The deal is you would have to waste a great deal of time (and perhaps effort) in order to convince yourself, and that just defeats the practice. There's so much that can improve your lucidity skills, that making the process harder and longer just seems counter-productive. You can improve memory, visualization, focus, meditate, and these few options are already huge on their own, and have direct and easy to comprove effects on lucidity, dream recall, amongst other components of dreaming. Making a whole new excuse in order to make your brain change views on something would be making the game harder without any reward, because in the end, you'll know (unlike the people back in the days) that the air is not a living thing. Forcing beliefs is not as easy at it seems