Keeping a Dream Journal: Reveal Your Inner Secrets

Did you know that studying your dreams can reveal secrets about your life that even YOU didn't know? Repetitive themes, unfamiliar people, falling, swimming, driving a car. Everything you dream actually has something to do with your waking life, no matter how trivial and hard to find it is. Dreams are simply your sub conscience trying to work out a problem or reveal emotions to us.

Here is how it works. Each morning when you get up, allow yourself a couple minutes to write down what your dreams from the previous night. The reason it is best to do this upon waking is that you will remember the most detail about the dream at this time, and may even still have strong emotions linked to it. Write down as many details as you can, including people in it, names, places, years, colors, sights, sounds, etc.

Along with each dream you write down, write down some of the things that are going on in your life. Don't think about them, just write.

If you think too hard about the day to day happenings, there is the risk of including things that aren't important instead of the things that are. Feel free, however, to include as much as you like, because any and all daily activity can enter into our dreams. The important stuff will surface in time, to be sure.

Do this for two weeks to several months. Then take an afternoon and read your dream journal from front to back, and you may start to notice certain themes or people popping into your dreams over and over again. The longer you keep the journal, the more accurate the feedback will be. The themes may or may not be obvious at first, but they will be noticed.

Once you identify a theme, compare your notes with things happening in your waking life. The correlations may be tiny, or may be strikingly and painfully obvious. For instance, someone you are in a relationship with could show up in your dreams as something completely different, but representative of your feelings toward that person.

I also recommend you get a book that breaks down what certain types of dreams mean. For instance, if you dream you are in a car with no brakes, the most common reason is that the dreamer feels their life is out of control, and they are just along for the ride. Breathing underwater or flying could indicate a positive, comfortable outlook at the time, and foreshadow good things to come!

When you know what to look for, analyzing dreams can be fun and helpful. Even without a key or legend as to what your dreams mean, it is possible to break them down and figure them out to a great extent simply by writing them in the journal and thinking about them in the waking state. So get a notebook, brush your teeth and go to bed; you have writing and analyzing to do in the morning!