Can you change your personality in lucid dreams?

It seems to me that it would be a good place to rehearse socializing. Just as practicing in a mirror to learn to act or even socialize. I’m a shy person myself, so i might give that a try.

Absolutely. Well, to an extent. I had a long LD about a week ago, which has significantly improved my confidence and conflict resolution skills. I’m still super introverted, but still… looking forward to putting my new-found aggressive posture to work in my employment tribunal pre-hearing tomorrow. It’s definitely made me feel less easily intimidated. I do think it takes quite regular practice for the changes to stick, though. That, I’m still working on.

You keep using that word… I do not think it means what you think it means.

Introverted =/= Shy
Extroverted =/= Outgoing

One simply gains energy from being alone and gets drained from social situations.
And the other gains energy from being social and gets tired from being alone.

But an introvert can be very social and an extrovert may enjoy being alone. Just thought I’d clarify.

Good point.

I also think one limits themself when believing he/she ‘IS’ an introvert or ‘IS’ an extravert, that introversion and extroversion are like cycles or seasons in one’s experience; some days introversion is needed more to gather healthy energy and some days extraversion is needed more.

Oh well. It’s my personality and I’ll generalise if I want to :smile:

I imagined that being sung like the Lesley Gore song, haha

Heh :wink:

It was.

[color=olive]That explains why I couldn’t stand being out in the open and wishing that the campus was empty. :bored: I would litterally feel drained or irritated in the presence of a bunch other people after being alone for a while. Guess its introvert season. :read: [/color]

Can you clarify what you mean by this? In my experience of people, they are generally one or the other, though in different positions on a spectrum, I’d say. Ex. A very introverted person, a very extroverted person, someone around the middle.

I see ideas like introversion/extraversion—and all the lil characteristics that attach to the idea— getting in the way of genuine self-realization. I feel true understanding of one’s self and others comes from a more ‘thoughtless’ or ‘mindful’ awareness. The less thoughts, prejudices, assumptions, etc. one has, then the more open one can be with who they’re observing. The more open they are, then the deeper they can understand.

The deeper one can understand themself, the more aware they become of their own potential, strengths, and abilities. The more aware they become, the more possibilities are available to them.

Well, I don’t find all labels limiting. And I certainly think labels are flexible and can be changed. They are merely ways we organize our lives and help us understand eachother, not only ourselves.
I’m reminded of the composer Claude Debussy who composed in the Impressionistic style. He preferred not to label his music by this term. I don’t think he had a label at all. He was somewhat of a hipster, you can say. :razz:
Wiki definition: Musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere rather than on a strong emotion or the depiction of a story as in program music
What does Debussy do? He composes music of his impression and feelings of dreams, oceans, storms, etc. He and Ravel are the examples we use today to understand that Impressionistic music.
You can choose to not apply a label to yourself, fine. But doesn’t mean you won’t inevitably fall into one.

Now, the point I wanted you to clarify was this specifically:

For the sake of staying on topic, as someone who practices lucid living, I am accustomed to the personality traits being pulled over from the dream life into waking life and vice versa. Given that this is possible, we can look at past dreams and examine the many roles and personas we may have taken in them. All of these would theoretically be accessible.
So, it may not necessarily be a ‘change’ in overall personality but an expansion of it. But I suppose it would be a change in what is accessible to us in WL, and the possibilities for this could be endless.

I’m not sure I agree here. This sounds like the words of somebody who could be called an ambivert. This means somebody who rides the line between introvert and extrovert, never fitting exactly into either category. Personally I’m strongly introverted.

I’d agree that entirely isolating yourself is not the best way to go, but that doesn’t change the fact that social situations will always deplete my energy over time. That without significant time alone and to myself I will become very stressed and unhappy. It’s not an issue of confidence for me, I work as a manager in retail and am comfortable dealing with everything from staff to obnoxious complaining customers. It’s just that being around people doesn’t ‘give me energy’ being alone in solitude does. Given the choice between a quiet walk alone in a forest, or a lively party, there is absolutely no doubt which I prefer. One sounds like a wonderful experience, the other sounds like a wasted and draining night. I also know others who talk about being alone in exactly the same ways that I feel about being with people. It’s not a limitation, it’s part of our ‘true identities’ if such a thing exists. Whether I’m labelled an introvert, an extrovert or a flying monkey. It won’t change how I feel about being around people. It’s something to be done and enjoyed in moderation.

It’s not just about how much you enjoy being around people, but also involves how you like to interact with them. I have zero, even negative interest in socializing when that means talking for the sake of talking for example. I seek deeper more meaningful connections to people I respect, I’d prefer to be entirely alone than with people who feel shallow, by a very large margin. I do have to admit that I tend not to seek contact with people as often as I probably should, because I don’t feel a compulsion to do so. I don’t suffer for being alone. That can mean missing out on getting to know some cool people or making them think I want to be left alone / don’t want to talk to them, but I’m getting off topic here.

Coming back to the topic a bit, it depends a lot on why you are feeling unsocial. There can be many reasons and it doesn’t have to be introversion. If you are scared of people in some way (and many many people are, I think most people have some level of agoraphobia at some time in their life.) then you will get tense being around people, which will have the effect of draining you and making you feel very uncomfortable and afraid to act. It’s different to being introverted, it’s being paralysed by fear. If that’s the case then I can definitely see lucid dreaming being useful in dispelling that fear. In that case though, it’s not strictly changing your personality, as much as releasing fears so you can act more naturally.

I once did an improvised version of peter kay’s sequence to the song Amarillo in the middle of a club filled with mostly people aged 40-75, who played the song only because they were from that era and liked it. It didn’t change my personality. I wasn’t drunk and I was the only one doing it. Another person tried to start, but didn’t know the sequence very well. It was something I would never normally do and I did just to see how it would feel, for a laugh and to see if I could actually do it. I’ve always been ‘shy’ such a public performance is dramatically out of character.

But you were not alone there? When there is at least one human being which who you are familiar with then it will not work, because doing something crazy when you are not alone is much easier. It wouldn’t give a desired result.
When I do something crazy I feel very energized afterwards and want to do something even more crazy. It doesn’t always have a long term effect, but sometimes it helps me to understand why doing something unusual is hard for me.

Good example, GreenDragon. I’m not too sure your example illustrates a true identity, however. Without the pretext of introversion/extraversion, the more I read into it the more I feel that your work environment and the people you must interact with on a daily basis are the reason as to why your energy gets drained by people. If one has to deal with people constantly needing your attention, expecting you to work for them, and trying to use you, it only seems natural to want to have a quiet walk in the forest and to have a negative opinion of socializing. Anger and resentment can build over time, and the energy of anger tends to drive its host into a sort of isolation.

If someone makes good friends, people that see the best in them, that love and respect them for who they are, then that someone can gather energy in the social way, then those people become a positive source of growth and a unique source of energy to gather from.

My point is that it’s not as simple as someone being an introvert or an extravert, that circumstances influence the ‘ambiversion’ in everyone, and that the need to define oneself or others can limit one’s conscious mind from understanding what’s going on. The energy that you gather while being alone can be very different then the energy gathered thru interacting with loving friends.

Those interested in continuing the discussion of introversion/extraversion can find the topic here: https://community.ld4all.com/t/introversion-extraversion/38637

My logic in my original post is that lucid dreaming should help you develop as a person because of the incredible effects it can have on how you feel.
I think you can all agree that everything becomes a lot easier when you feel very happy or excited about something, since it gives you such an energy boost - and lucid dreaming, if anything, has the potential to truly brighten up your day, which in turn should make all sorts of personal development much easier.

I’m sceptical to agree here, I agree it is different to “do something crazy” alone as opposed to with others. I’m not sure it’s automatically easier, it could in fact be harder depending on who the person/people was/were and their attitude and relationship to you. A best friend who encourages you to “do something crazy” would doubtless make it much easier. Parents, relatives or other peers may well make it considerably harder to act in this way. In my case I was with my parents, grandparents and my grandparents peers.

In my dreams im spontaneous, outgoing and have a lot of confident fun, even with socializing with other people. but in real life i’m too shy to talk to people i don’t know, and I’m nervous if i have any attention on me. There’s a big difference in who i am in my dreams and who i am in real life, and my dream personality doesn’t seem to reflect or effect my real life personality at all.

I guess in my dreams, I’m the person who i want to be, and maybe that’s what I’m really like if I wasn’t flooded with anxiety. But it doesn’t seem to matter how and how much i act in my dreams, it has never changed me in real life.

It can be helpful for you… you need to try to make changes in you like you see yourself in your dream… if you are not trying to be like this then you cannot find changes…

How we put these dream exercises into the real life.