Hello all!

I am an 18 years old male who is fascinated by the concept of lucid dreaming and would really like to be able to experience it.
I generally have a hard/long time falling asleep, takes at least ~30 minutes (sometimes much more), and noises, lights make it much harder for me.

Anyway, that's what I'm going to try :
-Many reality checks throughout the day, say around each 10 minutes. I combine about 4 of them, Is that alright or too much? Should I do them together or only one each ten minutes? When I do a reality check, should I tell myself that I am dreaming and that the reality check's purpose is to cancel that out (as someone on the web suggested), or should I simply ask myself if everything is normal and have the check try to approve/cancel that out?
-When I go to sleep, I just think a lot about how I would like to have a lucid dream, and say to myself that I will have one and remember it many times. I try to do this until I am asleep.

Since my pretty "sucky" sleeping profile, I will not attempt waking up on purpose during the night.

I will also start improving my dream recall (with a journal, among the rest) along with trying to achieve a LD.

Can anyone review and suggest improvements for my "road to LD"?
Thanks a lot for any help!

EDIT: I have some Valerian extract (mild sedative), which when used produces very vivid, real-like feeling and easily rememberable dreams. Could this help in order to achieve a lucid dream?