Interestingly enough, Jenny and Erin have decided to have a contest on their blog for all the tagged bloggers. The contest (as I see it), is basically to see which of us can best answer the following question:
How big of a role do habits play in your daily life? Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously? What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?
So, if I may, I’ll answer the question one part at a time.
How big of a role do habits play in your daily life?
I think this is a loaded question, because habits play a HUGE role in everyone’ lives. Show me a person without habits, and I’ll show you a person who has to read a driving manual each and every day before even getting behind the wheel.
Habits are a necessary outcome to the way our brains function. Without habits, life would be nothing more than a constant mess of signals all competing for our attention. As far as habits in MY life, I strive to develop good habits, as I’m sure we all do deep down.
I have been working on developing the habits that form the basics of Lucid Dreaming. I am not yet where I’d like to be as far as the frequency of my lucid dreams. My ultimate goal is to be able to have a lucid dream each and every time I go to sleep, if I so choose.
My deep belief in the power of building habits out of the basics is why I wrote the posts that are listed as “The Basics of Lucid Dreaming” in the sidebar. If you haven’t yet read those, I recommend it. It will change your life. Promise.
Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously?
Both. Habits are ALWAYS being formed unconsciously. We do, however, have the option of forming habits consciously as well. Great care must be taken in forming habits, that we forming habits that will empower us to live the lives we choose. A great deal about habits has been written on some of the excellent Personal Development Blogs on the original list at Priscilla’s blog.
What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?
There are several. For the past 5 or 6 years, off and on, I have been learning as much as I can teach myself about Neuro-Linguistic Programming. To me, NLP is a promising technology and an awesome tool. I totally fell off the bandwagon for the past couple years. I finally decided to get back into it more more hot and heavy, and am now re-reading “Unlimited Power” by Tony Robbins. As far as specific tools to develop and shape habits, one NLP Pattern I’m particularly fond of is the “Swish Pattern”. This is an awesome tool because it takes a bad habit, and simultaneously replaces it with a more empowering habit. Two Birds, One Stone.
Another tool I’ve come into contact with lately is the NLP Pattern called the “New Behavior Generator”.
If you are open to developing great and empowering habits in record time, I recommend you read the following sites for NLP Information.
Well, I guess that about covers it
This is probably one of the most exciting posts I’ve put on this blog to date!
When I wrote about doing Deep Trance Modeling in a Lucid Dream, it was just an idea I wanted to try out. Well, I am proud to say that I’ve done it and it works! At least for me…..
So, here’s the good stuff. A couple weeks ago, I had come home from work at 3am. I piddled on my computer for about 2 hours or so, then went to sleep for a nap. I woke up to have lunch and decided to head back to sleep for about one and a half hours before work. I realized that since I’d already slept enough for at least 2 good deep delta
sleeps, I would have a good chance of having a lucid dream.
So, I lay down, and I decided to try to induce a lucid dream with the WILD technique. I picked a woman that I wanted to use as my first test of “manifesting a dream character”. For now, I’ll have to keep her nameless as she has no idea that I’ve done this yet. I simply focused on the idea of her as I fell asleep, with the intention of seeing her in a dream.
Well, I sensed the initial onset of hypnagogia, and next thing I know, I am in a pub the likes of what I’ve seen in Scotland. The bar was made of the dark heavy oak that is stained and finished. I walked a few feet, there were several people in the room. My friend isn’t in the room, so I decided to try out the technique that Scott Lee mentioned of intending a person to be behind you, and then turning around. IT WORKED!
So, as soon as she sees me, she walks up to me and starts groping me and kissing me. I am already lucid at this point, and remember my previous intention to try out Deep Trance Modeling next time I’m in a lucid dream. I pushed her away and said “Stop. This isn’t the real you. Now, I fully intend that you will become as close to the real-life version of XXX as my mind can reasonably muster up, based on everything I know about her. IS THAT CLEAR?”
I am pretty assertive with the dream character, and as soon as I made that demand of her, she transformed from this supersexed person into a regular person. I swear, it was like an instant transformation. She is now standing there completely like the real person saying “yes, I understand you. What am I doing here?”
I reply, “Well….” and proceed to ask her a bunch of questions, with the intention of gaining a deeper insight into her as a person. She answered the questions in great detail. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put a notebook by me and forgot the questions and answers:(
Interestingly enough, there were a few questions that her reply was, “I can’t answer that question because you don’t have the answer in your mind.”
I challenge you to give this strategy a shot and let me know in comments how it goes.
p.s.
As I am sitting here writing this post for you, I realized that this strategy could likely be easily modified to incorporate the “New Behavior Generator Strategy“.
At one point midway into his post, he asks, “I wonder… what would some dream shrimp taste like? Or some dream milk?”
Then he posits, “My guess is my mind wouldn’t be able to conjure up the non-vegan foods that I’ve not eaten for so long and have little to no memory of.”
I tend to disagree with this a bit, because the mind doesn’t forget things like that. I remember a dream in which I was visiting with a person I knew as a youngster, that I haven’t really consciously thought about since I was about 6 or 7. The brain remembers basically every experience you have, and in the Lucid Dream State, or any dream state, you have unparalled access to the reserves of your subconscious mind and your storehouse of memories.
Check out Ben’s entire post and leave a comment to let him know what you think.
BANG!
You are off running. You are in a close 2nd place as you are rocketing toward the finish line. You are paying particular attention to the signals your body is giving you. Your muscles start screaming subtly for more air, so you adjust your breathing rhythm to match. Suddenly, before you know it, you are the leader of the pack. And sooner than you can realize, you are over the finish line, breaking the outstretched tape. You win.
In this post, I’ll be discussing how you can use Lucid Dreaming to enhance performance in just about any area of life.
As we look into how we can do this, I’ll first explain how my urge for writing this post came about.
A few years ago, I came across a Wikipedia article on Deep Trance Identification (DTI), sometimes referred to as Deep Trance Modeling (DTM). This is basically being put into a hypnotic trance and then having your unconscious mind recall everything you have ever known about a person you might want to gain more insight into. After the unconscious mind does this, you can then “step into” that person and experience awareness through that person’s eyes.
I began to wonder if this would be possible while in a Lucid Dream. The dream state is, after all, essentially the same as being in a hypnotic trance. The dream state, like the hypnotic trance, is the deepest and fullest connection we can have with the unconscious mind.
So, I began to wonder if I could use lucid dreaming to do the equivalent of DTI/DTM.
Which brings us to the “how”.
For the purposes of this, I’ll be assuming that you are now able to Stay in a Lucid Dream as long as you want, and Control the Dream. If not, check out my posts under “Basics of Lucid Dreaming” in the sidebar.
So, try this. Let’s assume you’re thinking about asking for a raise at work. You may be anxious about how to approach your boss and ask. So, next time you are in a lucid dream, create the dream setting to be at work, just outside your boss’s office. Tell your mind that your boss is in the office. Make sure to tell your mind that the character of your boss is the best, most accurate model of your boss that your mind can conjure up.
Knock. Go in, and point blank ask for the raise. The worst that can happen is your “boss” can say no. If your boss says no, don’t take that as an answer. Ask, “What do I have to do or say to you to make you want to give me a raise?”
What this does is that your mind, using your mental model of your boss, will give the most logical answer it can think of.
The key here is to refine your model by interaction in the real world. I know it may sound difficult, but honestly, the unconscious mind registers and stores millions, if not billions, of bits of information that never even makes it into conscious awareness.
So, when you at work (real world), go to your boss and say or do whatever the dream boss said to say or do. Don’t worry so much about remembering everything that is said. Obviously, you’ll want to pay attention to what is said, but do so as you would any other conversation. Keep the unconscious mind free to register everything else, which is what it does best.
Then, next time you are in a lucid dream, repeat the process, and see if anything different comes up that you should pay attention to.
Of course, it goes without saying that if your boss gives you the raise the first time, then there’s no need to repeat the process!
The beauty of this technique is that it can work for just about anything. Is there a special someone you want to connect with at a deeper level, or even someone you WANT to be your special someone? Get into a Lucid Dream and ask how.
Are you a race car driver wishing to cut down on your lap times? Grieving and wanting to communicate with a lost loved one? Programmer wanting learn from some of the coding legends? Are you a marketer wanting to get the best of Seth Godin’s knowledge? A blogger wanting to create a blog the likes of The Green Geek or Scott Lee? The examples for this are limitless. Let me know in comments what your ideas are.
Having been actively blogging in the Lucid Dreaming niche now since November 25th, I am already seeing something interesting.
Lucid Dreaming, or being aware that you are dreaming WHILE you are dreaming, is a niche which appears to be relatively small at any given point in time, but is in fact much larger than anyone realizes.
Remember that old adage about “the average person only uses about 5% of their brain”? Well, that adage has now been modified by scientists to mean “the average person only uses about 5% of their brain AT ANY GIVEN POINT IN TIME”. I think the “market penetration” of the Lucid Dreaming niche is the same way.
Lucid Dreaming is a niche which appears to be very small, and I think that overall, more people are aware of lucid dreaming than was previously thought, and at any given point in time, only a small portion of these people are actively searching out data on Lucid Dreaming.
So, basically, my prediction is that, through the efforts of people like Erin Pavlina and the folks over at LD4ALL.COM, and hopefully my blog, Lucid Dreaming will explode more into public awareness and become a very valuable tool in many areas such as entertainment and therapy.
As usual, had no trouble falling asleep. Before I know it, I’m walking around in the inside of some huge office building that is rather sterile looking. windowless, whitewalls. At one point, I see a girl I used to have a WAY MAJOR crush on, in junior school. I’ll call her “A”, since I haven’t seen her in years, and I’m not certain she’d want to have her real name published here.
Anyway, “A” is standing outside one of the many offices, and this one seems to be the only one that has any people in it. She is standing at a desk that is outside the office. I walk up to her, and say “Wow, ‘A’! Is that you? I haven’t seen you in years! How have you been?”
“I’ve been fine,” she says, “How have YOU been Bill?” (it’s at this point that I start to get that feeling that something isn’t quite right, because, thought she was always nice to me, she never returned my feelings, and usually talked to me only in passing).
Then I ask her, “Are you married?”
“Yep, expecting 2 kids in a few months.” (More of the uneasy pre-lucid feeling).
I start to ask her another question, then I wake up. Of course, as soon as I woke up, I was thinking, “NO! I want to get back into that dream and see how she’s doing!”.
So, I closed my eyes, and used a technique similiar to that Erin Pavlina uses to continue dreams.
Since I had just woken up, it was fairly easy. I closed my eyes immediately and remembered all I could about right where the dream ended and remembered how I felt. I fell asleep and, while maintaining my consciousness went directly back into the dream. I was lucid this time, and was right back in the same building, in the same hallway. The desk is there. The funny thing, though? The office is now empty, as if nobody had ever been in there, “A” is not there, the desk, which was previously cluttered with papers, is not barren. Nobody at all to be found. Once again, I am alone in a lucid dream. This seems to be a pattern with me. I start walking through the building, but quickly lose lucidity, because I really lost interest, since “A” isn’t there to talk to anymore.
What is my brain trying to tell me?