Thread: Only seem to become lucid when not “trying”

I have noticed in my attempts to lucid dream, that if I was to do many RC’s during the day in high hopes that it would result in lucidity the next night, try to have confidence it will work and do my best to believe I will LD soon, it never results in lucidity.

In contrast, however, sometimes when I think “oh I may as well just give up”, I have a LD the next morning or pretty soon. I am curious as to why this is; I thought that you needed to have high expectations at the forefront of your mind, and should be actively planning your LD’s etc. in augmentation with your daytime work. In fact, most of the LD’s I’ve had came about when I wasn’t actively trying or even thinking about it.

An example: I had an LD earlier this week after having “given up for a while", as it were. I only did 2 RC’s the previous day with a mindset of “well if it doesn’t pay off, it doesn’t pay off, but I’ll do it anyway”. I didn’t even plan on having an LD that night, but I did!

I’m just curious as to why this is, if anyone has an opinion.