Self-Limiting Beliefs and Achieving Lucidity

Hello,
For the past two years, I have made a few on-and-off attempts to LD. Although my efforts have not been successful(yet), I have been seriously committing myself to achieving lucidity for the past month or so. After a few changes in my life, I will be able to go to bed at a consistent time each night, which is good for my health and for dreaming. However, I have also browsed information on LDing from every corner of the internet, and I have read a fair amount of unoptimistic accounts and advice from others. Things like "You aren't trying hard enough" and "Some people just aren't able to LD", which may have wormed their way into my brain unintentionally. I worry that a part of my past struggles with LDing may come from self-limiting beliefs that I have collected. Does this resonate with anyone else, and how have you treated it? Also, I have ADHD, so I'm also curious about how that might affect my LD journey. :sleepmeditate2:

I think I have some form of ADHD and I've had lucid dreams at a time when I believed it was impossible for me to have them.

Neither ADHD nor that belief can prevent lucid dreams in a full stop way.

If you've been trying for a longer time and haven't had your first lucid dream, try varying up the technique. Keep in mind techniques like FILD and WILD are difficult and you may be executing them incorrectly so far and need more practice to do it well enough.

Thank you for replying. The closest I've been to a LD was a few weeks ago, where I tried SSILD after 6 hours of sleep. It was hard to focus because I was groggy, but eventually I "woke up" in a dream and looked at my clock, realized that the "12" was shaped strangely, and then actually woke up. I was surprised because it had been a while since I had a false awakening, but it was so vivid that it gave me more motivation. When I do WBTB normally, I get so tired that I fall back asleep immediately, or wake myself up too much. Another thing I noticed was that I never see text in any of my dreams (besides the SSILD attempt), and my RC involves looking at text, so I thought of switching it to plugging my nose. Have you ever had to change your RC because of your dreams?

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Originally Posted by Rajabox

Thank you for replying. The closest I've been to a LD was a few weeks ago, where I tried SSILD after 6 hours of sleep. It was hard to focus because I was groggy, but eventually I "woke up" in a dream and looked at my clock, realized that the "12" was shaped strangely, and then actually woke up. I was surprised because it had been a while since I had a false awakening, but it was so vivid that it gave me more motivation. When I do WBTB normally, I get so tired that I fall back asleep immediately, or wake myself up too much. Another thing I noticed was that I never see text in any of my dreams (besides the SSILD attempt), and my RC involves looking at text, so I thought of switching it to plugging my nose. Have you ever had to change your RC because of your dreams?

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RC is so low on my ranking of techniques to get lucid that I haven't bothered. I've had the RC "does this feel like a dream? If I need to question then it is." successfully get me lucid once but that's it, I've done tons of reality checks during the day (e.g. pushing your finger through your palm) and haven't had it work. But maybe that's because I've somehow lost my ability to lucid dream recently and dream journaling and FILD don't work for me anymore because of that.

Probably the most important thing is to find a resource or teaching that you whole-heartedly believe in, and follow it consistently, patiently. You may also want to read my recent post about how relaxation is the key to success in lucid dreaming. "Working hard [trying to 'force' a result to happen]" can backfire.

I can't advise about ADHD, but a lot of people in the LD community have it, and still lucid dream.

I personally follow a practice that not only benefits dreams, but waking life as well (as taught in "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" [the 2022 edition is the one to get]).

But you can't go wrong with ETWOLD. It *works*. Follow it, make the practice enjoyable, reach for dream recall on every waking, and really tune in to and become familiar with your dreams.

Starting with dream recall is great for a lot of reasons: it's much easier and faster to progress in dream recall than in lucidity, and building strong dream recall itself is an important cornerstone for regular lucid dreams.