Reality Checks Not Working

Quest for Lucidity
1

I have been trying to LD for about two weeks now. I have been recording my dreams, doing RCs every day, and I have mainly been trying the MILD technique to LD. Now so far I have greatly increased my dream recall and I have found several dream signs and situations that I am always in. Heres the thing, at least eight times I have realized that something strange is going on in my dreams and out of those eight, four times I did a nose RC. The first time I could only breathe out of my left nostril which I thought was strange in my dream but I just ignored it and the dream continued. When I woke up I found that my nose was stuffed up and I could only breathe through my left nostril! The other three times though, the nose RC completely didn’t work. I wasn’t able to breathe through my nose and the dream continued but when I woke up my nose wasn’t stuffed up and I was breathing fine. I have even tried the hand RC in one of my dreams and I still clearly had five fingers!

This is getting pretty annoying considering that I could have been lucid at least four times already! I have had two LDs in the past and both of those times the nose RC worked but for some reason now that I am returning to LDing the RCs aren’t working. Any tips?

P.S. I am not just doing the nose RC and leaving it, I usually make sure that I am not dreaming once I realize that I can’t breathe while my nose is plugged, sometimes saying out loud “I am not dreaming yet”.

2

Despite trying RCs, sometimes they do still mislead you. It’s good that you have the right mindset towards RCs. Some people just do an RC as a physical check. One must always remember that it’s also a mental check. That being said, an extra boost that might help your RCs would be:

  1. Try several RCs instead of just one (the more the better). All it takes is one to fail, and you’d know you’re dreaming, but it takes all to pass to ensure that you are IRL! So it improves your odds.

1a. I personally like the digital watch RC (that works for me usually). Or read some text, look away and look back. They would have changed. For this particular RC, the more text the more likely it’ll work.

  1. Wanting your RC to prove that you’re dreaming. By wanting your RC to fail, i.e. putting special intent on failing the RC, you give yourself better chances of making the RC work for you. For my RC, I try to change the numbers on my watch and not just allow them to change by themselves.

  2. Pay close attention to the result of your RC. You mentioned that you could breathe through one nostril even though you plugged your nose. You shouldn’t dismiss your RC result immediately, but analyze the results carefully before you conclude. Take your time.

Hope you have better success!