Thing that’s (technically) not a method but made me shift instantly
It’s called “changing the goal”? I guess? Let me just input the step-by-step then explain what happened:
1) Pick a goal that isn’t shifting. The goal for this method isn’t shifting, which is why it’s not a method at all. Daydream about your DR, listen to music and lip-sync in your head, make up a scenario, do whatever you want, because that’s what you’re going to “try” to do. Not shifting.
2) The idea is that your “mission accomplished” is just the goal that you chose. That way, you can’t finish it and say “ah fuck it didn’t work, so I failed.”
3) Focus only on that goal, and do it until you feel done. For example, if your goal was just to visualize this scenario that happens in your DR— after you visualize it, you’re done. Mentally check it off: goal accomplished.
Now, if you’re the type who can’t possibly let yourself do this knowing your “goal” wasn’t actually shifting to your DR, and you basically did nothing, hear me out:
So something fortuitous happened (in hindsight). I struggled to shift for 2 nights! But it had nothing to do with my ability or my methods not working (I wasn’t even trying, lbr). The problem was my sleep schedule was so catastrophically fucked that the second my back touched the mattress, I dropped every shred of intention or desire to shift and just knocked out cold. Then I’d wake up in the morning annoyed, like “Uggh, I can’t believe I chose sleep over shifting.”
And then, last night, I was watching my younger sibling play one of their car racing video games, the kind where you need gold to unlock the next level (this story will make sense in a minute, bear with me).
They claimed to have been at it all afternoon, grinding, determined to cross the finish line first. But no matter how hard they pushed for it, they kept failing. As I watched them, at one point, they were so close (nearly at the finish line in first place) when another car knocked them all the way down to last place again.
They paused the game, tears welling in their eyes, saying they tried so hard, got so far, and still ended up at the bottom. They were ready to rage quit, to toss the controller on the ground and walk away.
But then I took the controller before they could, wiped their tears, told them to drink some water, breathe, and let the frustration dissipate. When they calmed down, I told them not to quit the race, to go back in. Not to claw their way to tenth place, not to try to win, but just to finish. Because they had already made it so far in that race, so why not cross the line, even if they were dead last?
And more than that: why not just enjoy the game? I reminded them how lucky they are to even be sitting here with a game this good, in this moment, able to have fun.
They agreed to play for fun, and unpaused the game. But were no longer obsessed with the outcome, just playing for the sake of it.
And then it happened!! Without trying, they overtook every car, one by one, and crossed the finish line in first place.
Afterwards they stared at the screen, bewildered, and asked “How the fuck did I do that? How did you know?”
And of course I told them I was a witch.
But what I realized in that moment was this: The opportunity to come in first place is permanent, immovable, always waiting for you. The period that trips people up is the grind, the frustration, the obsession with getting it right now, and that pressure is what makes people rage quit.
That pressure is what steals the joy and places this invisible distance between you and your desire. But if the win is already guaranteed, if it’s already sitting there in the future with your name on it, then why would you even try?
So I went home and figured: if I’m struggling to shift, why not stop trying altogether? My core intention to shift isn’t going anywhere; it’s always there, in the background. So why keep forcing it in the exact moment my body is clearly resisting?
And then I tried something new. I let go of the active intention to shift (because it’d always be there), and replaced it with four shiny new goals. So I put on my music playlist to fight off sleep, and I wrote a little checklist in my notebook. Four boxes:
☐ Feel happy about my DR, that it exists.
☐ Feel happy about the opportunity to shift right now.
☐ Feel happy I even have the ability to shift in the first place.
☐ Daydream about what I’m going to eat when I get back to my DR next time (big back activities, sue me)
And that ended up becoming the method itself,, just having different goals altogether, and getting lost in my thoughts.
Somewhere in the middle of that, I slipped into hypnagogia (violently, okay, I violently slipped into hypnagogia). It was the usual mind awake, body asleep thing that carries me into shifting. Next thing I knew, I opened my eyes in my DR.
And I keep turning it over in my head—why it happened the way it did. Because, sure, my base intention was still to shift, that never really goes away, but in that moment I wasn’t trying to shift. I was doing something else entirely.
That night, I just wanted to feel good that my DR even exists, that shifting is possible for me at all. So I sat with my thoughts, letting myself enjoy the music, daydream about the cool stuff waiting for me there, and I actively chose to do only that. Shifting wasn’t even on the table anymore.
!!! And I don’t think the takeaway here is “just let go, stop trying, and eventually you’ll shift.” I hate that sm. As if you can ever “let go” of the desire to shift. Honestly, it’s not even what happened. Because I still wanted to shift. That desire was still in the background. But what I was doing in that moment wasn’t a shifting attempt at all,,it was this completely different thing, with its own purpose, and its own finish line.
I had shifted my focus to getting that done, and because I was so intent on this other goal, shifting got demoted to background noise. And that made me cool with whatever happened. Like, even if I fell asleep, even if nothing happened, I still hit my target for the night, so there was no way to “fail.”
And that’s the part I think is worth sharing. It’s not “give up and you’ll magically shift,” it’s more like: sometimes, swap the thing you’re chasing. If your current shifting attempt is all about “I must shift right now,” try making the attempt about something else entirely, like daydreaming in detail about your DR, or listening to music, or literally anything else like meditating, building a scene in your head, etc. Because when you make that the win, shifting stops being this desperate pass/fail trial.
Let yourself win, let yourself win more often, create victories for yourself that aren’t tied to whether or not you open your eyes in your DR.
Because bottom line.....you’re never going to see your shift coming. Even if you’re the kind of person who scripts it all out, does a method perfectly, and then wakes up in your DR,, there will still be that surprise, that moment of “holy shit, it actually happened.” It might feel natural, but it will never feel predictable.
And that’s the point. You can’t know if you’ll shift tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, but you do know that you’re going to shift either way. The only thing you do know is that it’s coming.
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