Lucid dreaming is hard and you may fail, because you did something in this list wrong. The reasons that you are failing can be anything, that is why you have to read this list about the reasons why you are failing to lucid dream.
1. You are doing your reality checks wrong.
Reality checks are great for beginners, but they start doing them wrong and don’t get them in their lucid dreams. This is because you are not believing in your reality checks. This is often because you are too lazy to take it seriously. A reality check can mean lucid or not and if you don’t take it seriously it is just a strange habit you have during the day.
You can prevent this by believing your reality check, and asking yourself if you are really awake or dreaming. If this still doesn’t work you can also decide to do a mantra, where you say a couple times in a row “I am not dreaming now, but can dream any time now” or “Remember to do a reality check later today”.
2. You are not using a dream journal.
This is more for beginners and not as much for more advanced lucid dreamers. Dream journals are super important for your lucid dreaming progress, with a dream journal you make it easier to remember dreams and gain recall, awareness in dreams, and an increased chance to become lucid.
Some people struggle with this habit and need another way to do a dream journal. I wrote an article about dream journals and how to effectively write into it. How to write effectively in your dream journal.
3. You are not using DILD techniques.
You can also fail with lucid dreaming because you are not using any Dream Induced Lucid Dreaming (DILD) techniques. Such as:
- Intention.
- Mantra’s.
- Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (MILD).
- Reality Checks.
- Dream Journal.
- Meditation.
These techniques can be very important to understand and used to increase the chance to become lucid. You may say “I am doing Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) so I don’t need it”, and this is completely wrong. You need recall to remember the lucid dream and to wake up from a dream (to remember it), you can get random lucid dreams, there is an increased chance to become lucid for free, and most WILD techniques use aspects from DILD techniques. Such as intention and visualization.
4. You are not believing in yourself.
Your mind is a complex thing, and there is a possibility that the reason you are failing is, that you are not believing that you are able to lucid dream. Lucid dreaming is like a mind game. It is a lot easier to achieve if you are believing that you are getting lucid tonight than if you are saying that you are probably not going to get a lucid dream.
5. You have stress.
Stress is a lucid dreaming killer. It can have a huge impact on your dream recall and awareness. This can be prevented easily, and that is with meditation or another form of relaxing. Such as:
- Reading a book.
- Exercising.
- Non-competitive game.
- A cup of tea.
My favorite way to relax is by doing some mindfulness meditation before I go to bed. I can see a big difference in results by doing meditation before bed. I can easily recall double or longer dreams when I do some meditation after a stressful day than when I do not do it at all. It doesn’t have to be a long meditation session, you only have to remove the things on your mind.
To learn more about meditation and lucid dreaming you can read my article: Meditation and Lucid Dreaming.
6. Lack of motivation.
Lucid dreaming is a lot of fun, but after some time you are getting less motivated to become lucid. Most people I talk to in lucid dreaming communities start motivated and end up being not motivated and quitting lucid dreaming entirely. Motivation can be hard to find sometimes for things you have to learn. For example, studying can be difficult and you start motivated and end up failing because you did not enjoy the subject.
You can learn from your mistakes and start over, or you can learn how to prevent losing motivation. With lucid dreaming, you should have short term goals and long term goals. You have to work towards the long term goal with short term goals, you can apply it to everything. For example, you always want to have a magic battle in a lucid dream but have never lucid dreamed before. Your goals should be:
- Learn about lucid dreaming techniques, and how to apply them.
- Getting dream recall up, and remember more beautiful dreams.
- Get a lucid dream.
- Learn how to control your dreams in a lucid dream.
- Get longer lucid dreams.
- Try to achieve your lucid dream goal.
Eventually, you will reach your goal, and you probably did not fail to lucid dream.
7. You exactly follow lucid dreaming guides.
Everyone is different. It can be super handy to get a lot of information about lucid dreaming and start with a technique everyone has resulted in, but this does not matter because maybe you cannot relate to the method at all.
If you are terrible at visualization, why are you even trying to learn VILD or FILD try something else instead? For example, MILD or another anchor for WILD (counting, breathing). It is important to know your boundaries. Some people take years to understand what works for them and what does not work for them.
I am a perfect example of this. I did MILD and Reality checks, and this worked perfectly for me. Instead, I wanted to learn WILD what worked fine, because I am good at visualization. I thought I did not need MILD and reality checks anymore and stopped using it. What happened was that I was getting less and less lucid dreams, instead of doing MILD and reality checks again I decided to dive deeper in WILD. This prevented me from progressing in lucid dreaming and even failed to lucid dream for months.
8. You have a bad sleep schedule.
Sleeping is very important, but having a strict sleeping schedule is even more important. Being tired can make dream recall significantly worse, you maybe don’t remember any dreams at all. It can sometimes be difficult to plan a good sleep schedule when you have different work hours every day or work at night, but you can probably make it a good night’s sleep. People who work 9 to 5 jobs should not complain about having a bad sleep schedule, because they can make a sleep schedule easily work.
People who are having a 9 till 5 jobs can have a sleep schedule like this:
- Going to bed at 10:30 and wake up at 7:00
- Sleeping at 11:00 and wake up at 8:00
- Going to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 6:30
It could be still hard to fall asleep directly, so don’t use your phone when you are going to bed and do a small meditation session to remove stress and to fall asleep quickly.
9. You are using drugs.
Drugs can have great effects on lucid dreaming. Such as Rem Rebound from Weed or crazy dreams from LSD, but it can also prevent you from having recall at all or almost impossible to have a good quality sleep. If you are still deciding to use drugs, don’t do it before bedtime and use it responsively.
10. You are scared.
Lucid dreaming can be scary, when you hear stories about sleep paralysis, that lucid dreaming maybe be dangerous or that you have a mental illness or disorder that can have a bad influence over your dreams. You cannot prevent it, but believing in yourself that it is not scary and that you can learn a lot about yourself is the only way to succeed.
Some stories may be misinformation or just creepypastas. You can probably recognize it from stories where people are exaggerating about their nightmares or made up stories about sleep paralysis when they don’t even experience it themselves.
The best way to prevent it is to not look up these stories. It may be tempting to read about those stories because they can be fun to read. This only applies to people who are scared of lucid dreaming.
11. You are doing WILD wrong.
Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) can be performed wrong. It is of course trial and error, but there is a lot of misinformation about WILD out there that can prevent you from succeeding with lucid dreaming.
The biggest misconception about WILD out there is, that you must go through sleep paralysis and that you are unable to move.
Sleep paralysis is not required for WILD, and I never experienced sleep paralysis from WILD before. I have experienced sleep paralysis in other scenarios and used WILD to become lucid. This is also a common misconception for astral projection.
You are allowed to move when you are doing WILD. The definition of WILD already tells you that you are allowed to move. The goal with WILD is that your body falls asleep while your mind stays awake. Someone on the internet succeeded by doing this on his back, but for some people, it is impossible to fall asleep on their back. This prevents them from succeeding WILD, instead, you should do WILD in your sleeping position where you can fall asleep a lot easier and the only job left for you to do is to keep your mind awake.
Final thoughts
Believe in what you are doing, and use the right information to become lucid. Try to not read about lucid dreaming creepypasta and good luck with your lucid dreaming progress.
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