Need help/advice FORCING Reality Checks

I dreamed that I was in a small, narrow home. I made my bed on the couch in the living room, facing two sliding-glass doors. I slid the door open to the dark night and woods outside, hoping that if I slept while facing that, I might induce a nightmare, which might induce a lucid dream (not realizing that I was in fact already dreaming!).

I “woke back up” into the same dream, and two outside cats had waltz into the living room. I squinted my eyes at the door, hoping maybe I was dreaming and would see some horror walking slowly inside. For a split second, I had the bizarre idea, “Or even just Marc Bolan of the band T.Rex, it doesn’t need to be Jason or Freddy Krueger,” but nothing happened. Drat, I must be awake (AND WHY AM I NOT REMEMBERING TO REALITY CHECK?!). So I got up, closed the door, turned and pet a kitty, and walked through the living room. A desk in the living room had a container of a powder supplement to help you sleep. I thought it was ironic… my dreams mock me, and it's getting a bit annoying.

Any advice for getting better at Reality Checking? Out of 6 lucid dreams in the last month or so, only ONE of them came to my attention through an RC. I'm checking my hands every time something weird happens through out the day, and even occasionally just because I think to do it. It just doesn't seem to translate for the last few weeks in my dreams.

I mean, I'm dreaming ABOUT attempting WILDs and ABOUT trying to induce dreams, and I'm not even RC'ing while it's happening.

Ideas?

Try to be more relaxed and have less going through your head before you go to sleep if possible. Meditation is great for this. I notice that when I'm tense my dreams move faster and I'm much less likely to really notice whats going on in them.

You could also try visualizing yourself doing a reality check in a dream. I've never done this but I hear that it works.

Ah, interesting. Relaxation. I've been doing 1, 3mg pill of melatonin a night, which knocks me out, but probably allows me to go to sleep tense. My dreams HAVE been fast and shifting since I stopped listening to relaxing music before bed. I'm creating a video for relaxing visualization, with the same sounds I can listen to before bed to calm me down. This way, there's a crap shoot I might RC, as I'll be doing while watching the video (not to mention chilling out in the woods I video'd).

That'd rock is this worked.