life I spend resting and recovering from the day's tasks. The fact that there are huge worlds that I can access from the safety of my own bed and home? Kickass!

Also, the human mind is a large interest to me. I've not taken any psychology classes, but it's interesting how our minds work. They can create worlds upon worlds in whatever image we can imagine. The only limit to our dreams is the limit to our imagination - if you can imagine it, your dreams can do it.

Hope you get motivated soon - we'd love to hear of your lucid dream and normal dream stories!

This post is actually very inspiring!!
I feel excited!

Yes, would love to hear your dream stories! I hope their epic(mine will be, trust me)

What is your original motivation for wanting to learn lucid dreaming? I.e. What are the long term goals you want to achieve from lucid dreaming? Staying motivated can be difficult, but knowing where you want to be in the future can help you stay motivated in the present.

Originally Posted by Intrepidity

What is your original motivation for wanting to learn lucid dreaming? I.e. What are the long term goals you want to achieve from lucid dreaming? Staying motivated can be difficult, but knowing where you want to be in the future can help you stay motivated in the present.

Ah, this is actually rather ironic, because I have so many goals that I have problems deciding on one of them.
There are of course the classics, like flying and sex, but also many others, like snowboarding down never-ending mountainsides, jumping extremely high, teleporting, and so on and so forth.
It's very hard to just pick one of them, because my reaction is almost always "well, I'll choose that one... but I kinda want to do this as well, so maybe I should start with that instead?".

Originally Posted by Laurelindo

Ah, this is actually rather ironic, because I have so many goals that I have problems deciding on one of them.
There are of course the classics, like flying and sex, but also many others, like snowboarding down never-ending mountainsides, jumping extremely high, teleporting, and so on and so forth.
It's very hard to just pick one of them, because my reaction is almost always "well, I'll choose that one... but I kinda want to do this as well, so maybe I should start with that instead?".

Nonono... You need something so passionate and impossible that you would kill for! An obsession to something only possibly experienced in dreams! I know I am not talking gibberish cuz I have such goals(perusing them is what made me stumble across LDing)

Read DJ entries, including your own. Read one of your favourite early lucid dreams like the time you saw yourself in bed, went through a wall or flew over the neighbourhood.
Re-live the first time you did an RC and it worked!

Louai is right, just wanting something because it seems fun or exciting rarely provides the long term motivation required to push through when things get tough. The motivation needs to come from a place that means everything to you..... EVERYTHING!

Even if it takes several weeks to perfect you should develop a very specific goal you want to achieve from lucid dreaming. Try and be as detailed as you can when describing the goal to yourself and then keep repeating it to yourself until eventually you achieve it. Don't be afraid to make the goal challenging, but make sure it is possible.

Yes, everything! Really, the more it means, the better. make it something intimate, and make sure it is impossible in waking life. Let it be something you adore. nobody can say that he adores flying, cuz adoring something means... how do I put it in words... you know... passion is a better word

It was better for me to put an awesome spin on something that was already pretty exciting, Like having sex While flying
That was fun.

sex on a cloud

Originally Posted by LouaiB

sex on a cloud

Quite literally on cloud nine, eh?

Also, with the set goals thing, just put them in order of importance - the ones you think you want to do the most. Focus on those first, and take them one at a time.

Originally Posted by DreamscapeGoat

Quite literally on cloud nine, eh?

lol

Remember what were capable of.

Originally Posted by SinisterDezz

Remember what were capable of.

Yes, especially this:

Anything you can imagine, you can live 150% realistic

Thanks again, everyone.

When I think about it, one of the skills I would really like to practice the most is to actually become better at flirting.
I tend to be on my guard a lot when it comes to that and probably give signals that I don't want to either approach anyone or be approached, and I would really like to "soften up" a bit on that and feel like a more flirty and spontaneous person.
Of course it would be unrealistic to expect total personality changes exclusively from lucid dreams, but they should certainly give me a great start and "get the ball rolling", so the rest becomes much easier.

great
Maybe try summoning a DC with that quality you want, and observe him and mimic, or even better, mirror or be him, something like that. I hear that DC can seem like an own consciousness, so he can seem like a normal dude, not a zombie reflecting exactly what you expect.
I'm just brainstorming

Actually I think I tend to be too careful when it comes to the amount of time I sleep during the nights.
In other words, if I go to bed very late or don't sleep long enough then I feel like it's not even worth trying, since I don't have the optimal chances to become lucid then (although, of course, trying anyway is always better than not trying at all).
How important is it to go to sleep at certain times, and how much do your lucidity chances decrease if you sleep for, say, less than 6 hours in one night?

oh, they decrease, to half. REM stages in the last few hours (mostly after 6) are as long as the REM stages before. I need to correct a wrong mainstream: If the dream is vivid doesn't mean better chances of lucidity since you already face the same mental boundries.
But you can work it out. You see, even if your missing half of the experience you sub will give you, you still have the other half, and if you build expectation correctly during the day, the sub would usually put it on the top of the list. You see, you don't do RCs a habit for you to hope to do them in a dream bcz they are a habit. You can do 1 RC a day, make it meaningful, and the sub will chose to incorporate it to the dream. Habits don't apply in dreams. That's why overdoing RCs during the day isn't good, since you lose the meaning of them(cuz you become bored and half-minded doing them).
So, even if you are cutting your chances, build strong(by strong I mean meaningful, even if you had to do only 1RC a day before it gets boring) expectation, with intentions to back them up, and they will appear.
So, the stronger the expectation, the better they will appear in dreams, so do this, and the expectation will appear even if you sleep through 10 minutes of REM a night.
Just to make it even clearer:
You have the meaningful things you did(again, quantity of them during the day doesn't matter) during the day lined up from the most meaningful to the least. More sleep will let you have more of these expectations, but if your expectations are meaningful, they will be on the start of the line.
Of course, it's more complicated how the sub choses what to incorporate, but you get the idea

Thank you, LouiaB.
Yes, I always thought that reality checks should be performed in a way so that you only use them when you actually want to prove to yourself that you are awake, not just out of habit where you go "I guess I'll do another reality check".
I have had a couple annoying dryspells these last months, where I may have one or two lucid dreams packed together but then suddenly nothing at all for several weeks, so this sometimes discourages me, like right now for example.
But then again, I have got spontaneous lucid dreams during periods like this before, so it's only a matter of time until I have another one.

Yeah, I know how you feel! It's been a month and a half and 1 LD only. Know what helps!? Set 10 LDs a month, and you'll have at least a few, which is great! BrandomBoss's advice!

The purpose of Reality Checks have been misunderstood.

They shouldn't be done mindlessly, or else their purpose is completely.. Well, useless.

You must ACTUALLY question your reality.

If you were in the dream, and you were just doing it COMPLETELY out of habit, what's the point?

You'll miss the opportunity.

Also, if you do them mindlessly, you may not even have them in the dream, since they will not be something the sub would incorporate in a dream(cuz it is mindless)

I think this decrease of lucidity when you sleep shorter isn't necessarily the case for everyone.. for me at least I actually have lucid dreams more often when I sleep less, like this week I have been sleeping 4 hours per night because I've had tons of work and I had around 3 or 4 lucid dreams in 7 days, without actually thinking about it.

And as for motivation, does it happen to you guys too that once you're having an LD you can't remember a single thing you were planning to do so you just end up flying or making out with someone?