Break your dryspell

Its been a LONG time on these boards and while i was here i only had one halfarsed Lucid which i couldn't really remember. However, last night i had a lucid dream and i know why! (I have school monday to friday every week but we had holidays this week so my brain dreamed I was at school however I felt this was ridiculous)

So today after i woke up i went back to bed after about 20 minutes and then bam i was just imagining things half vividly, i could still hear the rain outside, then BAM. The rain went away and the dream was like 100% vivid. I immediately asked why I was in school. Then i said to the two of my friends beside me "Holy shit i'm dreaming" and they looked at me weirdly, but I was in school, so I calmly explained why I figured this. So i just said to myself, screw this, you guys aren't even real! I decided, I HAD to fly, so i just said to myself its ok its just a dream and then hovered a few feet off the ground, I cant remember much after that accept going outside and flying to about tree height before falling to the ground, which i noticed was 100% painless. I then experienced something to a grey out and started to hear the rain outside again. I just blocked out the rain and started trying to imagine stuff again. I can't remember anything after that accept I DID get back in to the dream, and i did some crazy stuff. I'm pretty sure i lost lucidity in there somewhere, but this was a way longer lucid than i could have ever hoped for! Lasted ages.

For TL;DR, I had my first super long lucid dream, and i hope this is like alot of motivation for you guys!

my ld's seem so random!

What I do is just mix up techniques a once in a while. You basically want to convince yourself 100% that you are going to lucid dream. Do anything that requires effort to support this. Write a fake lucid dream in your private journal on days you don't LD. With MILDs try writing the affirmations down as lines 20 times. Mix it up with various supplements. Try to RC every time you get out of bed. You never know when you'll FA

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Originally Posted by Lucid fanatic

Then i said to the two of my friends beside me "Holy shit i'm dreaming" and they looked at me weirdly, but I was in school, so I calmly explained why I figured this. So i just said to myself, screw this, you guys aren't even real!

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Its hilarious when we try to explain things to DCs :D Congrats on your first long lucid

I was very close to breaking my dry spell last night. I had a small moment of "pre-lucidity." I was jogging (with difficulty, due to water legs), and I thought, "God, it's hard to jog while dreaming!" Not enough to actual realize the implications of what I had just thought, though!

I went back to my MILD mantra I was using before the dry spell. Since I just don't even think about the possibility of dreaming while I'm dreaming... that's what the mantra is. It worked pretty well before the dry spell. I'm going to take it up again :D

Last night I dreamed I was at work. :? Not only was I too dumb to realize it was a dream even though there was a lot of crazy things going on, I started to panic as I tried to lock the door to keep the costumers out. The key! I dropped it! Where is it! NO! NOT MORE COSTUMERS! (help)

So today, I probably made the biggest effort yet to be constantly aware of my total environment while at work. I'm hoping it pays off tonight. If not, that's okay, I'll keep practicing this awareness anyways.

After I got to work and had a chance to relax, I recalled everything from that moment all the way back to waking up. And even further back into my dream of work, making a happy little time loop. I also made a huge list of questions to ask myself while I'm at work. (It was a slow day, so I pulled out my journal. My boss doesn't mind!)

I started first with the physical appearance of the store. What do the walls look like? Each wall is a different color! And the pink wall in the back has four paintings. One is a plant, the other a skull, and the other two are portraits. (I wouldn't have been able to tell you that yesterday! I never bothered to remember!) So now I can RC this every time I walk in. I double check that each wall has the right color, and that the pink wall has it's proper paintings.

I also RC the registers and the glass display tables surrounding them. We only have two registers! And in a lot of dreams of work there's one too many. So now every time I walk back to the register area I can RC that too.

Every time anyone at work annoys me, makes me angry, makes me anxious, or confuses me with some weird question - I RC. Anytime I'm super busy and stressed - I RC. Any time the technology or the voices on the phone sound super weird - I RC (I swear I spoke with a robot today!)

And then the supplies! We sell ART supplies! But in dreams I've had people come up to the counter with food, toys, clothes. Then I become frustrated and confused because I have no idea how to ring it up. So now, I RC every single costumer. Are they buying art supplies? Is what they are buying making any sense? I also RC the prices. Is this a normal price for an item like this? Or when I look away at the computer screen, are the same items still on the table? I even read the receipt as it prints out to double check its printing the same items I remember ringing up!

I know I know..Obsessive! But I'm tired of dreaming work!

I basically created a way to RC every task I do at work without actually interfering work (actually I think I got more done?). Recalling takes a bit of time. So I recall three times. When I arrive at work, at lunch and when I get home. The funny thing was, by the time it was lunch time, all of my memories were already jumbled up! Sure I remember ringing out this and that costumer, but I didn't even remember who came first. But you bet I remember what I rung up since I made it a point to double check that everything was an art supply!

This is tough! This is foced zhine in action! I hope it pays off, and that one day it'll be more natural :D

And for anyone here who dreams of mundane activities.........

Don't trust your instincts that your awake! TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED! Question, Question, Question!!

Work is a major thing I dream of too. I once had this really nice, full level of lucidity that spawned because I was at work and there were people there that shouldn't be!

I started doing the same thing... really questioning things that happen around my work place. Hopefully that'll help, next time I'm back there in dream land :)

Likewise, school seems to be a dead giveaway for me.

Sorry for the TL;DR...

Been getting really frustrated with this current dry spell. Aprill 11th will mark an entire month of no LD's. I wouldn't even be so bothered with that, only... There have also been fewer "almosts" than I have ever experienced; less manifestations of things that I have tried to MILD to; decrease in recall; and an overall lack of engaging-ness in the content of my dreams.

So... I'm lost. It's never gone on a month before. I've been trying to stick to just one technique, and I know MILDs take the longest before they start working for people... but I'm not even having DILDs. Just feeling a little stressed, especially since I'm usually a natural DILD'er. Any advice/words of encouragement?

:hugitout:

Additional: There's two things I have pinpointed that might be causing the extension of this dry spell...

A) Fear. The killer of all potential LD's. It's not the fear of not having one, though. It's the fear of trying too hard during a MILD. So admittedly, my attempts have been half-assed. The fear is, when I do attempt what I think is going to be the textbook MILD (meaning,
1. Relax
2. Mantra
3. Visualize my last dream/or a scene in which I become lucid, stabilize and remember my goals), I wake up. The action of day dreaming wakes me up too much. So generally, when that happens, I do it for about the 30 or so minutes until I realize I'm not falling back to sleep this way, let my mind drift and I have a normal dream. The fear is quite ultimately the fear of not going back to sleep.

B) Messed up sleep schedule. Truth is, my sleeping has been wonky. It's probably hurt my recall because I've found that I can't work on remembering the mid-night dream. I get up, do a very short WBTB, and do my failed MILD back to sleep. In the morning, I'm usually not springing out of bed or grasping the dream I just woke up from... I'm usually falling back to sleep because I'm exhausted.

To be honest, I think this lack of recall might be sabotaging my LD's because I'm not paying close enough attention to detailing the normal dreams. If anyone asks about the importance of keeping a kick ass DJ in the future, this is my answer. I'm finding that the less effort I put into it, the less engaged I feel with my dreams.