Everyone makes mistakes, and with lucid dreaming, there are so many mistakes you can do. Some people don’t get the results they praise and I will list 10 things that may cause this to happen. Everyone can make mistakes and luckily they are easy to be fixed.
1 – No dream journal.
A dream journal is by far the most important thing to do as a beginner. A dream journal can give you more recall and awareness in dreams. Lucid dreams are able to be forgotten, and we don’t want to forget those.
Dream journaling can be hard, so maybe you got demotivated or lost what to do. In my article about How to write effectively in your dream journal, I go over things to make you more time efficient and that you are able to enjoy dream journaling once again.
2 – Forcing lucid dreams.
Forcing lucid dreams means, that you are trying too hard to get a lucid dream, and makes you lose beneficial sleep and time.
Lucid dreaming is by far not easy and trying to force one is great, but doing this every night or every other night you may feel tired and demotivated because you did not get the result you hoped for.
People who try Wake Induced Lucid Dreams (WILD) techniques are having these issues more often than people who do Dream Induced Lucid Dreaming (DILD) techniques. That is why you can do an interesting technique that doesn’t require an alarm. An alarm is probably the main problem that makes you tired and with that out of the way you can force more and do those WILD techniques without feeling tired and losing the important sleep you need.
The technique I am talking about is Intention or Mantra’s. You can learn more about these in my lucid dreaming techniques articles. For example, my Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD) guide.
3 – Trying to lucid dream with something on your mind.
People who struggle with stress, have worse results than people who have nothing on their mind.
Someone told me that he couldn’t be a lucid dream for months, and I asked what the issue was. He said that he did not know what the issue was. After some time we came to the conclusion that he could not lucid dream because he was stressed about school. He was struggling with school and this resulted in bad recall, no awareness in dreams, and what he thought was vivid was not vivid it all.
I helped by giving him some meditation tips. He started to do some meditation sessions before he went to bed. After a week he came back to me and said he finally had a lucid dream and that his dreams were so vivid.
I have noticed that he was not alone. That is why I made an article about meditation, and hopefully, you start learning meditation and become lucid. The article is called, Meditation and Lucid Dreaming.
4 – Doing WILD techniques as a beginner.
Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) is a great technique and is definitely worth trying. Beginners see this technique and try to execute it as their first technique and have little to no results.
This is because WILD is trial and error. They get badly guided by tutorials and YouTubers and often have no experience with getting to the state itself. This does not only hurt their process to become lucid it also makes it harder to keep them motivated, and they stop trying lucid dreaming.
You are able to solve it by reading the right guides and try to do DILD techniques as a side technique to have something else if you are failing to learn WILD. The best source out there is of course this site, or you can check out DreamViews what have a lot of resources.
5 – Too focused on one goal.
Most people I know have one goal in their head they really want to do the next time they become lucid. However, lucid dreaming goals can also have different difficulties.
If your goals is to become lucid and fly, you have a fairly easy goal in mind that is not hard to reach. Sometimes beginners have goals outside their skill range. For example, creating a world, teleporting or things that require a long time in lucid dreams.
Do not be one of those guys. Start with small goals and do not only have a single goal in your list, have multiple goals in your list. Do not lose your motivation if you are unable to reach your goal in a certain time frame. There is enough time for you to reach your goal next month or next year.
6 – High expectations.
People who just start lucid dreaming may have high expectations about lucid dreaming. They think that you are able to lucid dream in every dream in a matter of months. This is sadly not the case.
Lucid dreaming can take years to become skilled in it. The people who are able to become lucid in every dream have been practicing lucid dreaming for at least 5 years with high motivation and studying everything about lucid dreaming.
The goal with lucid dreaming is finding the technique that works for you and making that technique yours. When you are able to do this, you are probably able to become lucid in every dream.
7 – Trying to lucid dream during the day.
Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) is a hard technique by its own. Sadly people underestimate the technique by a lot. I admire people who try to lucid dream during the day but do not expect any results when you are a beginner of the technique WILD.
There is a way to guarantee an increased chance, that is with a nap and then try to do WILD. Even then the chance you will succeed as a beginner is very small. It is better to find and solve your issues with WILD first during the night, and then continue with other ways of inducing it. For example, during the day, before you go to bed, or when you wake up.
8 – Trying to induce sleep paralysis.
Some beginners think that sleep paralysis is part of Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) and try to induce it. The problem does not lay at inducing a sleep paralysis but more that it is not needed for WILD.
Sleep paralysis is not part of WILD, but inducing it is also a pain in the ass. My recommendations are to not bother trying because it is not a state you need in any case or for any technique to succeed.
Some people may find sleep paralysis scary, and decide to not try lucid dreaming. Sleep paralysis is not scary at all and is just a hallucination of your thoughts. You are in control of this state, and there are multiple ways to stop it from happening or making it a lucid dream. You can learn more about sleep paralysis by reading: Lucid Dreaming and Sleep Paralysis.
9 – Extending the dream state with time dilation.
This is absolutely not meant for beginners. If you are barely to have lucid dreams of a minute or shorter focus on dream control first. Time dilation is where you try to make the time go slower to make your lucid dream state last longer.
From my experience, it took some months before it actually worked. If you are a beginner, you shouldn’t focus on things that take a long time to achieve, because you have so much more to learn to begin with.
A cool story about time dilation. A lucid dreaming expert (also a good friend) called Hukif was experimenting with time dilation for a while. He formed a way to make the time go slower by counting down slower after every second. He was able to make a dream last for 300 years in his eyes. The memories of this dream were put in pieces and were no solid connections.
I made a podcast and Q&A with Hukif:
Sadly due to the distance from locations, there was a delay before he could answer the questions. (The Netherlands to Mexico).
10 – Inducing nightmares with no dream control.
Nightmares are great things to explore in lucid dreams, and I think that this is by far the most fun thing to do. Inducing them is not the hard part, and everyone can do that in multiple ways, even from the dream state itself.
The problem is that, when you are unable to handle this nightmare, you are not able to make this nightmare go away with your dream control if you have none. Dream control can be easy, and you should really believe in the things you say yourself and then you are able to control the dream itself.
This requires time and becoming lucid at least for some time before you are able to control it every time.
Final thoughts
There are basically no real mistakes, but more like guidelines, you should follow before you are starting to go deeper into the lucid dreaming rabbit hole. It is better to focus on the fundamentals and your small dream goals and let techniques like WILD, hard dream goals, inducing lucid dreams during the day, or inducing nightmares for later when you are able to become lucid more consistently.
