The Forgotten Trader’s Tool: How To Lucid Dream And Why You Should (Part 2 of 3)

This is where it gets fun, let’s dive into the world of lucid dreaming. (If you have not read part 1, please go here to do that first).

Once you are recording your dreams, you should begin to notice some recurring themes. Perhaps you notice you are always lost, or often falling, or in embarrassing situations… it doesn’t matter so long as you are able to record your feelings about the dream.

Your feelings about these themes matter. Because these will enable you to unlock the issues that you must deal with in order to overcome your barriers. (Example barriers might be barriers to profitable trading, barriers to healthy relationships or barriers to feeling confident in yourself, etc).

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of dreaming, and realizing you’re in a dream… this is called lucid dreaming. And it is good fun. But more importantly, here’s a list of the advantages of lucid dreaming:

• Lucid Dreaming allows you to directly connect to your subconscious mind. There are very few ways to directly interact and put information into your subconscious mind, lucid dreaming is one of them. Many of the others are detailed in my trading psychology course, You Get What You Trade For.

• Once you are able to control your dreams, your dreaming world is a training ground for real life. You wanna practice baggin’ pips? Do it every night. It’s like adding a few more hours of Forextester practice to you day.

• You can tap into a geyser of creativity with lucid dreaming. Remember, when you enter the markets, you are up against an army of nerds, PhD’s and supercomputers. These dudes have tons of clean data, cracking ideas and number-crunching, lightnin’ fast ‘puters… lucid dreaming is a great way to dream up a new approach to finding an edge in the forex markets.

• Lucid dreaming starts your day off on a high. The feeling of waking up after directing your own personal movie never wears off… and you can build up a library of insights about yourself, your own forex trading and life once you become a black belt lucid dreamer.

Lucid dreaming is just one of many ways for you to tap into your subconscious mind, and accelerate your trading.

Many other trading psychology techniques are covered in the You Get What You Trade For trading psychology course here.

So here are several methods for inducing lucid dreams below. Once you find one that works for you, keep at it until you are proficient at directing your dreams every night.

Method 1: Check Your Reality

Reading and dreaming activate different areas of the brain, which is why you cannot read in a dream. You can use this fact to your advantage. The easiest way to do this is to train yourself during the day to look at your watch, your phone or a clock. Try to do this at least 12 times per day.

Ideally, you will look at a digital clock (the kind with numbers) and not an analog clock (with moving hands or dials). The reason for this is because you cannot read in a dream. This means you cannot read the numbers of a digital clock. You may be able to glance at an analog clock in a dream and not notice any funny business, but with a digital clock you will notice your digital clock:

+ Has no numbers on it all all, OR…

+ The display is blurry, or so dim it is difficult to see, OR…

+ The numbers are hidden, so you cannot see them, OR….

+ The numbers are changing rapidly randomly, OR….

+ The numbers are are not normal (Arabic) numbers, but some other weird symbols…

If you see anything like this, it is a good bet you are in a dream. But you should probably do one more thing (as a habit, every day, at least 12 times) to make sure you are dreaming.

Check your reality by pressing your fingers into the palm of your hand. Try to press them through your hand. Ask yourself “is this a dream?” This should be a serious question.

If you’re dreaming, you will press your fingers through your hand, and voila! You know you are dreaming… and you can now take over the reigns and direct your own dream.

Another simple reality check is to cover your nose and mouth with your fingers, and see if you can breathe. This is only gonna happen if you’re dreaming.

Method 2: Last Call For Dreams

Set an alarm for 2-3 hours before you usually wake up. So if you normally wake at 6am, set your alarm for 3:30am-4:00am, and once you wake, turn off that alarm next to your bed and then stay in bed.

Stay still, and concentrate on what you want to dream about (that trading system you are looking to modify, the deep subconscious reason why you’re unable to properly execute your trading system, or why you have subconscious feelings of low self-worth getting in the way of your profitable trading.)

It may help to start repeating a mantra such as “In my next dream I will discover how I can improve my trading system” over and over, so that as you drift back to sleep, your mind will be aware of what you want to do.

Method 3: Hypnogogic Meditation

This method is exactly like Method 2 above, except that you will not use a mantra to drift back to sleep. After you shut off your alarm, you will lie as still as possible, concentrating on your breathing.

You will breathe slowly, and deeply, while concentrating on the cool air as it passes through your nose, into your lungs. Count to four as you inhale, count to seven as you hold your breath, and then breathe out for a count of eight.

After doing this 10 times, you will be in a nice state of relaxation.

You will eventually notice colored phosphorecent blobs of light on the back of your eyelids, this is a sure sign that you are entering a hypnogogic (pre-sleep) state.

Breathe slowly and deeply. Focus on breathing in to the count of four, holding for seven, then breathing out for eight counts. (This is also a great stress-reliever at any time of day.)

Do this ten times. You’ll be totally relaxed.

Try to create an image. One hallmark of hypnogogia is that you will start to see blobs and weird shapes on the back of your eyelids.

Once you start to see these shapes, you can tell yourself “I will see a square now.”

This is an excellent “mini-win” you can capture on your way to controlling your dreams.

Method 4: Alternate Your Wake-Up Time

This is an easy way to ease into lucid dreaming. Here’s how you do it:

Set an alarm for 90 minutes prior to your normal wake up time. If you usually wake at 6am, set your alarm for 4:30am.

Once you hit the alarm, go do something. Go to the toilet, get a cup of coffee, eat an orange… do something so that you are actually awake. If you hit the snooze on the alarm, it doesn’t count and it won’t help you achieve your lucid dreaming goal.

Make this your wake up time for the next week.

Yes, it’s gonna hurt, but do it. The rewards are worth it in the end.

After the first torturous week, alternate your wake up time each day. So, for instance, it may look like this:

Monday – wake up at 6:00am

Tuesday – wake up at 4:30am

Wednesday – wake up at 6:00am

Thursday – wake up at 4:30am

Friday – wake up at 6:00am

Even though you will wake up at different times each day mentally prepare yourself (and tell yourself when you prepare to go to sleep) that you will wake at the earlier time. This is critical.

When you wake up, you should check reality (see Method 1 above). This is the best time of the day to begin checking reality, as it will help you to realize when you are lucid dreaming at this early morning hour on the days that you “sleep in” until your normal wake up time.

Method 5: Supplement Short Cut

If this waking up, checking reality and switching wake up times seems like a bunch of shenanigans you have no interest in following through with, then perhaps a supplement is for you. This could short-cut your approach to lucid dreaming.

Here’s the best one available, it seems to do the trick for most people looking to get into a lucid dreaming state of mind.

In Part 3, you will see what to do in your lucid dreams to take your trading up a notch. They key is to know what to do once you are in a lucid dream.