My story of success

Hi everyone, I just wanted to share with all my ride over lucid dreaming and how it has evolved to what it is today. I am pretty sure some people will find it useful.

I started in the realm of lucid dreaming around 10 months ago, when I saw the topic in an episode of Netflix's show "Explained". I have been always passionate about dreams and knowing that there exists a possibility to be conscious and even manipulate your dreams was something I needed to try.
I started reading all the relevant literature, plus youtube videos and so on, so I started with a dream journal (through the app "lucidity", very recommended by the way) and doing my reality checks.
After 2 weeks I had my first lucid dream; this LD was extremelly vivid, it lasted around 10 to 15 minutes and I could fly, fight evil monsters with godly powers and so on, it was possibly one of the most intense lucid dreams I've had so far, and it left me really motivated for lucid dreaming. After this dream I became more intense with my training, trying new techniques and using different methdologies, this led to having around 4 lucid dreams in 1 month, some of them short and not important and others very vivid and long. I was very excited with this new topic and couldn't wait to learn more about it.
After that everything went south, I just stopped having lucid dreams at all. I kept having a dream journal as detailed as possible, never skipping a dream, I made constant RC throughout the day, and besides that I added new things like meditation, a little bit of ADA and new techniques to achieve lucidity during the night. However nothing happened, not even small LDs that last seconds. This became frustrating, as putting all that effort was not paying off, and it does take time and stress. This lasted around 5 months of literally no LD, a lot of training, reading more books, looking new videos, trying new techniques and just no success at all.
After those 5 months I succeeded and had another LD and it was a mind opener, it was extremelly intense and it was a series of more less 5 LDs all connected in topic and time, very vivid and complete. Of course by now I knew a lot more about LDs so I could apply different stabilization techniques that worked for me. This got me motivated again and I moved on with the training. After this I started having between 1 and 2 LDs every 2 weeks (say...1 LD every 1,5 weeks), however I was met with another problem now; Besides the intense LD I recently had, all of my LDs where extremelly short and blurry. I realized I was lucid and immediatelly things started to tremble, regardless of how vivid it was, vision became blurry, and I woke up, I think I exagerate by saying they lasted more than 15 seconds. This was a huge problem, mainly because the only way to train dream stability is to do it once you are lucid, and as lucidity is by itself scarce and complex to achieve, then your time to train is very limited. Regardless, I kept on going with the training and making sure to read mostly topics of stabilization and motivating myself to stabilize above everything.
After that (and this is actually my current stage), I kept having around 1 LD a week however I was able to stabilize them, now they go somewhere between 3 to even 15 minutes long, and they can be connected to other dreams. Just yesterday I had a series of 5 LDs connected where I could do whatever I wanted and all of them together must have summed around 20-25min. I am pretty sure I finally stabilized lucid dreaming, after going through periods of drought, low quality LDs and else, now I believe I am stable and can enjoy them as much as possible. To me it is definitely a story of success, and I would like to enlist a series of lessons learned which I hope will serve everyone struggling with achieving high quality lucidity.

1:I was very lucky to have my first lucid dream as an intense long experience, because when times were tough and you get un motivated, I knew what the price was and I knew how awesome it was. This motivated me to keep on going regardless of the time and effort it will take. I must say I do understand the people that quit LD because nothing happens after some months, as it requires effort, time and lack of sleep. I was very lucky now that I think about it. However I do want to motivate people that are unsuccessful to keep on going as the price is awesome.

2: Lucid dreaming is one of those topics where whatever you read, whatever you see on youtube and whatever experience you listen to will be CONSIDERABLY DIFFERENT TO YOUR EXPERIENCE!!! This is extremelly important, your road to lucidity is a complex multivariant road where a lot of things will affect on your success; like your brain chemistry, your current mood, your sleep patterns, your training and so on. So make sure that whenever you read about someone else experience, it is nothing more than a story on what worked for him, your road will be different and it is only up to you to know how to reach the ending line. A good example is that for me, MILD just does not work, it just doesn't. I have tried it with multiple mantras, long sentences, short sentences, combined it with WBTB, and whatever I do I have not found any difference between doing it or not. WILD is also complicated for me; i have had only 1 successfull WILD and it was awesome, however each time I try it and start to reach hypnagogia I wake up and cannot fall asleep again, like for 2 more hours. This is complex to me, I have to work and cannot always deal with 2 hours of not sleeping, hence I quitted WILD, however I do not discard trying it again in the future.

3: Make sure to be constantly trying new things, regardless of what you read about them. There is a famous quote that says "the meaning of madness is doing always the same things expecting different results". Are you doing 10 reality checks a day? Try doing 20. You read that someone took a break and it worked for them? Try it, see what happens. A video or a post said that supplements like melatonine are useless so don't waste your money on them? Go ahead and try it, make your own opinion on them, see by yourself whether it works or not. Trying new things will find eventually what will work for you the most, and even if you don't find anything new, it will keep your mind active on the topic of lucid dreaming, hence your subconscious will be crawling with memories of Lucid Dreaming and it is only a matter of time for those memories to reflect in your dreams so you can ask the question, AM I DREAMING?

Anyways, I hope this helps for anyone reading it.
Cheers

I'm going to check out 'Explained' on Netflix for sure. I think you have enough experience to have sussed out what works for you. For me, it is usually the WBTB method, but lately, the power of suggestion (a little MILD), coupled with mindfulness, seems to have been doing the trick.

I have well over a decade with lucid dreaming practice and I remember when I had my big breakthrough that made me obsessively chase the dragon, so to speak. Then the drought came, because practice is supposed to be relaxed---without pressure or stress.

It is all about promoting awareness in the present moment. You relax outside of time, as it were. Once I understood this, I was away using techniques that promote consciousness. Mnemonic tricks like keeping a dream journal and testing reality still apply and go hand in hand in promoting mindfulness during sleep, which is, in essence, lucidity in dreams.

Awake day and night! Lucid dreaming and lucid living as they say. No sweat.

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Thanks for sharing. I’ve just reached 8 months and can relate to a lot of your journey also. My first lucid was after 9 days practice and my second after about a month and both of those lucids were incredible and still two of the best I’ve had and totally agree that they motivated me in those early weeks. Since that time I have been blessed with at least 1 lucid dream a week for the following 7 months with my average as 1.5. I keep a dream journal, practice MILD, do some ADA and RCs occasionally and swear by WBTB which I do every night. When you spoke of your long dry spell I wonder if you were trying too hard at the time and bringing stress and frustration to the process. I noticed this was the case for me early on and I continue to make this mistake even now. When you haven’t had a lucid for a while you naturally try harder and I’ve found that never works for me. I had my longest dry spell recently which was over a week and so for the first time since I began I decided I needed a break. I took 2 weeks off with no practice but kept up with my DJ and recall and my lucids came back naturally. Now when ever I feel I’m doing too much and not getting results I step back and take it easy and it usually works. Stability and length is something I am now working on and yet to master. Though I’m having a few lucids a month more then often they are short and low level in terms of lucidity. If we can achieve this much in a year though where will we be in 5 years! All the best with your continuing journey.