Reality Checks

What it is

Borrowed from lucid dreaming practice (where the daily question is "Am I dreaming?"), reality checks were adapted by the shifting community to use the question "Am I in my CR or my DR?" CR means current reality — the life you are living now; DR means desired reality — the scripted, intended life you are shifting toward. The idea is that asking this sincerely, multiple times a day, trains the mind to stop treating the present circumstances as fixed and inevitable. Over days of practice, the identification with the current reality weakens, making sleep-based shifting attempts easier to initiate and sustain. In its broader manifestation use, the check functions as a mindset disruptor: catching moments when you are unconsciously reinforcing the CR and redirecting attention toward the felt sense of the DR.

How to do it

1. Set an intention at the start of the day to pause and perform a reality check 10–15 times before sleep.
2. At random moments — or whenever triggered by a cue like a phone notification, entering a new room, or feeling stress — stop and ask yourself out loud or silently: 'Am I in my CR or my DR?'
3. Do not answer automatically. Spend 10 seconds genuinely considering: what evidence around you marks this moment as your current reality and not your desired one?
4. If the answer is 'my CR,' hold a brief mental image or feeling of the DR — your scripted self, a detail from your desired reality — before continuing.
5. In the evening, before a shifting attempt, recall the checks you did during the day. Use the accumulated habit of questioning to enter your shifting method with less automatic identification with the CR.
6. Optional: keep a short tally or journal note of how many checks you did and whether any felt genuinely uncertain, which is the sign the habit is taking hold.

What people use it for

• shifting to a desired reality
• weakening identification with current circumstances
• manifestation mindset work
• lucid dreaming induction
• self-concept change

Where it comes from

Reality checks as a practice originate in the lucid dreaming research community, popularized in written form by Stephen LaBerge at Stanford's Lucidity Institute in the 1980s–90s. The CR/DR adaptation emerged organically within the TikTok shifting community (#shifttok) around 2020–2021 as shifting content exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, with no single credited originator — it spread as community advice across Tumblr shifting guides, Wattpad how-tos, and TikTok comment threads.