Dreams sound like fantasy. Something that you want or desire becomes your dream. Interestingly, we have to be clear about what sort of dream are we talking about. There is one dream that we have while sleeping.
Those dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. These kinds of dreams may or may not be your desires but they usually occur in our sleep due to the things we witness or because of memories.
Another type so of dream that we are about to talk here are the dreams we grow up with. These dreams are the reason for our survival. These are desires, luxuries, things, people or even accomplishments which we look on to.
It is important to understand the difference between a dream and a desire. A desire can be a dream but a dream may or may not be a desire. Desires can be lust for something, passion for career or materialistic needs. Desires usually vary from person to person and differs age-wise as well.
A small 10 year kid may desire for a Hot Wheels car where as a 50 year old guy may dream for a real luxury car. Definitely, a dream can be big or small, short termed or even a long term desire to attain something.
Here is a video explanation of why we dream:
Talking in general there are 5 main types of dreams: day dreaming, normal dreams, false awakenings, nightmares and lucid dreams. These are all different types of hypnotic states which introduce us to the phenomenal world of lucid dreaming.
Déjà vu attributes the feeling of having seen or experienced something or dreamt about a similar situation or place previously, and forgetting about it until you seem to be mysteriously reminded of the situation or the place while awake in the present situation. It might give shudders and leave you out there perplexed.
Day dreaming is more of a memory or a visionary fantasy of some ideas, thoughts for few happy moments, hopes, ambitions etc., experienced while awake.
Day dreamer usually refer to milder imagery, realistic future planning, review of past memories or just “spacing out“—i.e. one’s mind going relatively blank—when they talk about “daydreaming.”
Hallucinations are another kind of dreams. Hallucinations are perceptions in a conscious and awake state, in the absence of external stimuli, and have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid, substantial, and located in external objective space.
Sometimes one may experience progressive dreams that are like a sequence of dreams that continue for a period of nights. Such dreams are problem-solving dreams and help to explore different options and various approaches to a problem, situation or relationship.
Nightmares are unwanted, unpleasant dreams that lead cause stress, usually waking you up in sweat, tension or a severe headache. Nightmares arouse strong negative response from the mind like fear or horror, despair and anxiety leaving you behind in great sadness.
Night-terror is a parasomnia disorder and is different from nightmares. It predominantly affects children causing fear or terror.
Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception of one’s state while dreaming. The dreamer has a degree of control on his actions within the dream.
Interestingly:
In a lucid dream the dreamer knows that he is dreaming.
It is possible to communicate with the dreamer during his lucid dreaming using eye signal to map the subjective sense of time of dream and through the electrical activity of brain.
Keeping A Dream Journal
In lucid dreaming, it’s important to keep a dream journal. It helps you remember dreams when you wake up in the morning. Here are few steps that will help you maintain a dream journal.
Step 1
Keep a separate notebook to record your dreams. Keep it within arm’s reach of the bed. Dreams fade quickly on awakening so you need to write them down as soon as you wake.
Step 2 – Note down the date of your dream
Then write down everything you can remember. Write everything in the present tense (eg “I am walking down the street when a frog jumps out of the bushes”). This helps with remembering dreams by putting you in the moment.
Step 3 – Identify dream themes
Think about the location, characters, sensations, sounds, objects and emotions of the dream.
Step 4 – Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation and grammar
As long as you can read it back later and it still makes sense, you are fine.
Step 5 – Sketch any strong images from the dream
It doesn’t matter if you’re not an artist.
Step 6
When you have finished, jot down any major life issues that are going on right now. For instance, you may be suffering from a broken heart. Over time, you will be able to link your unconscious dream symbols with real life issues.
Step 7
Give the dream an appropriate title. It can be something simple that just helps you reconnect back to it.
Dream Analysis
It is important to analyze and interpret the dream because dreams always follow a theme.
Visuals: Dreams are highly psychedelic, that means they are like bizarre which continuously blends into each other.
Emotions: The most experienced emotion while dreaming is anxiety. Other emotions vary with the type of dreaming like anger, fear, terror, happiness etc.
Color: Interestingly, dreams can be colorful or even black and white.
Dream interpretations can be a result of subjective ideas believes and experiences. People believe that dreams reveal meaningful hidden truths.
How To Discover Your Dream?
As mentioned before, dream can be a desire or a wish as well. These are known as voluntary dreams. Every person has a purpose of living and it’s important that we figure out what exactly is your dream. A dreamless person lives a meaningless life because everyone needs an anchor.
- Discover your hobbies and areas of interest. It helps you realize your talent.
- Discover your area of compatibility that can you work alone or in a team. What sort of work area you actually like to work in? What kind of people can you associate well with? Analyzing yourself helps you understand your dream better.
- It’s important to understand what gives you happiness. One should always pursue the thing one finds the most happiness in.
- Do a little brainstorming and list down all your passions. It will help you choose a right and the best possible direction by creating a clear vision and an easy road-map.
- Practice hard on your passions; get inspirations and wok on self-motivation. It helps to give a good kick start to the right dream. Set the time for each day and work on your dreams once you are sure that it is the dream that you wish to pursue.
Why Should You Follow Your Dream?
It is important to follow your dream as it gives your life a meaning. It keeps you positive and on the track. Dreams make life worth living. They help you cope up with the bad days and keeps you optimistic in life. They also tell us that dreamless persona is lifeless.
When you are motivated and excited about pursuing your dreams, you’ll attract other people who have the same values and interests. The more you surround yourself with high achievers, the further you’ll go.
If you decide to go and follow your dreams, you will give hope to others who want to do the same. You become the inspirations for other to life.
Following your dream makes you happy and passionate. Life gets good so does family and job. The aura is positive and relaxing. You are happy because you are following what you always liked and wanted to do.
Every time you see yourself a step closer to your dream fulfillment. It makes you feel proud and good about yourself. Living your dream is must. You should always aim higher. Big goals give you a deeper horizon and ignore up lot many small irrelevant things.
Limit your goals to be focused on one thing. It helps you concentrate well and achieve faster. If you want the power to follow your dreams, you have to say no to all the alternatives.
Never compromise for less and always run for the best.
Hope you got inspired to follow your dreams from this post. Let me know your experience of using the above methods. Did they help you in getting near to your dream? Share your thoughts using the comments box below.
