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Are dreams important


Why Your Brain Needs to Dream

We often hear stories of people who’ve learned from their dreams or been inspired by them. Think of Paul McCartney’s story of how his hit song “Yesterday” came to him in a dream or of Mendeleev’s dream-inspired construction of the periodic table of elements.

But, while many of us may feel that our dreams have special meaning or a useful purpose, science has been more skeptical of that claim. Instead of being harbingers of creativity or some kind of message from our unconscious, some scientists have considered dreaming to be an unintended consequence of sleep—a byproduct of evolution without benefit.

Sleep itself is a different story. Scientists have known for a while now that shorter sleep is tied to dangerous diseases, like heart disease and stroke. There is mounting evidence that sleep deprivation leads to a higher risk of obesity and Alzheimer’s disease. Large population studies reflect a saddening truth—the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. Not only that, sleep helps us to hold onto our memories and to learn facts and skills faster, making it important for everyone including infants, students, athletes, pilots, and doctors.

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Much of this I outline in my new book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, which summarizes the many findings we have about sleep and its function in our lives.

But what about dreaming? Does it also have a purpose?

Recent work in my neuroscience lab and the work of other scientists has shown that dreams may have a very particular function important to our well-being. Here are the two main ways dreams help us.

Dreaming is like overnight therapy

It’s said that time heals all wounds, but my research suggests that time spent in dream sleep is what heals. REM-sleep dreaming appears to take the painful sting out of difficult, even traumatic, emotional episodes experienced during the day, offering emotional resolution when you awake the next morning.

REM sleep is the only time when our brain is completely devoid of the anxiety-triggering molecule noradrenaline. At the same time, key emotional and memory-related structures of the brain are reactivated during REM sleep as we dream. This means that emotional memory reactivation is occurring in a brain free of a key stress chemical, which allows us to re-process upsetting memories in a safer, calmer environment.

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How do we know this is so? In one study in my sleep center, healthy young adult participants were divided into two groups to watch a set of emotion-inducing images while inside an MRI scanner. Twelve hours later, they were shown the same emotional images—but for half the participants, the twelve hours were in the same day, while for the other half the twelve hours were separated by an evening of sleep.

Those who slept in between the two sessions reported a significant decrease in how emotional they felt in response to seeing those images again, and their MRI scans showed a significant reduction in reactivity in the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain that creates painful feelings. Moreover, there was a reengagement of the rational prefrontal cortex of the brain after sleep that helped maintain a dampening influence on emotional reactivity. In contrast, those who remained awake across the day showed no such dissolving of emotional reactivity over time.

That in itself doesn’t say anything about the role of dreaming. But we had recorded each participant’s sleep during the intervening night between the two test sessions, and we found that specific brain activity that reflected a drop in stress-related brain chemistry during the dream state determined the success of overnight therapy from one individual to the next.

Dreaming has the potential to help people de-escalate emotional reactivity, probably because the emotional content of dreams is paired with a decrease in brain noradrenaline. Support for this idea came from a study done by Murray Raskind on vets with PTSD, who often suffer debilitating nightmares. When given the drug Prazosin—a medication that lowers blood pressure and also acts as a blocker of the brain stress chemical noradrenaline—the vets in his study had fewer nightmares and fewer PTSD symptoms than those given a placebo. Newer studies suggest this effect can be shown in children and adolescents with nightmares, as well, though the research on this is still in its infancy.

The evidence points toward an important function of dreams: to help us take the sting out of our painful emotional experiences during the hours we are asleep, so that we can learn from them and carry on with our lives.

Dreaming enhances creativity and problem-solving

It’s been shown that deep non-REM sleep strengthens individual memories. But REM sleep is when those memories can be fused and blended together in abstract and highly novel ways. During the dreaming state, your brain will cogitate vast swaths of acquired knowledge and then extract overarching rules and commonalties, creating a mindset that can help us divine solutions to previously impenetrable problems.

How do we know dreaming and not just sleep is important to this process?

In one study, we tested this by waking up participants during the night—during both non-REM sleep and dreaming sleep—and gave them very short tests: solving anagram puzzles, where you try to unscramble letters to form a word (e.g., OSEOG = GOOSE). First, participants were tested beforehand, just to familiarize them with the test. Then, we monitored their sleep and woke them up at different points of the night to perform the test. When woken during non-REM sleep, they were not particularly creative—they could solve very few puzzles. But, when we woke up participants during REM sleep, they were able to solve 15-35 percent more puzzles than when they were awake. Not only that, participants woken while dreaming reported that the solution just “popped” into their heads, as if it were effortless.

In another study, I and my colleagues taught participants a series of relational facts—such as, A>B, B>C, C>D, and so on—and tested their understanding by asking them questions (e. g., Is B>D or not?). Afterwards, we compared their performance on this test before and after a full night’s sleep, and also after they’d had a 60- to 90-minute nap that included REM sleep. Those who’d slept or had a long nap performed much better on this test than when they were awake, as if they’d put together disparate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in their sleep.

Some may consider this trivial, but it is one of the key operations differentiating your brain from your computer. It also underlies the difference between knowledge (retention of individual facts) and wisdom (knowing what they all mean when you fit them together). The latter seems to be the work of REM-sleep dreaming.

“It’s said that time heals all wounds, but my research suggests that time spent in dream sleep is what heals”

―Dr. Matthew Walker

Dreaming improves creative problem solving, too, according to another study. Participants learned to navigate a virtual maze using trial and error and aided by the placement of unique objects—like Christmas trees—at certain junctions in the maze. After this learning session, the group was split in two, with half napping and half watching a video for 90 minutes. Nappers were occasionally awoken to ask about the content of their dreams; those watching a video were also asked about thoughts going through their minds.

Afterwards, the participants again tried to solve the maze, and those who napped were significantly better at it than those who didn’t, as expected. But the nappers who reported dreaming about the maze were 10 times better at the task than those who napped and didn’t dream about the maze. There’s a reason you’ve never been told to stay awake on a problem.

Looking at the content of these dreams, it was clear that the participants didn’t dream a precise replay of the learning experience while awake. Instead, they were cherry-picking salient fragments of the learning experience and attempting to place them within the catalog of preexisting knowledge. This is how dreaming helps us be more creative.

While the benefits of dreaming are real, too many of us have problems getting a full eight hours of sleep and lose out on these advantages. Alternatively, we may think we’re the exception to the rule—that we’re one of those people who doesn’t happen to need a lot of sleep. But nothing could be further from the truth. Research clearly shows that people who overestimate their ability to get by on less sleep are sadly wrong.

Five ways to enhance your sleep

This essay was adapted from Matthew Walker's new book, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (Scribner, 2017, 368 pages).

So how can we be sure to get enough sleep and experience a dream state? While we may be tempted to use sleeping pills to get to sleep, this has been shown to be detrimental to dreaming. Instead of taking pills, here are some simple ways to enhance your sleep:

1. Make sure your room is dark and that you are not looking at bright light sources—i.e., computer screens and cell phones—in the last hour or two before going to bed. You may even want to start dimming lights in your house in the earlier parts of the evening, which helps to stimulate sleepiness.

2. Go to bed and wake up at approximately the same time every day. This helps signal to your body a regular time for sleeping. It’s no use trying to sleep in a lot on weekends. There is no way to make up for regular sleep loss during the week.

3. Keep the temperature in your house cool at night—maybe even cooler than you think it should be, like around 65 degrees. Your body temperature needs to drop at night for sleep, and a lower room temperature helps signal your brain that it’s time to sleep.

4. If you have trouble falling asleep, or wake in the night feeling restless, don’t stay in bed awake. That trains the brain that your bed is not a place for sleeping. Instead, get up and read a book under dim light in a different room. Don’t look at your computer or cell phone. When sleepiness returns, then go back to bed. Or if you don’t want to get out of bed, try meditating. Studies suggest it helps individuals fall asleep faster, and also improves sleep quality.

5. Don’t have caffeine late in the day or an alcohol-infused nightcap. Both of these interfere with sleep—either keeping you awake or stimulating frequent wake-ups during the night.

Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to rest our brain and physical health each day. Atop of sleep, dreaming provides essential emotional first aid and a unique form of informational alchemy. If we wish to be as healthy, happy, and creative as possible, these are facts well worth waking up to.

The Science of Dreams · Frontiers for Young Minds

Abstract

Dreams are a common experience. Some are scary, some are funny. Recent research into how the brain works helps us understand why we dream. Strange combinations of ideas in our dreams may make us more creative and give us ideas that help us to solve problems. Or, when memories from the day are repeated in the brain during sleep, memories may get stronger. Dreams may also improve our moods. Together, these studies show that dreams and sleep are important for performing well when we are awake.

When she was 8, my daughter told me about one of her dreams. She was in a spaceship with some animals. Although she knew she was in a spaceship in her dream, when telling me about the dream, she realized the spaceship was actually a washing machine. At times, she and the animals would be out in space, but they also came back to earth. She told me the dream with a laugh and then moved on with her day, ignoring the crazy animals and spaceships that entertained her in her sleep.

Since we remember our dreams and then often forget them, what is their purpose? Why do we dream about the things we do? New research tools, particularly those that can be used to investigate the brain, are being used to answer these questions.

What Are Dreams?

Although it is hard to define what a dream is, for the purpose of this article, we will define dreams as our thoughts during sleep that we recall when we wake up. So, sleeping dreams are not the same as “daydreaming.” Dreams are mostly visual (made up of scenes and faces; sound, taste, and smell are rare in dreams [1]). Dreams can range from truly strange to rather boring, snapshots from a recent event.

To study dreams, scientists need a measure of dreaming. Most studies use dream reports (a person writes out her dreams when she wakes up) or questionnaires (a person answers questions like “How many dreams have you recalled in the past month?” [2]). Dreams are more likely to be recalled when a person is woken up from REM sleep. REM sleep is a type of sleep that is named for the rapid eye movements that can be measured during this stage of sleep. We do not dream as much in non-REM sleep, the sleep stages that make up the rest of the night, and dream reports from non-REM sleep are often less strange.

Dream frequency (how often dreams happen) and content (what dreams are about) is very different for everyone, and there are many reasons why this may be true. For example, you will remember dreams more if you are woken up by someone or by an alarm clock. This might be because you can still recall that dream memory while it is fresh but, if you wake up on your own, you will transition through a few sleep stages and possibly lose that dream memory. Dream recall changes with age, too. Older people are less likely to report dreaming. This could also be related to memory: since older people have weaker memories, it could be that they dream but cannot remember their dreams by the time they wake up. A brain area called the medial prefrontal cortex is also related to dream recall. If this brain area is damaged, the person recalls few dreams, which may mean the person dreams less (or not at all). Also, how tightly packed the brain cells are in the medial prefrontal cortex can vary from person to person, which may cause some healthy people to dream more or less than other healthy people. There are also genes that affect how much REM sleep people get. People with less REM sleep may not have the strange dreams that tend to come in REM. So, how long you sleep, your age, and your genetics may all explain why you dream more or less than someone else.

Do dreams actually happen while we sleep, or are they ideas that come to us when we wake up and we just “feel” like it happened during sleep? A recent study using a type of brain imaging called magnetic resonance imaging or (MRI: Read more in the Young Minds article “How Is Magnetic Resonance Imaging Used to Learn About the Brain?” [3]) helped answer this question (Figure 1A). The scientists made maps of the brain activity that occurred when people looked at pictures of things—keys, beds, airplanes. Later, the people in the study slept in the MRI machine. The scientists matched the pattern of brain activity from the people as they slept to brain activity patterns for the pictures they viewed earlier, and then chose the best match (Figures 1B,C). This match predicted what the person said they dreamed about 60% of the time. Although 60% is not perfect, it is better than guessing! [4]. This means that dreams are created in the brain during sleep.

  • Figure 1 - (A) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a way to investigate the brain.
  • The person lies on a bed inside a giant magnet. (B) MRI can measure the structure of the brain and the areas of the brain that are active. (C) MRI was used to measure dreaming. First, while the participant was awake, they viewed thousands of pictures in the MRI. This told scientists the specific brain responses to specific pictures. Later, when the participant slept in the MRI, scientists measured the brain activity patterns and matched this to the brain responses to the pictures the participant saw when they were awake. Scientists guessed that the best match would tell them what the participant was dreaming about. By asking the participant about their dreams in the MRI, scientists found that the dreams did tend to match the pictures predicted by the brain activity.

Dreams Support Memories

What is the purpose of our dreams? Researchers have found that sleep is important for memory (see this Frontiers for Young Minds article; “Thanks for the Memories…” [5]). Memories move from temporary storage in the hippocampus, a brain structure that is very important for short-term memory, to permanent storage in other parts of the brain. This makes the memories easier to remember later. Memories improve with sleep because the memories are replayed during sleep [6]. If you want to learn all the words to your favorite scene in a movie, you might re-watch that scene over and over again. The brain works the same way: neurons (brain cells) that are active with learning are active again and replay the learned material during sleep. This helps store the memory more permanently.

Memory replay may show up in our dreams. Dreams in non-REM sleep, when most memory replay happens, often contain normal people and objects from recent events. However, sleep switches between non-REM and REM sleep (see Figure 2). So, bizarre dreams in REM sleep may come from a combination of many different recent memories, which were replayed in non-REM sleep, and get jumbled up during REM sleep. If dreams help with memory processing, does that mean your memories are not being processed if you do not dream? No. Memories are moving to storage even if we do not dream.

  • Figure 2 - There are four types of sleep—REM sleep (purple) and three stages of non-REM sleep (blue).
  • REM stands for rapid eye movements, which happen during this stage of sleep. During REM sleep, muscle and brain activity also differ from other sleep stages. Characteristics of dreams tend to be different for each of these sleep stages.

Dreams Improve Creativity and Problem Solving

My daughter’s dream of a spaceship made a great story that she recited to me, and later, to her classmates. The images were intense and interesting, inspiring her to draw scenes in a notebook and write about the dream for school. This is an example of how dreams can help make us more creative. Mary Shelley, the author of the book Frankenstein, got the idea for her book from a dream. Even scientists get ideas from dreams [7].

To measure creative problem solving, scientists used a remote associates task, in which three unrelated words are shown, and the person is to come up with a word they have in common. For instance, HEART, SIXTEEN, and COOKIES seem unrelated until you realize they all are related to SWEET (sweetheart, sweet sixteen, and cookies are sweet) (Figure 3). The scientists wanted to see whether sleep helped people do better on this task. They found that people were better at thinking of the remote solution if they had a nap, particularly a nap with REM sleep. Given that REM is when most bizarre dreaming occurs, this supports the idea that these dreams might help us find creative solutions to problems [8].

  • Figure 3 - REM sleep helps people find creative solutions.
  • In the morning, participants did two tasks to test creativity and problem solving (A). They did one task again in the afternoon. In between, they either stayed awake (“wake” group) or took a nap. Those that took naps either did not have REM sleep in their nap (“nREM” group) or had both nREM and REM sleep (“nREM + REM” group). (B) If subjects stayed awake between the morning and afternoon tests (yellow bar), they did not improve on the task. They also did not improve if they had a nap that was only nREM sleep (light blue bar). But, if they had a nap with both nREM and REM sleep, they did better in the afternoon compared with when they did the task in the morning (dark blue bar). So, REM sleep must help us find creative solutions (from Cai et al. [8]).

This study and research like it gives us reason to believe that REM dreams may help us be more creative and solve problems. Many different memories may be activated at the same time and when these memories are mixed together, the result when we wake up may be both the memory of a strange dream and a unique perspective on problems.

Dreams Regulate Our Moods and Emotions

Dreams are usually emotional. One study found that most dreams are scary, angry, or sad.

Dreams might seem to be emotional simply because we tend to remember emotional things better than non-emotional things. For example, in waking life, the day you got a puppy is more memorable than a normal school day. So, dreams about emotional events might be remembered more easily than boring, non-emotional dreams. It is also possible that dreams are emotional because one job of dreams is to help us process emotions from our day [9]. This may be why the amygdala, an area of the brain that responds to emotions when we are awake, is active during REM sleep. If you had a sad day, you are more likely to have sad dreams. But, sleep also improves mood–sleep after a disagreement or sad event will make you happier.

Dreams could also help prepare us for emotional events, through something called threat simulation theory [10]. For example, when I dreamt that my young daughter, who could not swim, fell into a swimming pool, recall of that dream convinced me to sign her up for swim lessons. By simulating this fearful situation, I could prevent it by being prepared.

These studies show us that sleep and dreams are important for our emotions. By processing emotions in sleep, we may be better prepared and in a better mood the next day.

Conclusions

There are different ways scientists measure dreams—from asking questions to using MRI. These studies show us that activity in the brain while we sleep gives us the interesting dreams we recall when we wake up. These dreams help us remember things, be more creative, and process our emotions.

We know most kids do not get enough sleep. Some diseases (like Alzheimer’s disease) also make people sleep less, while others (like REM sleep behavior disorder and mood disorders) affect dreams directly. It is important to study sleep and dreams to understand what happens when we do not get enough sleep and how we can treat people with these diseases.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Glossary

Rapid Eye Movement (REM): ↑ A stage of sleep in which the eyes move rapidly and there is no muscle activity.

Medial Prefrontal Cortex: ↑ A specific area in the front of the brain that is associated with dream recall but also has a role in memory and decision-making.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): ↑ A tool used to take pictures of internal body parts (including the brain). MRI can also be used to measure the activity in the brain.

Hippocampus: ↑ An area in the brain that is thought to be important for short-term memory.

Neuron: ↑ A cell in the nervous system (brain and spinal cord) that can transmit information to other cells.

Amygdala: ↑ An area of the brain involved in the experience of emotions.

Threat Simulation Theory: ↑ A theory of dreaming that says that threats (things that could be bad) are simulated or practiced in your dreams to prepare you for those situations when you are awake.

References

1. ↑ Zandra, A. L., Nielsen, T. A., and Donderi, D. C. 1998. Prevalence of auditory, olfactory, and gustatory experiences in home dreams. Percept. Mot. Skills 87:819–26.

2. ↑ Schredl, M. 2002. Questionnaires and diaries as research instruments in dream research: methodological issues. Dreaming 12:17–26. doi: 10.1023/A:1013890421674

3. ↑ Hoyos, P., Kim, N., and Kastner, S. 2019. How Is Magnetic Resonance Imaging Used to Learn About the Brain? Front. Young Minds. 7:86. doi: 10.3389/frym.2019.00086

4. ↑ Horikawa, T., Tamaki, M., Miyawaki, Y., and Kamitani, T. 2013. Neural decoding of visual imagery during sleep. Science 340:639–42. doi: 10.1126/science.1234330

5. ↑ Davachi, L., and Shohamy, D. 2014. Thanks for the Memories.… Front. Young Minds. 2:23. doi: 10.3389/frym.2014.00023

6. ↑ O’Neill, J., Senior, T. J., Allen, K., Huxter, J. R., and Csicsvari, J. 2008. Reactivation of experience-dependent cell assembly patterns in the hippocampus. Nat. Neurosci. 11:209–15. doi: 10.1038/nn2037

7. ↑ Barrett, D. 2001. The Committee of Sleep: How artists, scientists, and athletes use dreams for creative problem-solving–and How You Can Too. New York, NY: Crown.

8. ↑ Cai, D. J., Mednick, S. A., Harrison, E. M., Kanady, J. C., and Mednick, S. C. 2009. REM, not incubation, improves creativity by priming associative networks. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 106:10130–4. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0900271106

9. ↑ Cremone, A., Kurdziel, L. B. F., Fraticelli, A., McDermott, J., and Spencer, R. M. C. 2017. Napping reduces emotional attention bias during early childhood. Dev. Sci. 20:e12411. doi: 10.1111/desc.12411

10. ↑ Revonsuo, A. 2000. The reinterpretation of dreams: an evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming. Behav. Brain Sci. 23:877–901. doi: 10.1017/s0140525x00004015

Where dreams lead us and why it is important to dream

About dreams and goals. Where dreams take us and why it is important to dream - let's talk about this topic, which is especially important for mothers on maternity leave, who often forget about themselves and their dreams.

Modern life requires us to be dynamic: lists, goals, tasks, careers, constant movement, decision-making and responsibility for them. And sometimes you want to quit everything and indulge in dreams. But the voices, your inner or relatives, acquaintances, book authors, coaches and businessmen, say: “Dreams are in the furnace, their time is gone.” Structure of life: 5 principles for introducing good habits into your life

Dreams are a resource for children

Do you remember how you could dream all day long as a child? And about flights into space, and about the fact that we will be able to make all people on the planet happy, and about how one day we will see the sea or its depths, ride a seahorse, and just dreamed of a doll or a scooter.

“What should children do,” you say, “play and dream, the rest is the troubles of parents.” Of course, you are right. But do you remember your childhood dreams? What did you feel while dreaming? Perhaps the wings grew, the world seemed rosier, and the obstacles were not serious? Dreams beckoned, drawing a future where every day is valuable, filled with joy, small and big victories, accomplishments, goals and achievements. Children's dreams know no boundaries, they fill every day with meaning and colors.

In children's dreams there was no place for dullness, monotony and depression, there are no boundaries and restrictions in them. Every age has its own dreams. Some of them have come true, some have lost their taste and cause only a smile. Do you dream now, as an adult, of a mother of one or more children? And if you dream, then what? Mind maps: what they are and how they can be useful for mothers

Dreams: harm or benefit

Spears, swords and arrows break in the argument: "To be or not to be dreams. " Skeptics argue that dreams, whatever emotions you may cause - harm and illegal confiscation of life resources, only the goal is important. But let's look from the other side.

For many mothers, no matter how much they love their children, their family in general and their home, life resembles a squirrel wheel - the same duties and worries that eventually get bored. And the question arises: “What is the interest? Raise a healthy and happy baby, give him love and affection, support your husband. Perhaps make money. Perhaps daily tired. What else? What bright, alluring awaits me in the future? Precisely me?"

Mothers are used to giving everything to their loved ones, but what can a squeezed orange give? But you can let a rainbow of colors into your life, fill it, deepen it, expand it, go beyond the ordinary, monotony. Dreaming, we begin to better understand and feel ourselves, do not forget about our development, fulfillment, because mother is the connecting link in the family chain. Overflowing with inspiration, energy, happiness, interest, we can share it with our loved ones. And not only with them. If mom is "blown away": what to do with emotional burnout

Solid bonuses and advantages

What do dreams give us? Why is it so important to dream?

  • The meaning of life appears, except for survival and satisfaction of natural needs and instincts.
  • A dream gives strength to create, work, overcome difficulties, sometimes it gives strength to live.
  • Realizing our dreams, we realize ourselves, our talents, abilities, destiny.
  • Dreams do not allow us to stop, creating a cozy swamp, they lead us further and further. One realized dream is replaced by another.
  • A dream, and especially a purposeful movement towards its fulfillment, energizes with positive, does not let you get hung up on difficulties, shifts the focus from problems.
  • By the way, people who make their dreams come true are healthier. 8 easy exercises: doing exercises with children
  • Striving for a dream teaches organization, competent time management, which is very important and useful for young mothers.
  • A woman who realizes her dream harmonizes relationships in the family, because she feels more energetic, happy, confident and broadcasts her feelings to others.
  • When we realize our dream, our self-esteem rises.
  • A mother who knows how to dream and fulfill her dreams will show a wonderful example to her children, will not cut off their fantasies at the root, plunging into the "reality and truth of life."

And don't forget, great accomplishments don't happen by themselves, it's a dream that leads to them. The path to your dream fills life with special meaning and joy.

Dreams and goals: unity of opposites

A dream comes from the heart, from the soul. It can be big or small, easy to do or completely impossible. We have already understood why a dream must be in the life of a mother. We can and should, like children, dream about anything, without limiting ourselves to material or age limits. At the same time, a dream can become a goal.

The goal is clearly defined, specific, and achievable. The goal gives us movement, and the dream - the direction of this movement. To achieve something, you need to understand what exactly you want to achieve. Without a goal, it's hard to get anywhere. And without a dream, it is difficult to choose a truly worthwhile goal. How a mother uses a baby carrier: personal experience

Dream and goal complement each other . One comes from the creative left hemisphere, the other from the logical right. Uniting, they help mothers find their way of life, the part that is outside the family, their vocation, and discover their talents.

Worst of all, many tired mothers have neither a dream nor a goal, because we have simply forgotten how to allow ourselves to dream. But how to live without a dream? No, you need to learn to dream again. Dreams come true and bear fruit if you move towards them purposefully, step by step.

In the beginning there was a dream

Archimedes, Icarus, Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Jules Verne and hundreds, thousands of inventors, travelers, discoverers - dreamers. Once in their hearts and minds, a dream arose to fly like a bird, move faster than on a horse, transmit signals hundreds of kilometers away, reach the Earth's pole and even fly to the stars.

Mankind would not have died out without airplanes, cars, giant telescopes and total electrification and internetization, as well as without multicookers and modern irons. At first there was no goal, there was only a dream. But she was so strong and so important to these people that she became a target.

You can say that they are men, it is easier for them. Maybe. Sarah Walker dreamed of overcoming her skin disease and feeling beautiful. She created her brand of hair products as a young widow with a child in her arms, and later became a millionaire. It was her dream that brought her to this. Should I send my child to kindergarten: pros and cons

Joy Mangano invented many useful things in everyday life, including a self-wringing mop, and secured a comfortable existence for herself. The dream of having free hands also led her to this. A lot of things have been invented by women who dream of simplifying life and freeing their hands.

It was women who invented the dishwasher and snow blower, windshield wipers and mufflers for the car, the circular saw, the synthetic material Kevlar and silicone, coffee filters and chocolate chip cookies, the bra for themselves and perfected diapers for children, the world owes them the prototype of modern Wi-Fi . Mary Kay Ash, Coco Chanel, Joanne Rowling were not afraid to dream, being in difficult conditions. And how many mothers, whose names are not so well known, heard the call of a dream and found their calling, their way?

Dear readers, I want to share with you a wonderful motivational video about dreams. Watch and be inspired!

Dream: why it is so important to make your dreams come true

“Dreaming is not harmful,” they repeated to us like a mantra since childhood. This attitude, unfortunately, remained with many in adulthood. Meanwhile, in difficult moments of emotional burnout and depression, the very cherished desire that a person carefully keeps in his heart saves. It doesn't matter if you secretly yearn for a skydiving or mini-vacation in the mountains, the main thing is to give yourself the opportunity to make this dream come true. We found the answer to the question of how it is right to dream so that everything comes true in the book by Elena Rezanova “It's the norm!” publishing house MIF. We share an excerpt below.

How not to deal with dreams

Dreams only lead to the wrong place if you break safety rules. Yes, imagine, there are such people, and they, like the flight safety rules, are written - no, not in blood - they are written in the wake of mistakes and disasters.

A dream, even one that has been with you for ten years, is also a hypothesis. She needs to be checked. The main mistake is to dream for a long time, decide, then finally give up everything, burn bridges and start realizing. Exactly this was the story of Alexander, who dreamed of a restaurant for a long time and put everything on it. Sergey acted in the same way: he quit his job to become a writer, and after two years of honest (and fruitless) attempts, he felt himself in an even greater impasse.

We think that if we devote ourselves completely to our dream, only then will we have a great life. But as Elizabeth Gilbert so beautifully said in The Big Magic, the surest way to kill any dream is to make it pay its bills.

Popular

well". Liz herself maintained parallel sources of income for a long time, because she “did not want to burden her literary vocation and hang on it the responsibility to support me financially. There is nothing shameful about working. Another shameful thing is to scare off your own talent by demanding that you take care of yourself.

In the approach "dream - dare - win" the saddest outcome is the realization that you have come to the wrong place, and, as a result, disappointment in yourself and refusal to change in the future. The person appears to be thrown back. That's why it's a losing proposition.

Actually, in the approach "dream - be afraid - do nothing" even less good. Again a losing proposition.

And what is the winning one?

Implement! But wisely. Because any dream - even if it's a false insight or a viral dream - is a huge potential and an indication of what you are missing right now.

Unlived impressions and lost experience

It turns out that a dream (not even related to work) is the point from which changes can start.

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And this is a great alternative to going in circles and underrealization. In my opinion, underrealization consists of two components: lost impressions and unlived meanings.

How to understand these components?

I offer two techniques to help you explore and fill the gaps in these resources.

Making up for missing impressions: the exercise "100 things worth doing while you're alive."

Make your own list. Most likely, these will be the very impressions that you are missing right now - inspiring bright moments shelved in anticipation of a brighter future. But even now they can become a source of a bright present. No delay! The list may include items that are difficult to implement (climb Machu Picchu or walk the red carpet in Cannes), and easy to do (go hiking with the kids on the weekend or attend a dessert-making master class). Sometimes complex things just seem so. One listener of my lectures shared that she would like to one day feel like a soldier of Jane, but this is unrealistic, not to join the army. The next day, she was sent a link to Soldier Jane's Camp website, with a group of girls running through the mud on the front page, just as ordered. A ten-day program where you can feel like a soldier of Jane to the fullest.

Why dreams cannot be ignored

Once a dream has arisen, it cannot simply be ignored or put aside. Let me remind you: a dream is energy. It is bad if it circulates somewhere in a closed space, because from there it will begin to send signals, remind of itself and cause a feeling that something is missing.

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But if you understand your dreams and use them to learn right now to have a positive experience, you will gain a lot of useful things.

First, exit from the vicious circle. You go to a new, unexplored space and try / test something there, while operating in a territory that is safe for yourself. Dreams are a wonderful test of the hypotheses I wrote about earlier. To test the dream of a restaurant, you can plan for a long time, get into debt and buy a restaurant, or you can get a job there on your next vacation. It will be the beginning of something new or just an interesting experience. Both are great.

Second, state change. You no longer remember about life with “extinguished headlights”, energy, drive are added, wings grow. And with them we can do a lot. After all, the feeling of flight and happiness is not a reward at the finish line (first success, then happiness) - it is a charge that gives us the strength to move forward (first happiness, then success).

Thirdly, is a way to know yourself and discover new facets. "You can't read a label while sitting inside a jar," wrote Steven Kotler and Jamie Weale in Stealing Fire. New experience is the territory of discovery. Remember: after new exercises, muscles hurt that we did not know about.

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Fourth, is a more complete implementation.

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