Hi all, this is my first post after many readings. Theres a technique that seems obvious to me but I have not seem it discussed elsewhere so wondering if theres a fundamental flaw in it or if ive stumbled on something special

Ok, it concerns using prospective memory to react when seeing a dreamsign whilst dreaming to become lucid - So far this sounds like a straightforward & basic MILD but my reason for this post regards the actual dreamsigns that people use.

The frustrating thing about dreamsigns is that you could go to bed and say 'next time i see the yellow post box i will recognize that im dreaming', you could even think of 6 dreamsigns and MILD them away into the subconscious mind but unless one of them appears in your dream then its not much use

I thought long and hard about this last week and whilst out driving during the day, i saw an attractive woman and so thought to myself 'id love to become lucid if i saw her in a dream' Of course im not gonna see her in a dream but it got me thinking what would happen if i programmed myself to become lucid if i saw ANY woman in a dream - in other words i would make the sight of ANY woman in my dream become a dream sign wether young, old, ugly or attractive etc. I then spent all that day doing a reality check everytime i saw a woman (quick nose pinch followed by 'am i dreaming' - after a while i was automatically doing a quick RC everytime i saw a woman.

The reason behind doing all this is that there is a very high chance that WHATEVER i dream about that night, there will probably be a woman involved somewhere in some dream scene at some point and if im doing a RC at every woman during the day then this would carry over into my dreams

Before i went to sleep i done a MILD with the mantra 'I will reality check the next time i see any woman'

I then teamed this with another very common element that shows up in nearly everyones dreams which was the act of someone random speaking to me.

So my MILD mantra were based around ' I will do a reality check the next time I see any woman, I will do a reality check the next time anyone speaks to me'

These 2 general dream signs will nearly always infiltrate the dreams of just about everyone as the dream signs (any woman, someone speaking to me) are very very common. Not many people will have a dream that dosnt involve anyone speaking to them or any woman showing up

I tried this method and i had my longest lucid dream to date after a 2 week dry spell (strangly enough it was within the first hour of going to bed at my normal time of 11pm). I dont remember exactly why i became lucid but suspect i saw a woman or someone spoke to me in the dream but it did work.

SO.... My summary question - when dealing with dream signs, why do people choose dreams signs that are so specific (yellow postbox, cross eyed cat etc) Why dont MILDers choose dream signs that, although general and vague, would show up in just about every dream at some point such as ' the next time i see the sky / tree / hands, or 'the next time i am walking, talking, etc)

Discuss This is my first post so i hope it can be helpful to forum readers in some way