Thread: DILD Difficulties

Hey dreamviews! A little background first: I've been into lucid dreaming for about 11 months and have had about 5 (very short) lucid dreams, all of which were from MILD or failed WILD (so essentially all MILD).

Recently I have shifted my focus from techniques to self awareness; throughout the day I try to see myself and my effects through others' perspectives and recall what I was doing 5 minutes ago. My dream recall has been good if I write my dreams down throughout the night, however, I do not feel this awareness has been carrying over into my dreams. DILD always has and still does feel impossible; I can't figure out how you get yourself to suddenly become aware or question reality in a dream (even in dreams about lucid dreaming, which I've had many of), no matter how crazy the dream.

So I came here to ask two things:
How important do you feel the techniques are to inducing lucid dreams?
How do I get waking-life awareness to carry over into my dreams?

Edit: I realized there is a contradiction in what I said since MILD is a form of DILD. I guess what I meant was how people fall asleep at night and, without WBTB, have DILDs. This seems to me the best approach to LDing since you can have consistent LDs with an inconsistent sleep schedule.