This started happening to me within the past year: While I am dreaming, I often recognize characters (even strangers) from previous dreams that I have had and acknowledge which dream they are from and how they behaved. This allows me to control my actions based on the characters’ previous behaviors and to essentially “avoid” the possibility of having a bad dream.

For example, about a year ago, I had a dream about a mysterious/dangerous person at my workplace. Fast forward to last night, I saw this person in my dream. Even though he looked harmless, I acknowledged which dream he was from (even saw a snapshot of that dream within my dream), and made my character and select characters change scenes because I felt like things would go badly with him there.

I know it sounds simple and is not as cool as making yourself have super powers and what not, but I think it is such a cool feeling to have that much awareness of the characters and to remember previous dreams so clearly within your dream!