What problems can you solve by sleeping on it?

It is not unusual when we start a new job, take up a new hobby or begin a new course of study, to find that we vividly dream about our new activities in waking life. one of the theories about why we dream is based on this observation, and the fact that children and babies sleep much more than adults, giving them more time to dream and so process the huge amounts of information and skills they are learning.

 

We can use this knowledge to our advantage by making sure we get enough sleep when learning new skills to give ourselves the maximum chance of subconsciously processing our new skills and making sure we retain them in our long term memory, as well as integrate the skills so they become “second nature, ”  which basically means they thoughts and skills have moved from conscious thought into subconscious reactions.  Anyone who has learned to drive a car will understand how to begin with, you have to think about every little action: how to brake, when to signal, when to check the mirrors and so on.  But after a while, you don’t think about it anymore, it just seems to happen “naturally.”  This is our subconscious taking over.

But we can go even further than this, and take our learning and problem solving skills to the next level by actively engaging our dreams.  This simply means asking our dreams to help us.  We can write our problem on a piece of paper before sleeping, or simply concentrate on what is bothering or concerning us before sleeping.  But the important thing then is to let it go, give up trying to consciously struggle with the issue, and relax and let our subconscious take over.  our subconscious mind in our dreams will show us connections we may never have noticed when we were awake.  This is not so strange as it may seem, many scientists, mathematicians, artists and writers have had breakthroughs  on important issues in their dreams.  We just need to learn to trust, to let go go, and then to listen to our dreams.  We don’t need to passively wait for our dreams to help us, we can actually start to train our dreams to help us.

There is a very good reason when we are struggling to understand something, we will receive the advice to “sleep on it.”  Its what happens while we are asleep that is the fascinating part!