Start at the Beginning
Goal Setting For Lucid Dreaming Success
Here you are… At the beginning. Like you, I have had a tremendous time recalling my dreams and when I did recall them I have had an even more difficult time understanding them. That is until I started to look at dreams like I looked at my hockey career and many other things I do… Set some goals and take action on it!
Lucid dreaming is a kind of mental performance, and you can enlist the aid of psychological techniques developed for enhancing performance to improve your lucid dreaming skills.
When I played competitive collegiate hockey I remember a sports psychologist talking about research they were conducting on improving performance. One of the most powerful tools to emerge from their work is the idea of goal setting. It may sound obvious; however, it’s one thing to think of your goals or even contemplate them. It’s a completely different story to process them – write them down – and take action on them. I understand this goes for anything, yet when it comes to dreaming and specifically lucid dreaming you will be alarmed at the growth you will have in the healing and taking action in your life through DreamWork.
Below are three easy steps to start your healing journey with dreams and learn to lucid dream.
1. Set Explicit, specific, and numerical goals
Goals are personal, and are related to both your potential and your abilities. Depending on your level of achievement, you might want to remember one dream every night or two dreams every night, or to have at least one lucid dream within the next week or month.
· I personally set myself a goal to increase the number of dreams and lucid dreams I have each month. This made it easier for me to evaluate my goals and growth regarding my dreaming. And low and behold I started to remember my dreams. Even if it was once a month as I got started.
2. Set difficult but realistic goals
To make it to Division I hockey is difficult – but as I learned possible. For many people, to have a lucid dream is a difficult but realistic goal too. For more advanced dreamers, a more proper goal may be to learn how to fly in their dream or face a scary character, your performance will increase in proportion to the ambition of your goals.
· When I set goals regarding my dreams I make an intention to make it specific.
3. Set short-range and long-range goals
Don’t forget to look at both the immediate dreaming you are doing and your hopes and visions you have for your future in dream world. Do you want to remember a certain amount of dreams in a week, or do you want to not only learn how to lucid dream but learn to fly or jump off a cliff.
· I can’t express this enough – keep track, keep track, keep track.
The dream world is full of exciting, colorful and often interesting experiences. But only to wake up and exclaim, “What was that?” or “Only if I could remember what was that?” is often when many give up.
Give the goal setting idea a try and follow up a month later… I bet you will see progress.
Check out my DreamWork group. In this group you find a place to process and explore your dreams, and other non-ordinary states of consciousness that may need to be integrated. The waking lessons you are trying to make more sense of will become clearer with using DreamWork.
Dr. Ryan Westrum is a clinical psychologist that is both personally and professionally enthusiastic about the dream world and other non-ordinary state transformational tools. He uses his DreamWork group as an integration technique to make better sense of your everyday life concerns and goals. If your interested in his DreamWork group send an email to ryanwestrum@gmail.com
