Two in one night/ shapeshifting help

After a whole month of nothing i finally had my first lucid. Two days later, my second. About four days after that (today) I had two in a row! The second was a continuation of the first. The only problem is that I had almost no control! I tried to Shapeshift in these two as well as my second lucid dream with no success. I've tried almost everything I read on the forums.
Well, I'm too exited to sleep so I want to hear your opinion: how long, if you were able to, did it take you to get the hang of a difficult ability in lucid dreams?

I first shape-shifted in like my 2nd or 3rd decent sized LD. It is important to note that this was before I had even heard of lucid dreaming meaning that I had no preconceived notions of what would be "difficult" or "easy". I believe that if you were to stop thinking of shape-shifting as a difficult thing to do, it would instantly be much easier for you. Did you have anything specific that you were trying to transform into? Deciding before-hand what you want to look like can help. Heres a list of some things which I think could be helpful.

- I personally find it easier to transform as quickly as possible. I recommend thinking of it as one brief process as opposed to concentrating on how each body part is going to change.
- You could summon a mirror, look at whatever you want to transform to, then walk through the mirror.
- Start acting as if you have already transformed (depends on what you want to be).

Good luck

In most of the lucid dreams I've had before joining here I usually go with a combonation of the first and the third of AscendedSleeper's helpfull tips.I usually just think of myself as that and then start acting it and the shapeshifting part usually slides into the thing.