Choose your own dreams
Preparing your mind during the day can shape your dreams at night.
Find a physical reminder
In order to make a particular person, experience, or solution to a problem appear in your dream, you’ll want to focus your mind on that topic in the moments before you fall asleep. If the theme lends itself toward a physical memento you can place on your nightstand, all the better. “If it’s a personal problem, it might be (a photo of) the person you have the conflict with,” Dr Deidre Barrett, author of The Committee of Sleep and assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, suggests. “If you’re an artist, it might be a blank canvas. If you’re a scientist, the device you’re working on that’s half assembled or a mathematical proof you’ve been writing through versions of.”
Expect common themes
As Dr Sandy P. Marantz, a licensed clinical social worker notes, the themes that appear most often in your dreams are the ones that appear most often in your life. Dreams “tend to repeat unresolved issues until they are mastered by the dreamer. As well, they can represent wishes and desires that we harbour,” she explains. With that said, if there’s a specific person, problem, or idea you’d like to explore more often in your dreams, make an effort to spend more time with it during your waking hours.