Thread: Need an idea

Do some reality checks during the day. Be aware to your surrounding and yourself where ever you go. Go for a lucid lifestyle at day, and the degree of successful awareness during your waking life should start to reflect itself in to what degree your lucid level becomes in your dreams. Good luck! Stay lucid!

I know it can be frustrating but I think that you should try to stay positive! Having your first lucid dream is a big step that you have already accomplished, you should be proud of yourself.

I think that our state of mind can greatly influence our success in dreaming, so a little positivity can really help you out when you're feeling down on yourself and losing hope. Remember that you are magnificent and that you can totally lucid dream, you already have.

I think that some positive affirmations/mantras could potentially help you a lot to get over this hurdle. You can do it, I believe in you!

I think a lot of us have the same issue with limited time to sleep, and "needing" sleep. If you really want to LD you will be willing to wake up in the night. The few minutes of time you spend awake will not affect your sleep quality and when waking from a REM cycle you can attempt induction techniques, set new affirmations while awake, and briefly take notes in your dream journal.

I'm a light sleeper and if I avoid lights and only stay awake for a short time, the awakening will not affect the quality of my sleep.

Waking up in the middle of the night does not have a negative effect on your sleep quality, because we naturally wake up numerous times during the night already.
My mother even stays up for 5-10 minutes on several occasions every single night, and she is in excellent shape.
And technically this is a form of WBTB, except she doesn't actually practice lucid dreaming.

Learning lucid dreaming can be challenging. I applaud you for sticking it out for 8 months. Most people would give up long before that.

Here's a simple game plan I followed when I was starting out:

1) Keep a Dream Journal everyday
- Developing solid dream recall is the first step to getting good at Lucid dreaming

2) Analyze dreamsigns
- Dreamsigns are clues within a dream that let you know you are dreaming. As you are writing down your dream journal pay special attention to strange objects, people, environments, and scenarios. Underline them with a pen. Eventually you will start to notice common patterns in your dreams that will notify you when you are dreaming

3) Perform 5-10 reality checks per day
- You can automate this process by putting a reminder on your phone to perform reality checks every 1-2 hours. Don't just mindlessly perform these reality checks either. Truly question whether or not you are dreaming.

Doing those 3 things everyday should help dramatically increase the chances of having lucid dreams. However, you must be consistent. Doing them once in a while when you feel like it won't help. You need to develop the discipline to do it every day.

Reconsider waking up in the middle of the night
I can understand why you don't want to wake up in the middle of the night. Interrupting your sleep for 30-60 minutes every day is not the best idea. However, performing the WBTB method once or twice a week when you have a day off, will not adversely hurt your health.

Like some of the other commenters I highly recommend you reconsider waking up in the middle of the night. I've had the most success with WBTB when I started learning lucid dreaming.