Personal growth or development and self-help as terms do not seem to hold the ‘spirit’ of what is truly involved close to heart. Maybe self-improvement as the phrase is a bit softer on the tongue but still does not capture the true essence required. Self-help and self-improvement are many things to many people but in essence looks to “quality of life” as a measuring stick by which to develop, measure and improve personal performance and awareness.

You’ll need to find the best way to achieve your own personal growth and development. I would like to talk about lucid dreaming. It has been exploding in popularity recently. It’s even caused a spike in sales for melatonin for lucid dreaming. It’s one of the best ways to your personal growth and development.

Lucid Dreaming.

There are many methods, or ‘tools’ one can use for personal growth and create awareness (conditioning your subconscious mind) such as:
• Meditation
• Personal
• Reflection
• Self-study
• Lucid dreaming
• Religious guidance
• Studying expert opinions (self-help books)
• Therapy
• Coaching
• Experience
• Spiritual growth

All these options are worth exploring. The rest of this writing will look at lucid dreaming.
The link between the subconscious mind and dreaming has been explored only recently. Sigmund Freud probably was the first to look at the role of the subconscious mind in dreams and explored the unconscious elements that drive our motivation. Now imagine being able to get a clear view of our subconscious mind and understand better how and what motivates each of us in our unique ways. You might find that there are unknown, to your consciousness, elements that are motivating you to counter to what you are trying to achieve consciously. I also like to refer to them as mental blocks.

A very frustrated smoker trying to stop does not necessarily realize that he subconsciously believes that it is fine to smoke and that it’s the reason why he cannot get himself to stop consciously. Not just because of the physical addiction. If he does realize this, he then has discovered a mental block and if he also realizes how powerful the subconscious mind is he may be better prepared mentally to change this habit by working on releasing the block.

You Can Reshape Yourself.

Not sure if you know what lucid dreaming is and or how to lucid dream, but the ability to be dream-aware while dreaming with the ability to control your dreams is a magnificent gift that could be used to access your subconscious mind. Lucid Dreaming can also be used to help recondition yourself as required.

It may sound like a brave new way to go about it, but as Einstein said (we’re paraphrasing here): You cannot solve a problem from the same mindset that created it. You must learn to see the world anew. How is that for a powerful problem-solving ethos?

Let’s say you have a personal development goal to become a motivational speaker but have a fear of speaking in front of people. Imagine you can create a safe place where you can motivate yourself and practice role-playing as much as you need to overcome this challenge. Similarly, lucid dreaming can give you the ability to deal with any such fears.

What if you need to change your feelings and thoughts around how you few humanity and need to cultivate a more positive view, because you may have realized it is holding you back in other areas in your life. You could create a new dream character, Nelson Mandela and then have an insightful discussion with him about how he was motivated and driven to be so forgiving and the ultimate humanitarian after everything that was done to him.

What if you could create a dream character that represents your subconscious mind and ask him or her?
• Why do I get so frustrated with my wife or children or,
• Is there any specific thing that I should know in regard to things that are holding me back from achieving my goals or,
• Why do I get so unhappy or frustrated when I am in a particular situation?

Remember after all your dreams are created by yourself, so all these techniques is an attempt to learn more about yourself to help you figure out what you need to change.

Your Imagination Unleashed:

Lucid dreaming is a gift that can be used in so many different ways. Your creative imagination is the only thing that will hold you back. However, lucid dreaming may be used to improve your creativity.

Having gone through the positive effects of lucid dreaming and how much it can play a big role in personal self-growth and development, I conclude that there is nothing wrong with lucid dreaming. It’s beneficial to everyone. Thus, my answer to the main question of the article is “NO”.