Why do you need to believe, subconscious?

[LouaiB]

You can have LDs by training, but it is essential to make your subconscious self believe that you can! Why? Why do you have more LDs when you are confident you can? All answers are very much appreciated!

[Bobblehat]

I don't really buy into the "blind belief" thing, to be honest. You can't make yourself believe in something you know inside you don't really believe, right? "but it is essential to make your subconscious self believe that you can!" sounds like something from a cheap self-help book.

[Zoth]

Why do you have more LDs when you are confident you can? Expectation improves prospective memory, it's the same as when you have an exam the next day: you tend to wake up and be like "EXAM DAY MUST NOT BE LATE". And it's that prospective memory that will make you more likely to remember your intention to lucid dream while you're meeting those dream cues. Of course other factors come into play, like pattern recognition (the better the mindset, the more "Inside" you are, the easier time you will have catching dream cues). The subconscious self isn't really a "self", it's just a bunch of processes that don't make into your awareness. For example when you're in a party and you can't really distinguish what other people are talking, but when someone mentions your name, you hear it perfectly: it's because you were subconsciously processing more information than you thought. This happens in a lot more situations, and there's many other mechanisms working that you aren't aware of. If subconscious expectation was essential to have lucid dreamers, then there would be no natural lucid dreamers, because most of them don't even need to induce them. It just helps, but for sure it's not the main ingredient

[benni]

It almost sounds as if making your self/ your person responsible for your success which seems to be a bit of a fallacy. Earlier on I was into this whole "confidence thing" a lot more, but by now I suppose that it's only about what you do and how you do it. I think it's much more or probably all about believing that WHAT you do is going to work (because it has worked for many others or because you have seen it working yourself for instance) and not about believing that YOU can do it simply because it's you.... Do you get the thought? - sounds strange haha. I'm just saying that enjoying what you do and trying to see what works best is the key and not saying things like "oh I can do it. I am good at it. I just need to believe" because this totally neglects the way of how to achieve something. I hope this was clear enough? - Benni

[Earthatic]

Becoming lucid is only a secondary concern for me, at best, where I often don't even care if I am really lucid or not. The events that occur are what are important to me. If people only recognized the subversive, adaptive, free-flowing nature of the late dreamscape processes, they'd realize how easy it is to shoot themselves in the foot with their own intent and frustration. Mental conditioning, discipline, high motivation, sleeping longer than 9 hours per day (more sleep = more REM cycles), resting in the correct position, and having the right diet can greatly improve LD consistency. Shallow self-assertion isn't enough, IMO.

[LouaiB]

So when your subconscious accepts the task and its possibility(LD), it works harder to achieve it? I'm so paranoid, I need to make sure:p

[HeSpeaks7]

I don't really buy into the "blind belief" thing, to be honest. You can't make yourself believe in something you know inside you don't really believe, right? "but it is essential to make your subconscious self believe that you can!" sounds like something from a cheap self-help book. The way I've always understood it was that you believe because you know that when you are confident it works more often. Confidence improves your performance in everything, try it some time at work/school. Just 100% trust yourself and be supremely confident towards the task at hand. It works. And that's not to say that you wont make mistakes or lucid every night, but its the belief or confidence that makes it happen more often and with better quality. You just can't discouraged when you fall down sometimes, because 1. you're human and 2. you know you're doing better with this new attitude. It's a positive, self-imposed catch 22.