7 Lucid Dreaming Mistakes You’re Making

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🌙 Written by Kai Riverstone, international lucid dreaming expert and teacher. Learn how to lucid dream in 7 days or less.

Over my years of being a lucid dreamer, I’ve noticed that many people make the same mistakes over and over again when starting out. These mistakes seem simple to an experienced lucid dreamer, but for a beginner they can waste a lot of time, and hold you back.

The good news is that they’re very easy to spot once you know what they are, and you can easily avoid them in the future! Here are some of the most common and most talked about mistakes that lots of people make when trying to lucid dream, and what you can DO about them to avoid making them again!

Common lucid dreaming Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. There is always going to be something you’ll miss, or something you’re not doing as well as it could be done. It’s part of life, but if you are really having problems lucid dreaming, then you may be doing one or more of these.

 

Mistake #1 – Not doing ENOUGH reality checks

Reality checks are very important to Lucid Dreamers, they enable you to know almost beyond a doubt whether you’re dreaming or not. This why it’s so important to make sure you ask yourself ‘Am I Dreaming?’ in order to avoid the common mistake of just trying to push your finger through your hand.

What is meant by this is that it’s not enough to just try and do a reality check several times a day, the check needs to be combined with a definite question that you ask yourself; ‘Am I Dreaming?’.

The answer to this question will come form the result of your reality check, but you can’t just do one without the other. They go together like two sides of the same coin.

How To Fix It!

Practice doing your reality checks, but only do the when you ask yourself the question at the same time. You need to make sure the two things are strongly linked together in your mind so they’re always done together.

A good way to start doing this is to ask your question before and after your reality check, for example; with the Trying to push your finger through your hand technique, do the following..

  • Focus, stop what you’re doing and ask yourself; ‘Am I Dreaming?’
  • Look at your hands, and slowly try and push your finger through the palm of your other hand. what does it feel like?
  • Ask yourself again, ‘Am I Dreaming?’, and you’ll know the answer.

Do it like this every time you do it until the act of asking the question and doing the check become one single thing. Don’t forget to read the basics of Reality Checks.

Mistake #2 – Not sleeping properly

Sleep is essential for Lucid Dreams. If you’re not sleeping right, which means comfortably, and while maintaining a healthy sleep cycle, then the chances are your overall health as well as your dreams will suffer.

Without going too much into detail, the natural sleep cycle relies heavily on light and darkness. The body naturally gets into the rhythm of feeling tried when it gets dark and waking up when the sun rises. It’s more complicated than that, but the basic thing to remember is to get up before 9.

This will solve almost all the problems, if you get up before 9 every day after a few days any bad habits or only feeling tired at 2 in the morning will be corrected and you’ll naturally want to sleep at about 10-11pm.

This is good for dreams for a whole load of reasons, but the thing to remember here is that it will correct your sleep patterns, and you’ll be able to experience more/higher quality Lucid Dreams. It’s also very important to sleep on the right mattress, specifically, a novaform memory foam mattress!

If you have REAL trouble sleeping, and/or actually have insmonia, there are a couple of easy ways to fix it that you might not have known about! 

 

  • For people who suffer with insmonia, try this simple cure. You’d be surprised how effective it actually is!
  • If you just can’t sleep properly, or you can’t seem to get a routine or pattern then you’ll find the sleep optimisation program very helpful

How To Fix It!

Set your alarm for half 8 every day, and after a week or so you’ll have corrected your sleep cycle and you’ll feel more rested in the mornings. You’ll also be able to go to sleep quicker at night, and this will all help you to have better dreams.

Mistake #3 – Overthinking or stressing about it

Dreams and sleep are different every night. Some nights you won’t be able to go to sleep if there’s a lot on your mind, other nights you’ll pass out and wake up with no memory of any dreams, regardless of what you do to try and induce them. That being said, it’s nothing to worry about, it’s not a definite science, sometimes it will work, other times not. Don’t get too stressed about it all.

How To Fix It!

Just relax.It’s not going to be an exact science, and this is likely a common lucid dreaming mistake. People want results instantly and they don’t like to wait for them, but this is a skill. It takes time to perfect, and as you’re probably new to the whole thing, it might take a few weeks or even months for some people to get good results.

Mistake #4 – Not using a dream journal the right way

One of the first things you’ll learn when you learn how to control your dreams is that you need to be writing your dreams down in some sort of journal, or dream diary. That’s all well and good, but there are certain things you need to remember to do..

A lot of people make the mistake of just scribbling down ‘dream about swimming’ or something else like that. That’s not enough..the dream diary needs to be filled with every thought you have about the dream, or as a memory of the dream.

Common Lucid Dreaming Mistakes

It needs to have certain things in the diary entry or it won’t help you. The goal of the dream journal after all is to train you to remember as much detail as you can about your dreams, and to help you identify common themes and dreams that keep happening. Writing a vague entry saying ‘dream about walking through town’ it doesn’t help you or anyone.

How To Fix It!

So stick to a few basic ‘rules’ so to speak when writing in your dream journal. Oh by the way, if you want a custom lucid dream journal, we’ve created one for you that looks incredible and has space for you to put things like which reality check you used to become lucid!

  • Write ‘something’ every morning. Even if you can’t remember a dream, write ‘no dreams recalled’ it’s better than nothing and it trains you to always write in your diary.
  • Write the date of the night before at the top. This helps you when you look back on your dreams to see when certain dreams started happening etc. the more detail the better.
  • Write as much detail as you possibly can, if you remember a dream about swimming near an island, write about the temperature, the sounds, the feeling of the water, colors, absolutely everything.
  • When you’ve completed your morning entry, highlight with a bright color the important parts, such as names places numbers and actions.

Mistake #5 – Not relaxing properly or meditating enough

Being relaxed is going to help you. The whole idea of sleeping and dreaming is that you’re so relaxed that you lose consciousness. You can’t do that if there are a million thoughts rushing around your head, so get your head clear of any internal conversations and replaying of the days events and relax.

How To Fix It!

Try some basic meditation techniques and consider trying brainwave entrainment. Here’s a good set of tracks to get you started. Listen to them as you relax, and try to make it all the way through to the end of each track. This will help your brain go into a deep relaxed state.

Mistake #6 – Rushing It

I know, you want to Lucid Dream tonight, but it’s not going to happen instantly unless you’re very lucky. It takes time and practice, learning what works and how your body responds to certain techniques.

You can only learn it through practice and repetition. It’s the same way you would achieve proficiency in most skills, by doing it again and again until you can do it well.

A common lucid dreaming mistake is to expect to do it the first or second night of even hearing about it. It’s a skill, one which you’ve never used before so to expect to be able to jump right in and do it isn’t realistic.

How To Fix It!

It won’t happen right away, keep trying. There’s literally no reason to rush it, plus if you try the right techniques and especially if you follow our 30 day bootcamp, you’ll likely have a lucid dream within a few days anyway. Don’t stress out about it!

Mistake #7 – Getting too excited the first time, and waking yourself up

Lucid Dreams are very exciting. They allow you to experience things you never dreamed of before (no pun intended), and that’s the problem for most people. You become aware in your dream, and the most common lucid dreaming mistake is to run around shouting ‘this is a dream!’ and waving your arms wildly.

Yes it’s going to be exciting, but if you run around shouting it then it will collapse. The dream falls apart if you shout out that it’s a dream, also if you get too excited then your heart rate and breathing increase in your real life body, and you are sprung back to the real world, in your boring bed.

How To Fix It!

There is no instant fix for this. The first time you lucid dream, it will be so profound that you will wake yourself up with the excitement. It’s something that you just learn to deal with, and you get to a point where you can judge how ‘awake’ you’re becoming. You will learn from experience what classes as ‘too excited’ and how to slow yourself down so you stay in the dream for longer.

A good way to stop waking up from becoming too excited is to use our ‘cinema technique’ to stay focused but not get too involved to the point where you wake up. Many people become too excited and just end their lucid dreams early.

Helpful tools

Hopefully now that you’re aware of the most common mistakes, you’ll be able to avoid them! That being said, here are some useful things you can use to avoid making these mistakes:

 

  • Get our beginners guide, because it teaches you the right way of doing everything. It won’t let you waste time doing things that don’t work, because I’ve only written exactly what you need to learn to lucid dream fast
  • If you’re more of a visual learner, try the lucid whiteboard course and really practice what’s taught in the lessons
  • If you’re feeling low on motivation and you’re starting to lose interest, read the big list of things to do in a lucid dream and you’ll feel better about it!