Thread: Can being good at dream control help you in real life as well?

I posted this on /r/luciddreaming a while ago (see here), but I figured I'd post it here as well so more people can see it.

A big part of dream control is forcing yourself to "expect" certain things, right? This is because your expectations, even your unconscious ones, determine what happens in dreams.

Isn't this true to an extent in real life as well? I don't mean you can fly or anything like that, as nice as that would be—I'm referring to the placebo effect. If you have a headache, and someone gives you a pill that you think will cure it, then even if the pill actually does nothing, it still might work, simply because you expect it to. It's not just pain either; some pretty surprising things have been attributed to the placebo effect.

What this means is that anything the placebo effect is proven to be able to cause, is physiologically possible to be caused by nothing but the person's mind. Unfortunately, it goes by what you actually expect to happen, rather than what you consciously want to happen, which would make a lot more sense. As a result it isn't nearly as useful as it ought to be.

But, from my understanding, practicing dream control is essentially practicing controlling what you expect to happen. The conclusion here should be obvious. Does anyone have experience with this?