Getting Discouraged

I have not been having any lucid dreams. Here is how the cycle goes: I see a technique, I try it out, a month later no progress is showing, I keep reminding myself it can take a long time, as the days go by I slowly forget to try out the technique until it is completely out of my schedule, a month or two later I get back on DV and get excited again, cycle begins anew. Seriously, after a year of this it kinda gets a guy down. Any suggestions on how I could fix this or why I might be stuck in this cycle?

Well, it could be because you're starting to expect that you're not going to have a lucid dream no matter what. The negativity will not help you. Try 'n think positive. If you can't seem to find a technique that works, try combining them. If you utilize several techniques. (ADA,MILD,DILD) all together you greatly improve your chances. Or, better yet you can take a break. Just let lucid dreaming completely out of your scedule altogether. Sometimes when I get discouraged by a dry spell, Just as I'm about to give up, BANG! Lucid dream. It's a little annoying, but for some reason, it seems to work that way with most people.

Well, I hope you have your first lucid dream soon, good luck. Hope this helps.

To be honestly, I find it bad to think of these methods as 'just techniques'. Which, of course, I understand that they are. However, to accept it more as a way of life, you'll find the things that you do to be much more integrated into your lifestyle and even more natural. Try thinking of it that way.
Of course, JadeGreen has a very valid point about negativity.
Have you read through Naiya's in-depth tutorial?

Think positive, continue trying, may even try changing your sleeping schedule if possible, i have had very hard time trying to LD until i shifted my sleeping schedule by 3 hours for example. :zzz:

Ah, yes! On the topic of sleep, make sure you get many hours of it! More sleep = more dreams = more chances to LD! And that is, consistently.

How many times do you wake up during the night? How long have you DJed?

I have attempted all of the above so far except for thinking of it as a life style. I always think positive when I start a technique, which makes it all the more frustrating when after a month it doesn't work. The more sleep thing does help even if I don't get lucid :).

@BrandonBoss I remember waking up maybe once a night usually around 5:00 AM. I try to DJ, but the instant I wake up my mind flips to other things leaving me with a slight recollection of what happened. Unfortunately, it is always something I can't seem to ever be able to describe.

Also to clear things up I have had 4 LDs. They were just all random and never when I was really thinking about LDing. Those tend to be so vivid I can't help but write them down.

Remember that lucid dreaming is (I would say) 100% psychological. It is in your mind. Think about how you can move your mind into that 'happy place'. That happy place that would be ideal to becoming lucid, both in waking life and in dreams. Reality is irrelevant, practice is everything.

Well it took me a month and a half of living lucidly to get a single LD. To me it doesn't sound like you have really committed. Yeah, you need more confidence like forceez says, but you also need to stay more committed. This summer me and my brother in law started LDing together. After 6 months (4 with a DJ) I have had 68 LDs. He has had 7. I have tried every single night, he tried for two months, stopped, tried again, stopped again. A DJ isn't just to get better dream recall. It is also to find out what technique works best for you. Which ones give you the most clear dreams, the most aware dreams, the most fun dreams. I would recommend trying to get up to 4 dreams a night while DJing and make that your primary goal. Write down as much detail as you can, as well as how long the dream lasted with what time it started and ended. You should get some LDs from that alone. What are your short term long term goals for lucid dreaming?

short term goals are to LDs consistently. Long term goals are to have a shared dream with some friends.

As for the DJing, I wake up and then sort of slowly convince myself to get out of bed. By the time I do, I have forgotten most of the dream.

I tried ADA as an awareness technique, but found myself day dreaming most of the time and actually getting depressed when I forced myself to not day dream.

Hello my friend
I am a novice lucid dreamer and maybe my opinion does not but i had/have the same problem..I used to try lot of techniques and nothing worked.Then one day i had my 1st lucid and everything changed.I started to believe at me and had more LDs.I even had 3 LDs the next week after my 1st one.Anyway, i think as mentioned above you have to believe that you can do it combined with any technique you want.Hope you achieve as soon as possible.

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Originally Posted by Jkniager

short term goals are to LDs consistently. Long term goals are to have a shared dream with some friends.

As for the DJing, I wake up and then sort of slowly convince myself to get out of bed. By the time I do, I have forgotten most of the dream.

I tried ADA as an awareness technique, but found myself day dreaming most of the time and actually getting depressed when I forced myself to not day dream.

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Sounds like you need some more specific goals. I like the goals you have, but more goals and concentrate on them. How many LDs do you want this week? This month? How many dreams do you want this week? This month? This keeps you motivated.

Keeping your phone or a light with paper near your bed for tags is good. Write down main points and/or what you think you will forget first. After a while you get better at this. I wake up like 5 times a night. I wouldn't recommend for an insomniac, but it gives you more dreams and keeps you more aware in the dreams.

Pao has a point. Sometimes it is hard to stay confident and motivated though. I would recommend really short term goals. As well as some just fun goals like "have 2 dreams a night for a week." Have 5 dreams in one night. " "have 2 LDs in a night." Have 2 LDing nights in a week." For things like that I normally give myself 2 months to complete and have ones that compliment each other like:

Have 15 dreams in one week.
And
Have 2 dreams a night for a week.

I started with things like that in a goal journal, and then I created the rule that I have to write down a dream for it to count. Feel a sense of accomplishment when you succeed. Feel motivated if you fail, not discouraged. ADA takes a lot of effort and I think that it is boring. :P I think that if you like day dreaming then use that as visualization practice. Spend the whole day visualizing what you want to do in an LD, just don't forget the visual of becoming lucid and stabilizing, then fly off and fight a dragon. I find this type of thing easy to do because it is like 5 seconds of boring visual, 5 minutes of awesome fun. Do this when you are bored throughout the day, when you go to sleep at night, and during your WBTBs. Those are very important to do. Try and sleep about 8 hours a night and most every night you should do a WBTB. It is easy to remember since you wake up after every REM cycle. :P

Good luck!

I like the way you explained the goals. They sound sort of like achievements.

Check list time:

1. Make a list of goals to meet some time this month

2. Get a sleep schedule that is consistent. (10:00 pm 6:30 am perhaps)

3. WBTB again

Did I mention I used to WBTB? It seemed to help me remember my dreams better. I think I stopped when my sleep schedule got messed up. Picking it up again might help.

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Originally Posted by Jkniager

I like the way you explained the goals. They sound sort of like achievements.

Check list time:

1. Make a list of goals to meet some time this month

2. Get a sleep schedule that is consistent. (10:00 pm 6:30 am perhaps)

3. WBTB again

Did I mention I used to WBTB? It seemed to help me remember my dreams better. I think I stopped when my sleep schedule got messed up. Picking it up again might help.

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Yeah. Actually things like achievements in video games trigger a chemical reaction in your brain that makes you feel good about yourself. This is why they are addictive. Laberge mentioned setting goals, and I put it to a different level I would like. :P I would also recommend using check marks for when you get it done. :D and a goal journal that you like the look of because it will make you more prone to use it. This is my own experience though.

This might help. Shameless plug of my own thread.

http://www.dreamviews.com/f11/lucid-...gement-138953/

I like that list.

feel free to add. I don't think it has been long enough to be considered buried. It helps when I feel like not LDing. :P

I would try focusing on dream recall a bit. If you don't have good dream recall then you can have lucid dreams and forget you had them. Often times with good recall you experience those random lucid dreams as well. The key to having good recall is to write everything down no matter how small the detail, and even if you can't remember much write down what you do remember, and often times you will remember more as you write.

As Alric said, try improving your dream recall. You may be having lucid dreams and are simply not remembering them in the morning. I know how frustrating this concept is but it's something that needs to be addressed. Start with the recall, once you have mastered your recall, move on to becoming aware that you are dreaming, then stabilizing the dream and then dream control. It seems very formulaic but I believe that these steps are very important for mastering lucid dreaming.

So last night I remember four dream fragments. Each I think was a different dream. I give credit to my cat for waking me up in the middle of a dream. Now I have an idea of what to set my WBTB timer for.

Awesome! 4 frags is good. Keep it up.