Thread: Click here to get motivated

Hey everyone.

My aim is to make this thread a nice home for anyone seeking motivation to go that extra step further. Be it gaining lucidity for the first time or reaching four lucids per night, summoning giant five-headed crocodiles and vanquishing them with nothing more than a teaspoon - this is the place for you.

The method:
Introduce yourself, share some goals, share some things about yourself (if you like) update your progress, encourage others and have fun!

I will be checking this thread at least every day and will be making my absoltue best effort to keep it afloat, I know that a big barrier to achieving your dreams (hah) is a lack of motivation and it has certainly slowed me down in the past, if you want to be a part of this little project of mine, please post a hello, it wont take long and it will (hopefully) be worthwhile!

I know there are already a few threads about LD goals but I would love to make this thread a little bit more open ended, goals could be about day to day life as well as the dream state, ideally it would be awesome to get to know a few of you better, I'm sure it would be a great help having more people backing your personal goals.
From my experience it is hard to talk to a lot of people about lucid dreaming. Whenever I bring the subject up it seems to get dismissed rather hastily, about 90% of the time, meaning that motivation and excitement has to be toally self driven, which can be very hard at times!
So for that reason, I hope this thread can be a haven of like-minded inspiration!
I will introduce myself properly in the next post down, Happy dreaming!

I'll make this as quick as possible so I don't overflow the thread before anyone has had a chance to post!

My name is Duncan and I live in the capital of New Zealand where it is currently very sunny and very warm, I got a horrible sunburn today from painting the exterior of a backpackers..

Reasons for persuing Lucidity:
I really want to improve my memory and general day to day awareness. aside from that, as an amature artist, I love the creative exploration which is possible in the dream state. I also would love to communicate with my subconcious and see whats going on in there!

Goals:
1 Lucid per week (starting small, Ive only had a few in my life)
Improve my sketching (Im going to do at least one sketch every day for 365 days and compile them at the end, starting tonight!)
Generally be a better person
Make my dream Journal a habit.

Thats me for now,
Duncan.

I like your posts Duncan, it's certainly been my experience as well that it's difficult to talk to anyone about lucid dreaming. Is there any particular reason you want to improve your memory? There are some pretty cool mnemonic methods for memorising things, though they are only really useful for memorising specific things rather then just having a better memory in general, look up memory palaces (sometimes known as the method of loci) if you're interested, or PM me!

I'd like to reach a stage where I can confidently induce lucid dreams at will, and preferably without a great deal of effort. I've managed lucid dreams the last 3 nights in a row, and I'd like to keep this streak going for as long as possible, it's provided me with a bit of extra motivation. I'd also like to improve the length and stability of my dreams, which will hopefully come with practice. Pretty standard goals I suppose, I'd just like to get to a stage where I can enjoy my dreams without the disappointment of short-lived lucids or failure to become lucid and all the practice will pay off. I'd also like to help guide my friend to his first lucid dream, hopefully he'll become a regular lucid dreamer too.

Originally Posted by dreamguy1515

I want to become a Lucid Dreamer because i love the sensation of it and the thrill you get. Also because i can eat all the foot i want .

Short Term: 1 Lucid a week, first lucid by next monday.

Talk to you later,
Dreamguy

If you could eat an entire swimming pool full of one particular food, what would it be? haha. Let us know how your goal for monday goes, I'd love to hear!

Originally Posted by unda

Is there any particular reason you want to improve your memory?

I'd like to reach a stage where I can confidently induce lucid dreams at will, and preferably without a great deal of effort. I've managed lucid dreams the last 3 nights in a row, and I'd like to keep this streak going for as long as possible, it's provided me with a bit of extra motivation. I'd also like to improve the length and stability of my dreams, which will hopefully come with practice. Pretty standard goals I suppose, I'd just like to get to a stage where I can enjoy my dreams without the disappointment of short-lived lucids or failure to become lucid and all the practice will pay off. I'd also like to help guide my friend to his first lucid dream, hopefully he'll become a regular lucid dreamer too.

Well personally I have spent the last few years in a kind of inbetween state, not really caring about many things and being pretty unhealthy, both mentally and physically. Improving my memory is just something that I feel will help me feel like I'm operating at full capacity again - I used to have this feeling like I would want to wash my brain out with cold water (might actually try this in a lucid) because it felt so clogged up at times haha, just from overthinking things and being excessivly introspective.

Having these things to work toward has really helped me start to grab hold of life again, especially when it comes to relating to other people, I am becoming more and more interested in what people have to say, where as previously I would get bored very easily. Thats kind of the second reason for improving memory too, I'd like to really remember conversations and peoples stories properly, I feel like everyone has something different and interesting to say, so long as you are paying attention. I don't want to miss out on that anymore!

Sheesh, bit of a rant haha sorry..

Those are some nice things to aim for, It's cool that you are spending the time to teach others as well, the more the merrier! Have you introduced him to this forum?

Do you have any Lucid goals? Are you in it for pure adventure?
Hope all is well,

Duncan

P.S Thanks for the replies so far guys!

If you don't mind me asking, was there any particular reason you were in that 'inbetween state'? Sometimes if you are obsessed with one thing it can affect your memory in other areas, as I'm sure you know it's massively psychological in every sense of the word, believe you have a good memory and you will. What gave you this new found enthusiasm for life? It's quite uplifting to see such positivity!

I introduced my friend to this forum earlier and he read this thread, I don't think he's created an account yet though. I don't know about long-term lucid goals, the possibilities are limitless!

I dont mind at all, what you said about becoming obsessed with one thing sort of rings true, I would spend hours out of each day reading philosophy articles and essays on the internet. As a result my university work suffered and I seemed to lose interest in pretty much everything.. Although I am still pretty keen on philosophy I don't let myself get too involved anymore, it kept me awake at night (no good for lucids!) As I see it now philosophy is really an attempt to answer the (currently) unanswerable and while it can provide great stimulation for your mind it can also confuse and clutter it!

I guess I eventually just saw that I wasnt having a good time of it and decided to kick myself into gear, if for nothing else life is just one big bunch of experiences and opportunities and theres no use in missing out on them haha

I just read an article on the method of loci, not only does it instantly seem extremely useful, I guess I could have some fun with it too, great for creativity as well as visualisation - perfect! thnaks for introducing me to that.

I might PM you tomorrow so this doesn't drift too far off topic, although I am not sure how much interest this thread will get anyhow!

Duncan.

My name is Dreamguy (heheheh don't ask about it, i didn't think i would be staying here) and i live in Florida, currently the weather is nice. But people think 50* is freezing >.> silly kids.

I want to become a Lucid Dreamer because i love the sensation of it and the thrill you get. Also because i can eat all the foot i want .

Short Term: 1 Lucid a week, first lucid by next monday.

Long Term: Possibly in 6-12 months, become a semi expert on LD and have one ever day.

Talk to you later,
Dreamguy

Nice! thats sounding awesome, I cant wait to get to the point where I LD every night. what did you do in them? Yeah I also want to start using WILD and DEILD but currently just use DILD, ADA coupled with meditation and MILD

Last night I managed to break my dry spell of a few weeks and had three lucids! only one was of a decent length though. It seems to me that one of the biggest hindrences to Lucidity is a lack of confidence. for the last few weeks I have been going to bed hoping I would become lucid, whereas last night I went to bed excited and 'knowing' that it would come and it did!

So far my longest lucid would have been about five minutes and that happened last night, the rest have ranged from a few seconds to 1 or two minutes. How about you?

I think it would be interesting if there was a study done with a group of people who had not heard about lucid dreaming before - give half the group as many tutorials and theorys on lucidity as possible, then simply just tell the second group what lucid dreaming is and then ask them to have some lucid dreams and report on their experiences.
Maybe the second group would naturally become aware of their dream state simply by knowing it is possible, if you treat it as something that is easy to do, chances are you will find it easy. (just like you said earlier, if you believe something, it will be so.)
Sometimes I think that having all these various techniques which bog down the forums can make lucid dreaming seem daunting and difficult, when really it is not. The more difficult part is learning to make your lucids behave as you wish.

Just some thoughts,
Duncan

About the same length for me too, there's a lot of ideas about attaining lucidity but not much about length. Yeah that study would be interesting, it's a shame there isn't more research out there. Personally I'm not sure that confidence itself has that much impact, it's maybe more to do with the fact you're confident for a reason, e.g. you're focused and you've been thinking about it all day. My guess would be that the first group would do better if only due to the material providing them with a reason to think about it more often and there are definitely techniques which do help, WBTB for example, but I agree that there are too many techniques that can confuse beginners. I think the key for me seems to be just drilling in my brain the idea that I'm dreaming, starting before I go to bed and continuing in the WBTB, with MILD being the best technique to help drill it in my brain. What does your meditation involve and do you use WBTB?

My name isn't actually "Lucy", but I'd like to be known as Lucy on the internet. I'm 25 and work as a secretary. I've lived in England for 10 months and have been back for about 9 now. My interests are rock music, Japan and My Little Pony.

My goal for now, is to summon person C. (not disclosing their identity) I've tried twice and failed twice. I really want to be with this person. Not a day goes by when I don't think of him, so you'd THINK he'd show up in my dreams, right? No.

So I want to use my Lucid Dreams for this purpose.

My name is cedward1. That's a boring handle, I know, but it's easy to remember and type when logging in. I live in the United States, near the Great Lakes. I have many interests, lucid dreaming obviously being one of them.

My short term goal is to learn to WILD. I got pretty close once, and had some definite signs of transitioning into sleep paralysis, but then had a violent twitch that woke me up. In retrospect, it could very well have been a false awakening, but I don't remember if I did a RC or not.

My long term goal is to have a lucid dream every night, that last for a decent amount of time.

Well my name is yuskey, yusk, whatevers best for you guys lol I'm new here as you can tell by my post count/lack of profile picture. Idealy I'd like to get good enough to have as many lucids as possible per night but realistically I know it'll take forever lol. I plan on having as many adventures in my dreams as I can and even using them as a way to study if I can figure out how that's done haha

Anyway I'm from south florida, last semester of college and applying to UCF for grad school. I'm planning on following this through and practicing every night.

New here as well. I stumbled into lucid dreaming through my friend, who told me he was trying to learn it. I'm from PA and am about to graduate college.
A few months ago, september leading into october, I was starting to take this quite seriously and kept a constant journal, etc. I even had an appointment with my neuroscience professor to discuss lucidity as we had briefly discussed it in class. the day of the meeting however i had to go to the hospital and was subsequently there or a month. then this past month i've been getting myself back on track for school.
for some reason i decided to visit here last night, and am now hoping to get myself back on track and into lucid dreaming.

I really don't have huge goals. Why am I here? Simply put, happiness. Night-time/dreaming is a time for extreme relaxation and I find dreams to be fascinating and are a huge source of happiness. Waking up from a great dream puts me in a good mood to start my day. I believe good sleep/dreaming is a major way to improve your life. I hope to simply increase my dream recall and hopefully have some good lucid dreams. Realistically I can't put in the dedication for having them every night... but I'd hope to eventually have them once a week or so.
Also, I'm a musician, and on occassion I've dreamt about writing great songs. Once I remembered part when I woke up. But the idea that I could theoretically write great music in a dream is a fun idea.

Originally Posted by unda

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I tried WBTB once and failed, I really need to try again, I hear so many good things about it. maybe tonight! I have had trouble falling asleep over the last few nights and my recall has suffered because of it, I am too tired in the morning to bother trying to remember things, I just roll back over and sleep again haha
I kind of change up my meditation day to day, I tend to just focus on my breathing for a while until my mind clears and then just let it run from there, I guess you could call it living in the moment. I try to do it as much as possible throughout the day as well.

Originally Posted by MissLucy

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Hey Lucy!
Have you tried just looking behind a closed door or in a new room? it is much easier than summoning! (so I hear)

Originally Posted by cedward1

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What got you hooked into lucid dreaming? are there any in-dream goals you want to achieve?

Originally Posted by Yuskey

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Hey Yuskey (im going to stick with that, I like it hah)
What are you studying at the moment? That whole idea of using lucidity to study is pretty interesting, similar to stories of athletes using it for practice. I guess it is possible but if my example is anything to go by, I dislike study in day to day life so I guess I would have a hard time studying in my dreams when I knew I could be doing absolutely anything else!
I do understand where you are coming from though, one of my goals is to experience an amazing lucid scene or object and sketch it while lucid so I can visualize it later on while I am awake and recreate it.

Originally Posted by cessna

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I would love to have a discussion about lucidity with someone like that, did you ever ask if you could arrange another meeting? I'd love to know what he had to say. Hope everything is okay after being in hospital..

I agree that dreaming can provide a good deal of happiness, its always fun to discuss dreams with others too. Do you think there is personal insight to be gained from interpreting dreams?

If you ever make some dream music, do share!

-----------------------------------------

On a personal note, my goal for tonight is to attempt to find a 'dream guide', or talk to my subconcious in some way or other.

Hope everyone is well!

Dunc.

Originally Posted by Duncan

I tried WBTB once and failed, I really need to try again, I hear so many good things about it. maybe tonight! I have had trouble falling asleep over the last few nights and my recall has suffered because of it, I am too tired in the morning to bother trying to remember things, I just roll back over and sleep again haha
I kind of change up my meditation day to day, I tend to just focus on my breathing for a while until my mind clears and then just let it run from there, I guess you could call it living in the moment. I try to do it as much as possible throughout the day as well.

I'm surprised you don't use WBTB, in my opinion it's the most effective thing you can do to increase your chances of lucid dreaming. I've only once ever had a lucid dream without the technique, and there is plenty evidence for its effectiveness (Wakefulness Makes Lucidity More Likely). If you don't use the method then by the time you're having decent length REM periods you've been asleep for 6+ hours, so any preparation you did before bed is no longer fresh in your mind, with WBTB the thoughts of realising your dreaming are still active in your mind while you dream. I'd really recommend using WBTB every time you get the chance, don't feel as if you have to stay awake for an hour for it to be worthwhile, personally I usually just make sure I've returned to full wakefulness and can focus on the goal of becoming lucid, then return to sleep.

Did you achieve your goal last night?

Hi, my name is Alexis and I am 19 years old. I live in Wisconsin, ( yes its cold here ) and am currently in college.

The reason I want to be able to lucid dream is because the idea fathoms me. Most people I talk to have no idea what this is, and I feel very lucky that it happened to me before I even knew what it was. In the past month, I have had 4 lucid dreams. 3 of them were random, and this morning was my first lucid dream achieved by techniques I've learned through the internet. I would like to be able to control them better because so far all I ever do once I realize I am dreaming is have sex haha. I would like to fly to the end of the world, jump in a swimming pool full of jello, talk to my deceased relatives, and other things. I believe lucid dreams can almost be like a parallel universe in a way, with you being able to do whatever you want whenver you want. Who wouldnt want that??

Originally Posted by Duncan

What got you hooked into lucid dreaming? are there any in-dream goals you want to achieve?

I had lucid dreams every now and then when I was little. I didn't know anything about it, other than the fact that every once in a while a wonderful thing would happen where I knew I was dreaming and I could do anything I wanted to. But this only happened once in a long while, maybe once every 5 years if then. When I got to high school, one of my friends told me about lucid dreaming, and I found that there was an actual science behind it. He told me that simply keeping a dream journal could give me more lucid dreams, so I tried it. Sure enough, I started having perhaps a lucid dream each month which I thought was incredible. Then I started researching online and really got interested, and discovered that one lucid dream a month isn't even close to the realizing the full potential of lucid dreaming. For me, the greatest attraction is not so much being able to do whatever I want, like it used to be, but is just the fascination with exploring the dreams themselves. It's like a whole new world.

I have several in dream goals. One is to be able to visit places that I have imagined and written descriptions of. I hope to be able to write out the dreamscape ahead of time, and be able to visit it in a lucid dream. I have done this once, but when I arrived I lost lucidity. I would also like to be able to re-enter dreams so that I can pick up where I left off from one night to the next. Other goals center around improving the quality of my lucid dreams, length, vividness, etc.

Duncan, yes, I have. The first time I didn't, I was outside and just turned around assuming he'd be there. He wasn't.
The second time was a False Awakening, so I lay my hand on the door know, thinking "when I open this door, he'll be on the other side." so I opened the door and almost fell over a golden retriever I apparently owned in the dream XD

Maybe I'll change the phrase into "I'm going to open this door, and he *is* on the other side." using the present tense, rather than the future tense? 'd You think that'd work?

I am not really the one to ask such a question because I too am a beginner, but I guess the present tense would help, along with confidence and just "knowing"

I think I may have lost the confidence of "knowing" over the years. Because I used to do it in my waking life, too. And the disappointment may have dulled this ability.. hmm..

I know for a fact that I can do it, though! In a past lucid dream, I summoned Jack Sparrow, and had a conversation with him..

My pseudonym here is Rawracookie. I'm 19 years old, I live in central USA, and I work at Walmart as a cashier. I'm going to college for engineering. I'm interested in open source software and hardware. I've been doing some computer programming for years mostly with a videogame focus, but I recently got an Arduino to do some electronics work.

I had known about lucid dreaming since before inception. Early this year (January) I got interested in it again. I wanted to speak to my subconscious and fix my bad sleeping habits. February I got into Dream Views. Later, I had my first lucid dream since.

I want to have at least 1 lucid dream every week. And I'm going to do it sometime next year. I have poor control over lucid dreams. I'm working on lucid dreaming more often and controlling myself better once I'm in there. I also want to learn to WILD.

Hello, my name is PepsiBlueFan (No I never tried pepsi blue, ironically this handle was created a long time ago for someone that hated pepsi blue.) I have been having a serious dry spell of lack of lucid dreams. This morning I thought I could do it since I woke up early enough and was tired enough. I tried a WBTB but failed, I recorded it all in my dream journal. What I have been noticing though is my dreams are started to get more vivid which I think is a good sign.

Goals: Trying to find some dream signs, and try to have one lucid a week at least. I want to use the dreams for practicing my Spanish too, and teachings other DC's how to speak it so I can learn it better. I know no one that speaks Spanish in real life, and there isn't any college classes either for Spanish. So I got a lot of reasons to become lucid. Also I just want to do it so I can help people in general with lucid dreams.

Hey, my name is Mark.

I'm interested in Lucid Dreaming because first of all, the concept is extremely interesting, and I don't want to live 1/3 of my life 'asleep' - if you will. I have studied it for a few months, had a lucid dream within the two months, and then had a dry spell for another two before I had an AMAZING lucid dream - fairly long and I had excellent dream control - 4 nights ago. I would like to improve my awareness, gain insight, practice, and excel in life goals, improve memory, and just have a good time doing it all.

Goals? In signature. I also have a couple more, though.


Find my dream guide
tell me dream guide to aware me whenever I am dreaming
fix my mistakes with a girl
love someone
walk through a solid object
major life epiphany (very unspecific), but I don't know exactly what yet!
Lucid easily
talk to my subconscious again
visit another planet ... or just a creative landscape!

Hi, I'm AscendedSleeper. I learned about lucid dreaming initially by watching a television program (I don't remember what it was) which mentioned it (I don't remember what the show was). I started seriously attempting to lucid dream about a year and a half ago, and lurked here for a few months before joining. My short term goals are generally dream control related while my long term goals are lucidity related.

Short term:
-Control lightning
-Win in a fight against a nightmare character (from a specific dream which unsettled me for a while) and ask why they are there
-Become better at maintaining clarity while changing scene
-Improve at shapeshifting
-Meet my "dream guide"
Long term:
-Have at least one lucid dream every two days.
-Find an effective way to deal with aggravating dry spells

From my experience it is hard to talk to a lot of people about lucid dreaming. Whenever I bring the subject up it seems to get dismissed rather hastily, about 90% of the time, meaning that motivation and excitement has to be toally self driven, which can be very hard at times!

I totally identify with this. It is saddening to me that such a vast array of misconceptions about dreams exist in modern society. Some don't seem to comprehend that dreams can actually feel real and vivid, and dismiss the concept of lucid dreaming before they truly understand what it is.

There have been times when I was tempted to quit, but I am extremely glad I never did. Lucid dreaming is worth the effort, so don't give up.