Setting a goal for nightly lucidity by this time next year

**JadeGreen** · 09-07-2014 05:10 PM

I have been lucid dreaming for nearly four years. And for the most part really enjoyed it, but I sometimes feel as though I could be doing more to improve. I practice inconsistently, at best. But I feel as though it is time I fully commit to this. So I have decided to give myself a high goal and a lot of time to do it. So, what steps am I going to take to reach this goal?

1. Improve my recall. My dream recall is pretty good, I wake up nearly every day with SOMETHING. On the worst days, I at least have some dream fragments. And on the good days... well I can recall long and detailed dreams. Autosuggestion But I'm going to be getting on a more regular sleeping pattern to even things out. That is as such.

2. More regular sleeping pattern. Since day-to-day issues can arise, I wanted to put some flexibility into this. I am officially making a 10pm 'cut off' point as my bedtime. At 10pm I drop whatever I'm doing, brush my teeth and hit the sack. I allow myself exceptions if there is an emergency or special occasion, but unless such, I should go to bed at 10. I am always amazed at how much the clarity of my dreams shoots up when I go to bed earlier.

3. More consistent practice. In my time, I have learned that Autosuggestion is one of my most powerful tools, and I'm surprised how often I neglect to set aside ten minutes to say my mantras. Although I had some luck with reality checks in my early years, for the most part, I don't find myself becoming lucid because of them. More often than not, I find myself already lucid, or become lucid thanks to a dream character. This doesn't mean that I will stop doing them. It just means that they are not my mainsail approach.
As for WILDs. I've never had much luck with WILD. I've done it a few times by 'accident' but never been able to do it on command. The point is, I've gotten my feet wet with WILD and am itching to learn more. But WILD is more something I plan to do on the side. I'm not going to take it seriously, and simply experiment with it as a method for lucid dreaming.

4. Diet upgrade. I've decided to try and stick with the basics. Apple products. I might go into B6 supplements if I get the chance, or need a boost.

5. Revive my SILD (Symbol Induced Lucid Dream) project. Remember this?

LD-Symbol.png

This was my Avatar before It was the painting of my dream self. It was part of a project to link a reality check to a symbol. (If you notice the symbol vaguely looks like the letters LD for lucid dreaming.) Ideally, I would have this symbol everywhere in waking life and teach myself to associate it with lucid dreaming. Then the symbol would appear in my dream, and I would become lucid.
It was a great idea, but I never put it into practice all that well. I would like to give this a full trial run, and if there are any other lucid dreamers out there who want to give this a go, be my guest.

Part of what inspired me to do this was when I created a spreadsheet. I entered, by month the number of lucid dreams I had recorded in my dream journal. And sure there was some variation depending upon whether I was in school or taking a break or what not. But the general trend showed that over the years, I have been improving. So I thought: why not see how far this thing can go?

I feel as though I should be a bit more clear about this goal. Nightly lucidity by this time next year. I don't care if it's just a few moments of lucidity and I wake up. So long as there is blue text in my DJ every morning, I have reached my goal.

I felt like having a goal that was fairly clear cut might actually make me more motivated. I had to make it something of a challenge, but still attainable and realistic.

But ultimately. This is Lucid Dreaming. Something that I have always done for fun. The reward for staying on task is the thrill of the lucid dreams themselves that will hopefully increase in clarity and length. I want to take this seriously, but not so seriously that I'm beating myself up every time I make a mistake. So this is like a 6/10 serious goal for me.

**spellbee2** · 09-07-2014 07:14 PM

Dude, that's awesome. You've kind of inspired me to do the same. I've only been lucid dreaming for two years, but I still feel like I should be better. Mostly because I haven't been committed. It was easy to get into lucid dreaming in the summer, where you practically set your own schedule, but last year once school started, I pretty much dropped it entirely. I gave up on journaling and reality checks, and even though I still had a few natural lucids, I never set any intentions, so they weren't that great.

Of course, my goal has always been to achieve nightly lucidity (pretty sure everyone wants that) but I always thought it would just happen eventually, so I didn't really sweat it. But I think setting a deadline might be the kick in the pants I need to stick with it. I guess I'll list my steps too:

1. Improve recall. Not gonna lie, my recall sucks right now. I'll remember stuff when I wake up, but somewhere in the 15 seconds or so it takes me to shut off my alarm and start up my dream journal app on my phone, it's 95-100% gone. I sometimes take b6 to "kick start" it, but I don't want to take it regularly, as I've already had problems with it in the past (one crazy night I took 600 mg. I remembered like 10 dreams, but I also woke up every 15 minutes). So, improve my recall, mainly by...

2. Serious dream journaling. Looking back through my journal, I see that most of the dreams I bothered to journal were either lucids or long dreams that I felt like adding. I never really had any consistency, as sometimes there were weeks to months between entries. One of the reasons I would keep falling out of the habit was the fact that journaling took too long, especially when I have to get up and get ready for morning classes. So, I'm now going to write words, and not necessarily coherent sentences, just as much as I need to remind me of the dream later. Then, eventually, start writing the dreams out in full later in the day when my schedule has cleared up. I think that should solve quite a few of the problems.

3. Better awareness. I swear I have ADD when it comes to lucid dreaming. My awareness sucks, and it's definitely something I want/need to work on. I've been trying using gravity awareness, and so far it's worked pretty well. I want to use it more consistently until it becomes a full-time thing.

So yeah, this is happening. I'm setting in my calendar a deadline of 9/7/15 to have nightly lucidity. Good luck to the both of us!

**JadeGreen** · 09-07-2014 09:17 PM

Yay for inspiring another DV member to follow me!

Your situation sounds very similar to mine. Somebody who's been at it for a long time but does not really feel like they are getting anywhere (or are getting somewhere but just alarmingly slow).

(one crazy night I took 600 mg. I remembered like 10 dreams, but I also woke up every 15 minutes)

That is crazy.

Better awareness. I swear I have ADD when it comes to lucid dreaming. My awareness sucks, and it's definitely something I want/need to work on.

This sounds like something I would have said in that post.

**spellbee2** · 09-08-2014 12:51 AM

Originally Posted by JadeGreen

That is crazy.

Yeah, that was back when I first started out and knew just about nothing about lucid dreaming. I was desperate, and I kind of thought b6 was like a "magic lucidity pill". I was wrong. Very wrong...

**Hukif** · 09-08-2014 12:56 AM

Good luck guys!

One thing I found worked when I had problems journaling was to make a race with someone and make a small bet on who would finish first. It helped boost journaling speed and recall at the same time, plus it was fun. I mean... just an idea in case it looks too difficult and you have someone to try with.

**JadeGreen** · 09-08-2014 01:26 AM

I'm not really the competitive type...

Well at least not in the traditional sense. I've been taking Taekwondo lessons for about as long as I have been lucid dreaming, and in Taekwondo, you are taught that your greatest opponent is always yourself. So before competing to see if you are better than others, you should compete to see if you are better than yourself.

**LucidEveryNight** · 09-08-2014 03:03 AM

It's a good goal to have if your serious about it especially how long alot of people take to reach this stage it seems like you have to put in alot of work and your plan seems good jade, I have the same goal, as you might have noticed from my name lol, I've been taking lucid dreaming seriously for about 3 months now and have definitely been making progress I'm almost lucid on demand now but I'm still putting in lots practice with Rc, self awareness, and using a technique or two almost every night it sure is draining but I've accomplished heaps of really cool stuff in my lucid dreams so it's all been worth it! Good luck to all on the journey to be lucid every night

**Hukif** · 09-08-2014 03:25 AM

Oh no, I don't mean this in a competitive way. It is just a fun game to play with a friend is all.

I mean... the competition would be mostly about who types the fastest, so yeah. I just like the idea of playing a game with someone in order to boost morale, since journaling very long dreams can be tiring.

And just raelized, but gravity awareness spellbee2?

**spellbee2** · 09-08-2014 06:21 AM

Originally Posted by Hukif

And just raelized, but gravity awareness spellbee2?

You of all people should know what it is, although I guess you call it Gravity RC. Just kind of being aware of how gravity feels on your body in real life, since it's different in dreams.