Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
Everyone should have a dream journal. And they should use it, too. If they did, it could help them learn more about themselves, boost creativity, and solve problems. Keeping one is like going on a cool adventure in your own mind every night! Write down your dreams. You might see patterns or themes that mean…
When you wake up in the middle of the night, is it better to record your dreams with your voice or write them down? If you sleep with someone, it’s better to write them down. You don’t want to wake them up. Talking into a recorder or a recording app might do it. If you…
In your dreams, you can and will explore alternate scenarios—even if you rarely do so when you’re awake. It’s a good idea to be ready for it. Otherwise, when it happens, it can throw you for a loop. You/I can’t think that. It’s wrong. It doesn’t work that way. That’s stupid. You’ve got to hurry.…
Superficially considered, the dreams don’t necessarily relate to each other. One dream, say, might be about some birds. Another dream might be about swimming at a beach. The themes of the dreams, however, are related. And there’s a lesson for you in how your subconscious expresses the dream.
Most people don’t have precognitive dreams. They may reel off an accurate prediction now and then, but that’s more of a question of getting lucky. It’s not useful if it’s not consistent. That doesn’t mean one can’t put two situations together and determine a likely result. That’s not the same thing as being able to…
Sometimes you’ll draw a blank when you wake up and try remembering what you were dreaming about. Maybe you were woken suddenly and the memory of the dream shatters. Maybe the details were simply dim. Whatever the reason, you know you were dreaming and you’re coming blank. You might only be left with a memory…
When I was in school there was this kid, Dave. He remembered all of his dreams, so he said. They’d be crazy. They’d have monsters in them, people with no faces, and talking ducks. Every so often he’d keep us entertained before school and at recess with his tales from the night before. Sometimes his…
Dreams are fun but it’s best to acknowledge it and not to get stuck on that aspect. It’s cool when you do something like holding seven men at gunpoint in your dreams. Or when you save a life. Or when you ride a horse really fast. Unfortunately, the long-term dream journaler pseudonymously named “Barb Sanders”…
Often dreams don’t match reality in any way shape or form. In the famous short story and movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber, hapless main character Mitty has one daydream after another triggered by mundane events. In one, he’s a surgeon saving lives. In another, a fighter pilot. And in another…
Anything can happen in a dream. Anything often does. One of those things that happen in dreams—unlike real life—is what dream researchers have come to call “character transformations.” In the collected dreams of a pseudonymous dream journaler whom Calvin Hall referred to as “Barb Sanders” these character transformations were fairly common. Hall estimated they occurred…