Hey guys, I read about LD's years ago, but didn't have much motivation to really stick to the whole process of achieving them. Well, like most people on here now, after watching Inception I decided what the hell I'll give it some effort this time.

So yesterday I decided to read up and found this site and read all of it's intro pages on the home page to all this dream stuff. About midday I took about an hour nap, thinking before napping that I wanted to remember my dream, and after I woke up I probably had the most vivid dream recollection in years.

Needless to say I was pretty excited, but last night I had no success in recalling any of my dreams. I woke up once about 6 hrs after falling asleep (not to an alarm) and didn't recall anything, so I went back to sleep and got up about 2 hrs later (again not to an alarm) and didn't recall anything, and was kind of pissed haha.

I guess what I need help on is is how to improve on dream recollection? What were your techniques to become better at recalling your dreams? Is it simply just repeating to yourself as you fall asleep that you "want to remember your dreams when you wake up"?

And secondly, the whole idea of performing reality checks while in a dream is kind of puzzling to me. For myself, when I'm in a dream (or recalling it afterward) it feels like I'm not really in control of my actions, that I'm kind of watching myself act through my dreams but through my own eyes? Hopefully I'm explaining it well enough for you guys to understand haha. I just can't grasp the idea of actually having the awareness to perform an action such as a reality check when I feel so lost during dreams.

I'm not gonna lie though, the dream I did recall yesterday ended in a nightmare though, so I wasn't as motivated last night to really remember my dreams in case they were nightmares again haha. Did any of you run into that problem when starting, because the emotions you feel during those nightmares, however goofy the situation is logically, feel pretty real when experiencing them.