So, how do you know you're in a dream? Easy, you check if you are!

Reality checks are the bread and butter of lucid dreaming. The concept is simple, when you're not sure if you're dreaming or not, you check! You might have however seen a problem with this, you don't just naturally tend to ask yourself if you're dreaming while in a dream. We'll get back to this in a bit but first...

A reality check is really simple. It's just a few steps.

• Ask yourself "Am I dreaming?". Don't ask it for the sake of it. You should really be doubting your reality. Even if you did a check just before, you always might be in a dream.
• Look around you, does anything look weird. If so, inspect it.
• Ask yourself "How did I get here", what did you do 5 minutes ago, how did you get to the location you currently are? Time often works differently in dreams, see if you can recognize a time skip, or if you can't remember how you got there.
• Perform the reality check itself, here you perform an action that should tell you for sure that you're dreaming. In this example we're using the classic "Look at your hands" check.
  • Look at your palms
  • Check if they look as they normally do, how many fingers do you have, don't yet assume what the correct amount should be.
• Say to yourself "Next time I am dreaming, I will reality check and realize I'm dreaming.". This will incubate the idea of doing reality checks in your mind and help bring that into your dreams.
• Re-try your reality check a few times and keep saying that to yourself every time.

When you go to sleep, you should also repeat "Next time I am dreaming, I will reality check and realize I'm dreaming." to yourself as you're falling asleep. The reality check example given is a classic and simple one, but there's various others you can do.

• Keeping your nose plugged/blocked and trying to breathe.
• Trying to push your thumb through your palm.
• Paying attention to gravity, see if it's harder or easier to walk than it should be.
• Try to change something in your potential dream.
• Try light switches, they don't always work right in dreams.
• Read some text, see if it's hard to read or doesn't make any sense. Look away and back and again and see if it changed.

In total doing a check shouldn't take you too long and it won't be interrupting to your overall day. You can do as many checks as you want and combine different ones, be creative!

Well, one thing that will help is the mantra above, repeating to yourself that you will be doing a check. But there's one important key thing to keep in mind when you start lucid dreaming.

You should never be sure you're not dreaming, always assume you might be no matter what. A reality check can't prove that you are in reality, it can only prove that you're not.

This is so incredibly key I can't make it bold enough text. You should always assume you might be dreaming, it is always a possibility. Living with this doubt may sound scary, but it isn't! Doubting your surroundings at all times makes you more aware of what's happening around you, and doesn't take away from the experiences you have while awake. Having this constant doubt about being awake is the first step to realizing that you're dreaming in a dream, but again we'll get back to that in a bit.

Before we move on I should make a quick mention, if you doubting your reality starts impacting your life in serious negative ways, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate if this is the right path for you. Some people suffer from mental disorders that make distinguishing between reality and non-reality (hallucinations, dreams, etc.) extremely hard and if you feel like you are experiencing that you should stop right then and contact a therapist. Prioritize your mental wellbeing over lucid dreaming.

Sure! A few more detailed tricks will be mentioned later in this guide but here's a few simple tricks you can make use of.

• Read back your dream journal (we'll get to what that is later), and see if you have any recurring dream signs that should help you recognize it's a dream.
• Perform a reality check whenever something common occurs that also happens in your dreams.
• Perform a reality check whenever you go through a door.

Basically, the trick here is to create triggers that will cause you to reality check. You can also meditate to incubate these triggers into your dreams. (More on meditation and incubation later in this guide)

Yes! Eventually. It's going to take time, takes a different amount for everyone. Some take a few days, others a few months. The key is persistence and staying positive. Say to yourself every night before sleeping that you will have a lucid dream. Really believe it, even if you've been going for weeks without success.

This technique is called "DILD" for Dream-Initiated Lucid Dream. Up next in this guide you'll read about another technique called "MILD" that will make it easier to become lucid as well. Both of these techniques benefit from persistence and time, it will become easier over time to become lucid.

Eventually, you'll get a successes. You'll start being more aware in dreams, thinking more critically. You start noticing things are weird, but perhaps not quite realizing yet. And one day, you'll suddenly be standing there, looking at your hands having 6 fingers.

An extra technique you could make use of to remember your reality checks is called "Prospective Memory", there's no guide on this currently in this book. Instead you could read this one.