There are certain times during the day when doing reality checks is MOST effective, and most likely to show up in your dreams. This can help you have more lucid dreams for LESS effort.
Times when your consciousness is usually not really focused, but these opportunities are there every day, without fail. The perfect time to do a reality check is ideally, before and after everything you do as this will firmly lodge the idea in your mind and you’ll always do it in your dreams however this isn’t really practical.
You’d probably go insane if you had to ask yourself ‘Am I Dreaming’ every minute of the day, so we’ve compiled a list for you of the perfect times to do a reality check. Enjoy!
Opportunity 1 – Every time you look in a mirror
Tris from the film ‘Divergent’ mastered this one. Every time she saw herself in a reflection, she’d realize that she either was or wasn’t dreaming/hallucinating. See our post on it for more; either way this is the perfect time to do a reality check because you’re already doing something you normally do. It’s part of your routine and therefore integrating reality checks into this routine will help cement it in your mind. This works because..
- Most people look in the mirror a lot
- If you’re at home, you’ll look even more
- You at least see a reflection of yourself a few times a day
Opportunity 2 – Set your watch to chime every hour
Every hour is about right for maximum effectiveness with reality checks, doing it less tends to not really affect the dream much and doing it more just sends you into a ‘lucid obsession’ and sometimes you can get confused when you do the reality check in your dream and don’t realize you’re dreaming.
It all gets complicated but about once an hour is good. Set your watch to chime or maybe set your phone to remind you every hour with a vibrate or a small pop up message.
Opportunity 3 – Whenever you look at your ring
This is my favorite as I have a ‘dream totem ring’ which has a very unique engraving on the outside of it. Every time I see this ring I am reminded to do a reality check, and it’s got to the point now where almost every night I see the ring in my dreams and do a reality check > Become lucid.
Opportunity 4 – Write ‘A’ on the back of your hand
This is a common one and it’s been seen circulating on social media as a simple way to Lucid Dream. It does work, but only when combined with the whole approach, recording your dreams etc.. Either way for the purposes of this article it’s a good reality check because you look at your hands pretty much all the time.
Opportunity 5 – Whenever you have a drink
Hopefully you drink about 8 glasses of water a day (you do, right?) so whenever you drink, associate it with a reality check so you’re reminded to do it throughout the day. This is a great one actually, because whenever you get thirsty, you’ll be reminded to do a reality check and this can mean that going to bed thirsty can trigger reality checks in the dream when you look for something to drink in the dream.
The perfect time to do a reality check
Well, it depends on what works best for you. That’s the best answer we can give, it really depends on what works best for each person because it’s different for everyone. Some people find that just holding their nose and trying to breathe twice a day is enough for it to show up in their dreams, while others require a lot more effort.
Generally speaking, doing a reality check about 8 times a day should give MOST people the results they want, but it’s not set in stone. For this reason, it’s a good idea to combine more than one opportunity to do a reality check so you get the most benefit from it.
By the way, you may be thinking that some of these RCs are difficult awkward or annoying to do in public and when you’re around people, work mates or food. This is a fair point, therefore we made a post about mental reality checks as well.
Keep your mind guessing!
This is a small problem some people have when they reality check, specially when they do it a lot and never change their reality check. Sometimes you can get used to a certain type of reality check so that when you do it in the dream it has no effect and doesn’t actually do anything.
This is a problem and can be very annoying when you’re trying to induce lucidity. To combat this just try and change your reality checks about once a month so you’re not always doing the same one. It keeps your mind guessing and keeps you on track.
I made a little video actually about how you could be doing your reality checks wrong:
Tips for doing reality checks
The most important thing to remember when doing reality checks is that whatever the ‘action’ is you must really expect it to happen. If you’re doing the finger/palm push, REALLY expect your finger to go through your palm. Here are some more useful things:
- If you want a physical reality check, try looking at this totem and using it as your key to your dream world
- Get some small stickers and write ‘are you dreaming’ on them and stick them around your house!
