Hi all, I have been doing something for about 2 weeks now that seems to be working somewhat. Alot of my dream signs are not that common in my waking life. I would say my strongest are water, a ton of my dream journal entries involve swimming, being underwater etc... while another great many feature the house I grew up in. Since neither of these things I experience on a regular basis (probably once a week max.), why I keep dreaming about it is unknown to me, but I cannot create the habit of Reality checking when I experience these things so rarely.

Something I have noticed however is in almost all of my dreams, the settings change quite often, so I started to RC whenever the setting changes in my waking life, for example on a typical day,

I rc when I..
leave the bedroom
leave my apartment
I get outside
into the car
get inside work
walk to the mail room (from my cube)
etc...

It seems to have worked in that in about 2 weeks time I am now doing this without thinking, I walk outside and immediately have a big urge to asses my surroundings, plug my nose and decide I am indeed awake. I think I'm checking almost 30 times a day using this method.

Problem is I haven't incorporated these checks into the dream, I suppose I could be doing something wrong I'm not sure... but one thing is certain I am doing RC's almost continually now, being close to almost always aware of what reality I'm in... unfortunately not in my dreams... a number of times however I have looked at things in a dream which have triggered the thought that something was important there but I just justify it... a classic example is I wake up (in my dream) and get ready for work. Look at the clock in my dream which says 7:30... then I keep going about my business when I suddenly realize I'm late for work, and its 12:30... I get confused but rationalize "oh I must have fallen asleep"....

I feel pretty disappointed at these times, so close but just not there yet..

Anyhow try this method of RC'ing if your very absent minded during the busy hours of the day, let me know if it works for you or if you think I should be doing something different.

thanks, happy dreaming!