How To Deal With A Wandering Mind During Ssild

I was wondering, during SSILD, how do you deal with a wandering mind?

Try not to be upset when your mind wanders, going "ah crap I really suck at focusing, now back to SSILD". When your mind wanders it means you're closer to falling asleep, so acknowledge that and drift back into the SSILD cycles. With SSILD, you are supposed to actually fall unconscious so don't put any effort into staying alert, just enough effort to get it in your mind to keep performing SSILD. Edit: just realized you're the person I've been PMing lol. You got this I know it, never give up never surrender.

A good way is mindulness meditation. When your mind wanders, just gently bring your focus back to your senses. Don't hate yourself for wandering, just aknowledge that your mind has wandered.

[deleted]

For staying focused, that's good advice... But for SSILD, the OP got it wrong -- one does not need to stay focused at all with SSILD. In fact the key to SSILD is un-focus and letting go.

What should I do when my mind wanders then?

Just repeat the cycles a couple more times then go to sleep

Should i do mini cycles. i notice i don't those

Yes you should do them because they are the best and quickest way to help you relax. You can stop doing them as soon as you notice that focusing on the senses become very easy. For example, when you begin focusing on vision you may feel tense. There may be a lot of tensions between you eyes. As you perform these cycles you will at some point notice that the tensions are no longer there. The darkness in front of you can seem to take on more depth. When this happens you can stop the quick cycles and begin focusing on that particular sense.

I was wondering, today, I set my alarm 4hrs after i woke, but i could not sleep and by the time it went off, i slept for only an hour. i decided not to try ssild. did i make the right choice?

I think it is wise. SSILD promotes a relaxed approach to lucid dreaming -- there is always the next time! Doing SSILD will no doubt increase your chance of having DILDs and even WILDs, therefore you shouldn't try too hard.

Would SSILD work without 4hs, a bit less, like 3h and a half?