How "good" can I get with practice?

Hi there. I'm new here but I've been interested in lucid dreaming for over a year. Last summer I kept a dream journal and had a few lucid experiences. I'm considering getting really serious with LDing and journaling, but I want to make sure it's worth it. You see, I'm about to enter college and I expect both free time and sleep to be quite hard to come by.

Anyways my main problem is the quality of my dreams. I think I might have a natural ability when it comes to attaining lucidity as I had a couple DILDs as soon as I started researching lucid dreaming, without any experience. That said, when I am dreaming, whether or not I am lucid, my dreams don't seem very vivid or realistic at all. Moreover, I can never succeed in doing anything in my dreams. It's like the classic example of running away from something and falling down constantly, but it's applied to everything I do (including trying to think straight). I'm beginning to think constant failure might even be a dream sign... Can I overcome these problems with practice?

More importantly, regardless of my situation, how easy and convenient can lucid dreaming get with practice? Without an innate ability, is it possible to regularly have vivid lucid dreams without any real world preparation?

Thanks,
Luigidorf

you could take supplements to make more vivid dreams. Try peanut butter, hazelnuts or apple juice.

And :welcome:

Welcome to DV.
eeeh don't rely on supplements, i rarely take them. To make your dreams "more vivid" try to get your recall up.
Set alarms in the middle of the night, that's what always helped/helps me (don't really have to do it anymore)
lucid aids can be helpful, but the affects wear off after a while....and i never really found them helpful for me, they work different for everyone.
and really its different for everyone how easy or hard they have to try to have a lucid dream.

Welcome. My advice would be to experiment with as many techniques as you can. Journal and dont get discourage. Once you find your lucid dreming style you'll have gd recall just about every night and you will be able to go lucid alot more often. I like to refer to dream views as a technique in it's self because there is so much information on how to go lucid, yes something here is bound to help you reach lucidity frequently. namaste

If I have lucidity, a big aid for me is closing my eyes and willing my dream to let me do what I want. Another thing you can do is a verbal aid, you just say things like, I'm dreaming, or, I am the master of this dream, stuff like that.

Welcome to DV. (:

Different people use different methods. I recommed you head over to the wiki here at DV and see what methods would work the best for you. Most of them don't take more than a few minutes per day. But most also require some practice to work properly at all.