Getting good at DILD, but maintaining dream is difficult

I have had 3 or 4 instances of becoming lucid in a dream.

The first time I was sitting in my office, doing my usual routing before I started working for the day. I go to get my ADHD medication and notice that I'm all out, I look at the date and its a date thats a few days away, but a new prescription, so I know it hasnt been 30 days.

At this point I my logic tells me, you might be dreaming? So I look at the clock on my computer screen and its difficult to read, I look to the door and back and its a different pattern. Thats when I realize I am dreaming. After that I wake up instantly.

The second time, I'm in the bathroom and I notice the door it still open. I hear the song "Slipknot - Wait and bleed" playing loud from nowhere. (Which is another odd thing because its been years since I listened to any rock/metal)

I also notice the light it off, so I go to turn on the light and nothing happens. Theres a night light plugged in to the socket, so I go to turn that one on and still nothing happens. I'm actually getting very PO'ed at this point, I think to myself "You got to be freaking kidding me" (PG version), then it dawns on me that lights dont work in dreams, so I look at my hands and only count 4 fingers.

I'm tempted to look in the mirror, but I heard thats usually not a good idea. So now I'm lucid and decide to try to fly out of the bathroom. Well, I fly, right into the ceiling. It doesnt hurt, but it wakes me up immediately.

The third time, I'm taking a shopping cart back to where you return them in a parking lot. I turn around and my mother is waiting for me by a car I didnt recognize. My mother lives in another state, I moved years ago.

So I realize this is off, and its just enough hint that maybe I'm dreaming. Instead of reality checking, I just try to levitate a few inches off the ground. When I realize I did it, I go ahead and start flying higher to find something else to do. (Mom watching me fly away, clearly miffed that I didnt explain where I was going first? I must have had the car keys)

Anyways, dream goes black.I try spinning to regain, but I still wake up.

And fourth and final time starts out as a nightmare. I'm making my way down a dark staircase, when something invisible pushes me down. I land on my back and hit my head, and as I'm looking up I again realize, this doesnt happen in real life, I must be dreaming.

Before I can get up I'm suddenly in my bed but I notice that in my room, in place of the TV and TV stand by the bed, is actually a big dresser that I dont own, so I immediately realize I'm still dreaming. I try to begin to control it but to no avail. The dream goes black. I try spinning and a very strange thing happens, the darkness is filled with what looks like a tiled background of spinning wheels (like you see on a webpage when something is loading), as if my dream was buffering. I end up waking up for real shortly after.

Am I just getting too excited about becoming lucid or am I making a beginner mistake somewhere that I dont know about?

For anyone interested, I also have been having luck getting lucid by looking beyond the usual reality checks, and trying to recognize the negative effects of dreams to realize I'm dreaming. Like when your trying to run away from something and cant move. Using that as a dream cue and turning a bad dream into an oppurtunity for a lucid one.

Hey, welcome to the forum :)

You didn't mention getting excited, so I don't know if that's the reason. It could be that you're becoming lucid towards the end of the dream anyways, in which case there's not much you can do. Just control what you can, continue to stabilize the dream whenever it's necessary, and stay calm.

I've had 5 lucid dreams, and each time they have gotten longer. Just today I was napping and realized I was dreaming just because I became aware that the geography of the situation was all wrong. It ended in a combination of several false awakenings and I started feeling my real body in sleep paralysis and that's when I woke up.

Anyway I think the more lucid dreams you have the more aware you'll be during them, and eventually you will be able to become as fully aware as waking life and stabilization will become easier.

Just remember that dreams are by definition entirely a product of your mind. The worst thing you can do is lack confidence, because your confidence is your only limiting factor. The secret ingredient to getting better at staying lucid is confidence.

Of course there are a lot of little tricks that people come up with, but they all come down to relaxing and observing the dream. Maybe try observing the feeling of your clothing. In dreams you don't tend to think about your clothing.