How Did You First Get Lucid?

Hey all, as I have yet to have a consciously induced lucid dream (I've had just two random ones) I was wondering what some of you used to successfully get your first LD. Feel free to be as descriptive or as brief as you wish, I just want to see what can help bridge the "gap" many beginners encounter.

I just happened to have one when I was little (don't remember exactly when the first one would be; the earliest one I remember was when I was about 10). Not because of nightmares or anything, they just sort of happened for some reason, maybe once every couple of years or so. I always assumed it was normal to have LDs occasionally, and it wasn't until much later that I knew they even had a name.

I learned a bit more about them during my teenage years when I read about them from a book, and had a brief burst of them around that time. I don't recall doing anything special, just happened to have it on my mind a lot and would up with some DILDs. That's pretty much how I started having them more often several years ago when I really got into them and found this forum.

I had a recurring nightmare that occurred enough that I began to notice it while I was dreaming.

Like my example, what would help many beginners bridge the gap would be to memorize their major dream signs strongly enough that they're able to recall them while they're dreaming.

My first lucid was when I was 10 or something. I had a dream about being held captive by pirates (it was nightmare-ish but not very much). After waking up from it, I went to the bathroom and back to bed immediately. I think the dream must have been on my mind quite prominently as I had the same dream right away. I realised I had had this dream just a few minutes ago and became lucid (not really knowing about lucid dreaming of course), after which I decided to kill the pirates and fly away (waking me up in the excitement).

My first lucid dreaming after learning about LD'ing was a DILD but for no apparent reason. I was walking around some park and suddenly realised 'Hey, I'm dreaming!'.

Dolphin makes a great point about dreamsigns to which I don't have much to add (having little experience myself and only 1 LD per 3 months or something) but I wanted to mention that DEILD is a really reliable technique. It might be hard at first to train yourself to stay still and keep your eyes closed after waking up but if you get that down you're certain of LD's.

I don't really remember when my first LD was, I think maybe some time in the middle of high school when I read something about LDing (can't remember from where, but it lead me to being active in the ld4all forums at the time), back then ld4all had much of the same techniques we have now but the thing that stuck with me was the "laws" of dreams, such as electricity doesn't usually work, lighting doesn't match the light source, shadows going the wrong way, text being unreadable or jumbled and changes when you look at it multiple times, clocks not showing proper time etc....

At the time I already had vivid dreams and was enjoying them (or not for some of them, I still have the odd nightmare, bugs and spiders seem to be my current nightmare theme) and basically I started doing RCs during the day, which was just me paying attention to light switches and other electronics to see if they work, also checking clocks and text, that's basically all I did. Had a lot of LDs from just realising I was dreaming from that. Later I read about WILD and had a few LDs from that, but for the most part most of my LDs were just a sudden realisation of "hey this seems like a dream" followed by me searching for a light switch or clock to RC with (I didn't know about nose plug at the time, so my RCs were all based on dream "laws") and that was it.

During the day I also had lots of daydreams (especially on the bus going home from school) and my imagination was very active, I also paid constant attention to my environment (always knew where I was, what was around me) and my computer was terrible back then so I spent more time outside, reading and imagining than playing video games. Maybe the secret to LDing is turning off the computer. ;)

How did I first get lucid?

I slept a lot. A lot.

Extra hours of sleep exposed my mind -- and my curiosity -- to the wonder of dreams, so I began to pay more and more attention to them. And, given that these extra hours of sleep were riddled with waking moments, I began to find myself insinuating my waking-life self into the dreams, becoming aware that I was dreaming.

I just spontaneously became lucid during REM rebound a few times. My first induced LD was during a late morning nap. I used the 21 affirmations and focusing on the black dot described in LaBerge's EWOLD.