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Top 5 Ways to Activate & Increase Your Dreams | Ep #30
56 Plays4 years ago
Dreams should be an intricate part of our daily lives. They speak to us, guide us, and lead us into the life we are meant to have. In part two of our series on dreams we dive into how exactly do you activate dreams if you feel you don't' have them and so much more.
Things we cover:
- How to "turn on" your dream life.
- How to increase the number of dreams you have.
- How to extract more details from the dreams you're already having on a regular basis.
- This point comes in handy for next week's episode where we will go into how you can pull meaning from your dreams.
Recommended
Transcript
Exploring Masculinity and Dreams
00:00:00
Speaker
Men, we are not simple, chest-thumping, rock-smashing, fire-starting barbarians. We have depth. We intensely feel. We are scared, yet brave. We love to have fun. We're imperfect and make mistakes. We're compassionate and loving. We are multifaceted. Let's explore the reality of masculinity together.
Series Overview & Importance of Dreams
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to part two of a three-part series on dreams. Now, if you haven't already, I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to last week's. And that is we covered identifying the source of your dreams. There's a couple of primary sources that they come from, as well as what are the main types of dreams. That was last week's. And then this week, we're gonna be diving into how do you increase your dreams
00:00:56
Speaker
Or if you don't really have much of a dream life, how do you activate them? How do you kind of turn that switch on? And then next week, we are going to be getting into how to understand your dreams, like how to actually extract something from your dreams in a way that you can integrate them in your life.
00:01:15
Speaker
If you haven't already, I would highly recommend that you subscribe because you don't want to miss part three of this series. Really, part three is the one that kind of takes it all home and helps you integrate all the different aspects of dreams. So let's go ahead and dive into how do you increase your dreams? And if you're not currently dreaming, how do you activate them and kind of turn that switch on in your life?
00:01:49
Speaker
Today's episode is gonna be fun. And maybe not necessarily the episode itself, but what I know will happen as a byproduct of you listening to this episode. And that's because the things that we're gonna get into today on increasing your dreams as well as if you feel like you don't really recall dreams or have dreams, essentially how to activate them in your life with all the clients I've worked with.
Five Actions to Activate Dreams
00:02:13
Speaker
Anytime we walk through what we're gonna be going through today,
00:02:17
Speaker
without fail in the coming days or weeks, they all of a sudden start having dreams. And so that's how I know if you're listening to this episode that you are already committing to increasing your dreams or further integrating your dreams into your life.
00:02:35
Speaker
So we're going to dive into really the five primary things that you can do to either increase or, like I said before, activate if you feel like you don't have the dreams right now. And the first one, it really starts with your heart posture. And that may seem really simple or almost too simple, but you'd be surprised how many people overlook this first step. And that's because you have to ask yourself,
00:03:04
Speaker
How have you positioned your heart related to dreams? Do you come with an expectant heart? Or do you just kind of go? Yeah, I have dreams. Sometimes I haven't. Sometimes I don't. It's no big deal. The way that you position your heart as well as your spirit to engage with your nightlife
00:03:24
Speaker
really determines the degree at which you start to experience more vivid dreams or lucid dreams or the variety of different kinds of dreams that you can have. It starts with being open to them.
00:03:39
Speaker
Now you might say, okay, that sounds great, but tangibly, how can I do that? I hear what you're saying, Josh, but that doesn't really help me out in the sense of positioning my heart. So here's what I want you to do when you lay down to go to bed tonight. You just call it a social experiment with yourself to see how it goes.
00:04:00
Speaker
But when you're laying down in your bed, do one of two things or both things. And that is one, put your hand on your heart. And if you're not sure exactly what your heart is other than this thing that's in your chest that pumps blood for you, I highly recommend going back to our first guest that we had with Blair Reynolds, who breaks down in detail what exactly your heart is and why it's such a big deal.
00:04:25
Speaker
It'll be also linked in your show notes as well. But laying down in bed, put your hand on your heart and just say, heart, I give you permission to speak to me through my dreams. Again, heart, I give you permission to speak to me through my dream. And that is verbalizing your commitment to your heart.
00:04:48
Speaker
Essentially, right before you go to sleep, that is you positioning your heart to engage with you, your subconscious to engage with you when your conscious is resting. And then on the spiritual side of it, the same is true. You're laying in bed and you just say, God, I invite you to speak to me through my dreams. And we're going to get into telling the difference between the two of those. But for now, all we're talking about is how do you activate and increase your dreams?
00:05:18
Speaker
And this is one of the cornerstones that everything else stems from. Because if you're dismissive or maybe you have a negative relationship with your heart or a negative heart posture towards your dreams, those all are factors that determine what exactly you are going to get from your dreams or the amount of dreams that you may have in your life. And that kind of leads into the second one, which is to be expectant. And what do you mean by that, Josh?
00:05:48
Speaker
I mean, don't just say the words, heart, I give you permission to speak through my dreams. Yes, that's important. But partner those words with an expectancy that you are going to actually anticipate an increase in dreams. Basically what I'm saying is I'm daring you, I'm imploring you, I'm asking you to apply hope to your dreams.
00:06:14
Speaker
And I know, especially for some people, if they've had nightmares that torment them, or they feel like they have dreams all the time but don't know what they mean, or they happen to have reoccurring dreams that they just don't understand the meaning, all those kinds of things can actually create hope deferred, which in the Bible says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. So doing this, what seems like a simple thing of giving your heart permission to engage with dreams and to be expectant,
00:06:43
Speaker
If you have a negative association or history of dreams, this can actually be a really hard thing to do, is to be willing to re-engage with hope related to your dreams. But positioning your heart and being expectant are probably the two biggest things that I would say determine to what degree do your dreams be a part of your life.
00:07:06
Speaker
Now, on the practical side of things, there's a couple things that you can do. The first is, keep a dream journal or an audio recording device, whatever that may be for you. Most of us, it's our phone that we charge on our nightstand. Don't just have them, use them. What I mean by that is, if you have a journal,
00:07:28
Speaker
I often tell people to dedicate a journal just to their dreams, or if you have one that's kind of broken out in sections, to dedicate a section just to your dreams. And the reason is because the more that you integrate dreams, the more that you honor them, the more that you make them a part of your life, you want to have one source that you go to to begin to reflect on them. Or as life goes on and you look back on them, you realize, oh, I had that dream six months ago. Where was that?
00:07:57
Speaker
And if you're actually writing them down, you have a central location that you can do. You have a central location that you can refer back to. Not only that, but when you write down dreams in your journal, you're actually using a different part of your mind. And what that does is that actually drives the experience of the dream and the meaning of the dream even deeper. It's the same principle as if you have something that you're pursuing or that you're passionate about, the best thing you can do is
00:08:26
Speaker
Put it everywhere. Talk about it. Write it down. Put it in front of you. Tell your friends. The more that you are doing that, the more it becomes a part of who you are. And the same is true for journaling, where if you're writing it down, you are setting aside time where you're consciously thinking about, okay, what were the details?
00:08:45
Speaker
And the more details, the better, because sometimes the smallest detail has the biggest impact or meaning within the dream. So everything you can think of, whether it be the color of something, the mood of the sky, the the mood that you were in in the dream or the kinds of cars, how many cars were they big? Were they small? Were there was there one person, two people, 10 people, 1000 people
00:09:12
Speaker
Were they black, white, Hispanic, Indian? What were they? Every single detail that you can think of, jot that down. Now you may say, you know what, Josh, I just don't journal. It sounds great, but it's not a part of my life and I'm not going to do it just for the sake of dreams. That's fine. Then I would say to you, it'd be good to use the audio recording.
00:09:37
Speaker
You got voice memos. If you've got an iPhone, I'm sure Android has another app that's similar to that. I'm an iPhone user myself. So that's kind of my default and my go-to, but I have several embarrassing voice memos of me sounding really groggy because I just woke up, but I want to capture the details of the dream. And so I literally have voice memos where I'm going.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah, I just, um, so I just had a crazy dream and it, it, uh, it started like at nighttime and, you know, cause I'm kind of in and out of consciousness or I just woke up. But then what I do is I go back and I listened to it later on in the day after I've had my morning coffee or tea and I re listened to it. Now for me, I write them down because I like to have that centralized location for my dreams, but even just listening to it again.
00:10:32
Speaker
You can actually close your eyes and go into the dream again and kind of re-experience it and even look around, look for details. But you start with actually capturing the dream in a voice memo or in a journal.
00:10:49
Speaker
And just as a side note, I would highly recommend you keep your journal and or your phone, whatever it may be that you're going to use for this, right next to your nightstand and just make it a habit. You roll over, you grab it, you start writing certain details. It's more important to grab the details as soon as you wake up than it is to have something neatly written down or for you to sound good or whatever it may be. It's more important to grab the dream first.
Capturing and Sharing Dreams
00:11:19
Speaker
Cause I don't know about you, but I've had dreams where in the dream I'm thinking in the dream, man, this is crazy. There is no way I'm going to forget this, or this is so vivid or so detailed. And then you wake up, you have the habit of just waking up, doing your morning stretches or having coffee, having tea, going downstairs, making breakfast, whatever it may be for you. And an hour later, you're saying to your spouse or your friend or your kids,
00:11:45
Speaker
You know what, I had a dream, but I don't even remember, I just remember, I don't know, I was driving a car or something, but I don't remember anything else really. It can fade that quickly. So a way for you to increase your dreams is to actually position practically things that will capture them as soon as you wake up before you move on and life gets in the way and you kind of lose track of the details.
00:12:10
Speaker
Now the fourth one, I've already kind of touched on it, but that is to talk about your dreams. And I don't know about you, but dreams just in general, dream interpretations, dream meanings, it was mostly kind of new age woo woo for me. And so I was always turned off by sharing them or talking about them.
00:12:31
Speaker
And hopefully, if that's kind of your perception of dreams, I'm helping change that perception a little bit. But talking about your dreams does a few things. First of all, circling back to our first few points, it's about the posture.
00:12:48
Speaker
If you're honoring your dreams in the sense of you're talking about them, you're mulling them over, you're letting them be a part of your life, what will happen is the more that you honor the dreams by talking about them with family members. I mean, for my kids, I have three kids ages 5, 8, and 11.
00:13:12
Speaker
And they know when they wake up, we normally either snuggle in my bed or downstairs on the couch. And normally it is, Hey, how'd you sleep last night? Oh, I slept good. I didn't sleep good. I woke up. I didn't. And then followed by, well, did you have any dreams? What were they? And we literally take the first 30 minutes of our day together as a family. And we're talking about dreams.
00:13:39
Speaker
We're not just talking about dreams. We're talking about our nightlife in general, the quality of our sleep. Did we experience anything? Did you wake up? Oh, well, you definitely woke daddy up last night, whatever it may be, because I'm wanting to help them understand the value of actually using a third of their life, the sleeping time, the nightlife.
00:14:00
Speaker
to their advantage. And the number one way you can use that to your advantage is to actually understand dreams and integrate them into your life. So what do we do? We honor the dreams by sitting down and talking about them as a family. And we're sharing them with one another.
00:14:16
Speaker
And there's times where I've shared things with my 11 year old and he's given me a meaning that I didn't even catch. So if you have kids, I would be slow to dismiss their ability to find insight into your dreams. And I would even broaden that even more and just say into your life, but specific for dreams. Don't be quick to dismiss them just because they may be younger. A lot of times they can actually see something within dreams because they haven't had the life experiences.
00:14:42
Speaker
that have tainted their view or taught them to not see things that we often overlook at times. And the same vein of talking about it, I would say to reach out to one or two friends.
00:14:58
Speaker
You can have group text messages. You can call friends. You can Marco Polo them. You can FaceTime them. There's a thousand and one ways that you can reach out to people. But the point is that you want to integrate them into your life. And the best way you can do that is to be talking about them.
00:15:17
Speaker
And so when you talk about them, a lot of times when you share them more than once, or you're sharing them with a friend, you actually realize certain aspects of the dream or interpretations or meanings from the dream. Or what happens a lot of times is as you're sharing the dream,
00:15:35
Speaker
All of a sudden, you go, oh, you know what, I forgot about this part of the dream, but yeah, I definitely experienced this and this and this. And certain details that you may have forgotten when you first woke up and jotted it down and journaled or did the voice memo.
00:15:50
Speaker
You will actually recall certain details because you used your journal or your voice memo as kind of a springboard, but then sharing it with friends or family helped you recall even more. And so really what it comes down to is the fifth point, which is the more that you honor your dreams as an actual legitimate way of engaging with life, experiencing life, experiencing your relationship with God, experiencing your relationship with yourself, with others.
Integrating Dreams into Life
00:16:20
Speaker
You know a lot of times dreams gives us insight into relationships both with ourselves with God and with others but it's hard to gain that insight if we haven't found a way to integrate dreams as an integral part of our life and so if you Take the time to really do these five things right position your heart be expectant
00:16:42
Speaker
Journal them or log the dreams in some way. Talk about them with friends. And honor them. What you're going to do is you're going to actually see an increase in your dreams. You're going to start to recall even more dreams that you may have had. Or maybe you had reoccurring dreams that felt dormant. All of a sudden they will start to come back. Or I've heard so many people say, I dream but I just don't remember them. Or I don't remember the details.
00:17:09
Speaker
And doing these five simple things, all of a sudden they come back to me a week later, two weeks later and go, man, Josh, this is crazy, but I haven't had a vivid dream in five years. And this last week I had two. So I know that if you take these five points seriously, you are going to experience an increase in the number of dreams and the details that you pull from dreams. And if you haven't already started to really engage with dreams, it's going to activate that part of your life.
00:17:39
Speaker
As always, if you get something from this podcast, especially in the realm of dreams, it means the world to me if you share it with somebody. Pass it along. I want more than anything these podcasts to be conversation starters or provoke conversation amongst men that maybe we don't have by default or doesn't come super easily.
Conversations on Dreams Among Men
00:18:02
Speaker
And I don't know about you, but one of the areas that doesn't come super easily from me as a man is the whole area of dreams. That's why we're doing a three-part series on it. So if you found this beneficial, please leave a review, let me know, and share with a friend, share with five friends, whatever it may be. Help get the word out in the area of dreams. And I guarantee you it's going to disrupt your life in a beautiful way
00:18:29
Speaker
If you take the time to actually honor and integrate your dreams, you may get certain insights into your life and to others' lives that you couldn't otherwise gain.