First real lucid (and it was awesome!)

I think my confidence this time around played a big role. I was positive I was going to have a lucid, and I think that mindset worked. I tried again for the first time in like 3 months last night using WBTB and MILD together.
I woke up after each dream I had, and usually tried to MILD whenever I did ruign the night. AT about 6, I got up and wen to the bathroom and read about LDs on my laptop for like 15 min. I then fell asleep again
I had just woken up from a dream at like 7am where I was in an armored SUV with witness protection and people were coming after me. I was told to hide in the SUV, and the agents were shooting at the gunmen. As I fell back asleep I was thinking about that dream and MILD and I reentered the dream. I was stuck in the SUV, but I knew it was a dream. I tried to do something but I couldn't until I did the nose holding RC and became fully lucid. I then flew through the roof of the SUV into the sky but the flight was pretty blurry and not very controlled. I crash and everything turns a weird sky blue. I try walking up a green hill I created, but I kept falling down. I think I may have gone on my laptop in the dream to look up info about lucid dreams at this point but I'm not sure. I might have tried dream sex at this point, but it was way too unstable
I then had a false awakening where I realized I was still dreaming by doing the RC and became lucid again. My dad in the dream was talking to me and I muted him. I turned my house into a mansion but my alarm woke me up while in the bathroom of the new house. The new house changed from red to blue as I woke up.

It actually worked, and wasn't even that hard. This is the first night I really even tried since about 3 months ago. I woke up like 5 times during this night whenever one of my dreams ended, and I remembered a lot of dreams but only had this last lucid before my alarm woke me up for good. I did go to the bathroom for 5 min at 6am as part of my WBTB, but my lucid wasn't until a few dreams after that. I think all of the waking up meant I didn't get all of my sleep, I was awake for about 1-2 hours total during the night while doing all of this. Oddly, I forgot to set an alarm at 5 am for my WBTB, but I woke up very often this night (I usually don't at all), I think due to the MILD. Still, it was pretty awesome and I definitely want to try to have another.

My biggest issue was instability in my dreams. Spinning didn't really work that well but maybe I didn't do it correctly. My dream would have been a lot better If I could have controlled it and have it not be blurry. My false awakening was very stable however, but I had a hard time asserting control over it even after my RC. Would love any feedback/advice on stability.

Congratulations, that was a really cool lucid! :shadewink: Good luck on future lucids! What do you plan on doing with future lucids?

One way I've regained stability was to use another DV member's great suggestion: grab hold of something, a handle or doorknob or your own knees, and focus on that object. It'll gain more detail and clarity, and you'll regain stability. You can then pay attention to the rest of the dream and see more details around you, and your dream should come right back to you. That's one of a hundred or more methods of regaining stability, but I've tried and proven this one to work in the past. Good luck!

The grabbing seems like a good idea. I'll definitely try it next lucid I get (hopefully tonight). One more thing, If I go to sleep at 10-11 pm, and get up at 6:30-7:00, when should I set my alarm for WBTB + MILD and how long do I sty up for? I got up like 6 hours into my sleep last time and was up for maybe 15 min. I'm thinking about using urination to wake up after a cycle with my alarm as a back-up, but I woke up after every cycle last night, recalling tons of dreams, just because I told myself "I will have and remember a lucid dream. I will know when I am dreaming," as I went to bed at 10. It actually ended up disturbing my sleep, since I woke up every hour or so, and I usually sleep through the night.

I've set mine for 4.5 hours after sleep, 5 hours, and 6 hours after sleep for WBTB alarms, on different nights of course. Be careful not to get too used to it - the idea is to inject a little awareness into your sleeping mind by waking it up and letting it go back to sleep, so it doesn't stay too unaware in dreams. Therefore, it needs to have the right amount of sleep first, then you can set your WBTB alarm for whenever you suspect you're about to begin dreaming a lot, which will come after the 4.5 hour mark of sleep. You'll need to experiment, there's no two ways about it, but that's what I've set mine for in the past. It works great for recall, as I see you've found out. :D

Actually, my recall shot up not because of the alarm but because I ended up waking after every single sleep cycle. Maybe it was a combination of my mantra and my excitement, but it got annoying after a while because I would wake up every 1-2 hours and have to MILD all over again. I didn't even bother to write down my dreams because I was bored of getting so many non-lucids.
I'm gonna set my alarm for 4, which is about 5 hours or less into my sleep. I also posted the wrong mantra in my previous post, the one I used last night was "I will be dreaming soon and I will know that I am dreaming. I will wake up after each dream and remember it." It must have worked well, cause I entered my dream fully lucid even before the RC but was unable to control the dream for some reason until I did the nose RC.
BTW, any tips for napping? I slept from like 3-6 today and got a few dreams but no lucids when I tried MILD.
EDIT: Can speaking help increase my stability or control?

thank you very much I know what autosugestion to experiment with tonight.