“The person with dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts” – Albert Einstein.

I’m sure Einstein was talking about those dreams which are our hopes and aspirations, rather than what goes on when we are asleep. I would like to posit that those movies we play when we are unconscious are important. Therefore, you should record your dreams so that you may benefit from them.

Why do we have dreams?

Why do we have dreams in the first place? Are they just an evolutionary quirk from when we first became conscious beings?

Flotsam and jetsam

Materialistic scientists would say that they serve no purpose. Dreams are just the useless items of our daily lives being washed up as we sleep, so that we can clean them out and forget them. Are they the de-fragging of the mind?

To make sense of the world

Other experts suggest that dreams help us make sense of the world and help with our memory building. It’s certainly true that lack of sleep can cause poor memory retention and recall.

Warnings and opportunities

I do believe that it may be true that some dreams serve no purpose or that they are our brain’s nightly decluttering. However, some dreams are there to warn of certain threats or to highlight opportunities.

The problem is that you don’t know which dreams are useful and which aren’t. That’s why I record my dreams so that I can look back to see what patterns there are.

How to record your dreams

How do you record your dreams when you don’t remember them. Dreams are like the will-o’-th’-wisp, they disappear shortly after you wake. Here are some tips to help you record your dreams

Say to yourself “I will remember”

When you are in bed just about to sleep, say to yourself, that you will remember your dreams. You are sending your unconscious mind an instruction and it will obey.

Notebook

Have a notebook next to your bed. If you wake up in the night or first thing in the morning, write down your dreams, before they evaporate.

Dream journal

It’s often a good idea to put these dreams into a dedicated Dream Journal. I used to put my dreams into a normal daily notebook journal, but looking back it was hard to find the entries. A dedicated dream journal will make it easier for you scan your past dreams to look for clues and trends.

Problems & puzzles – ask a question before you sleep.

Your unconscious mind will obey your commands if you give it a specific directive. If you are struggling to solve some conundrum in your life, try asking for an answer in your dreams. I’m sure this is where the phrase to ‘sleep on it’ came from.

Take a nap

Why wait for bedtime? You might be able to make use of napping. Often during a nap you will have dream-like visions or maybe you will hear yourself say phrases. These again can be useful if you have directed yourself beforehand.

Many famous people have used afternoon naps for this purpose. Thomas Edison would lock himself in a dark room to sleep on a problem. He would then wake up refreshed and usually with an answer to whatever was puzzling him.

Try it yourself. Get yourself a blank notebook and pen start recording your dreams. Also read my other post on dreams and how to interpret them.

The post Record your dreams appeared first on Mike Holden Sales.

Is intuition real and can we cultivate it?  What do dreams have to do with intuition? Does intuition and dreaming point to what is significant?

Three profound questions. Is that significant?

The law of 3 s

One great way to test whether what you are noticing is significant is the Law of Three’s. If you notice three related coincidences, then it is a good chance that this is the answer you need. You can use this in lots of ways. It could be a hint to go in a certain direction (buy a certain book).It might be that you have an ache in your back. It goes away to be followed by a pain in the hip. That goes away and makes way for a sore knee. The fact that you notice three things is significant, to focus on your structural health. Maybe look into starting yoga.

Is the Law of 3s Real?

The reason why I believe this law of three’s is real is that because you filter a vast amount of sensory information, you don’t even register it. You even disregard and forget many things. For instance, let’s take the example of buying a book. How many books have you browsed and then forgotten, because there was nothing out of the ordinary. How many times do you hear a recommendation about a book and disregard it immediately. And yet you noticed this book recommendation because it was the third time. The crux here is not that it was a coincidence or anything supernatural, the goldmine of information for you to grasp here is that you noticed.

What you notice is always significant.

Gut feelings

It took me a long time to trust that my gut feelings were real and should be taken seriously. It is usually when things go wrong that I look back and realise that I had a hunch and a gut feeling. I have two major examples that looking back had major impacts on my life.

The first was when I was looking for work in my early thirties after a failed attempt to get into business. I had two interviews lined up, both for commissioned sales companies. One for an engineering firm and one for a training company. The interview with the Managing Director of the engineering company went well. We liked each other and talked about our mutual love of self-development. I was offered a second interview to meet the board. The second interview, with the training company, was a group interview with other candidates. As I walked into their offices, I felt an all too familiar gut feel. Don’t walk away from this – RUN. I can’t put my finger on it why. It was just a no – no. However, the training company offered me a job, it was great money, with the chance to earn massive commission.

Much to my later regret, I took the job at the Training Company and turned down the second interview at the Engineering Company. Although it felt right to go with the engineering firm, my logic persuaded me that the training firm was better.

The Aftermath

I left that training company three months later. This doesn’t begin to describe the horror of my experience here. It was sheer drudgery. I hated the place. I didn’t like the company and their values, shall we say, were not the same as mine.

What followed was around nine months of wilderness for me. I will write about this time one day, but for now all I will say is that things just fell apart.
To cap this story off, years later one Sunday morning, I picked up my weekend Financial Times and settled down with a mug of hot coffee. I flicked through to my favourite column – How I made my first Million, in the Money section. Low and behold, there was the MD of the engineering firm, being featured. I was gob-smacked. There was the man I turned down, who could have been a mentor and friend.

Once bitten, twice bitten, thrice shy

The second story, will help you figure out how to trust someone you meet in business, in seconds. After three months of renovation, my very first investment property was ready for letting out to tenants. This was a small two bed apartment in a block of six flats. I put the property up for let with a local estate agent. I quickly received a phone call from another property manager, who got my number from another owner in the building. He offered to better any offer the original agent made to me to manage the property. He wouldn’t even charge me to find a tenant. We agreed to meet up at the flat; it was all agreed over a hand-shake and it was a weak hand-shake. It was limp and lifeless and he completely avoided my eye contact.

As I left the building having handed over the keys, I was filled with feeling of woe, which came right up from by gut. This person could not be trusted.
However, logic ruled. If I stayed with him, I would be better off each month, financially and he would find a tenant for the flat completely free.

Fast forward to four years later, I shuck hands with my new property manager. A good firm hand shake, great eye contact and a genuine smile. Thank God that is all over I thought. Here’s someone I can trust. My family and I had just spent the previous month getting the flat back into a habitable state, after the first manager had been using the flat as a cannabis farm.
Always trust your gut.

Record your dreams

Your subconscious communicates with you in many ways. This communication between the conscious and subconscious faculties is a two way process. One method of communication is the dream. Dreams are symbolic representations, as we try to make sense of the world. The conscious mind, can grasp a tiny bit of what goes on. Like a laser, this focus is sharp but narrow. The subconscious mind is the opposite. It’s grasp is enormous, probably infinite. However, it is unfocused. It sees the whole picture, the ecology. Having evolved before humans could speak, the subconscious doesn’t use language or words, like the conscious. Instead it uses pictures and symbols. If it does use words, they will be an aphorism or lyrics from a song.

Archetypes

The subconscious also uses archetypes. Do you have a particular person or place that comes into your dreams. This person in the dream doesn’t represent the actual person, but is a representation or a part of you. I often dream of a couple of friends from primary school, who I’ve not seen for decades. One was a leader the other was a follower. These two archetypes represent two parts of me the teacher and the student. So whichever of these is in my dreams, I need to think about myself as the reciprocal.

Other dreams can be metaphorical. For instance, I dreamed recently that some old family treasure was buried deep under a derelict building, deep underground. All I needed to do was go and dig deep down underneath all the rubble of the past, to find the treasure. Translation – what we are searching for in life is almost always deep within our own psyche. It’s often within life’s baggage (our crap), where we find it. Get yourself a metaphorical shovel and go digging. Yes, it’s dirty hard work and often painful. But that’s where the treasure lies.

My recommendation to you is to start recording your dreams as soon as you can. If you think that your subconscious mind has downloaded and recorded everything you have ever seen, heard or read, then you have the wisest teacher right there for you.
I tie this in with my morning journal writing (another recommendation). At first, these dreams will not make sense, but over the weeks and months, you will notice patterns. You will start to get aha’s. you will begin to learn the language of your own subconscious.

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