How to keep a good record of your dreams.
When you decide to delve deeper into understanding your dreams meanings, you may not be exactly sure where to start.
My advise is to find a method or system that works best for you and keep using it for as long as possible.
- Find the best way to record your dreams
- Once chosen, stick with it.
This will build up a wealth of dream meanings and information all in one place and one system.
It will also help to increase your confidence by improving the frequency of paying attention to your dreams as consistently as possible.
For Beginners, I suggest to use the traditional practice of keeping a typical journal or notebook. You may already have a type you are comfortable using so use that.
It really helps that you can keep it beside your bed and if necessary, is nimble enough to take with you if you are going to be away from home for longer than normal.
Use a pen or pencil and make sure it’s one that you enjoy using.
Making the Dream Entry work
These three elements create a good record of a dream:
- Date
- Title
- Scribbles – Words & Drawings
Date
Important (if not obvious), make sure to log that date.
The Title
When logging a dream it is not unusual for me to quickly commit the title first. It’s my way to create a snapshot of the overall theme or feeling behind the dream. The title is a crucial element in practice, as it gives your dream an identity. It will help for later recall or reference. Think of your dream as a story or chapter in your book of life, a fantastically flourishing or frugally functional title is fitting – “Chased by a GIANT Ant In The Desert!”, yep that’s a perfect title and sounds like a fascinating dream.
Scribbles – Words
Scribble and write up your dream recount in plain and simple terms. Do include include your own thoughts from when in the dream and also your impression while recording the dream too (side notes or side narration). This is often useful in capturing the moment – you may log important keywords and details that at the time make no sense, seems incongruent or plain bizarre.
Try be as attentive to the purity of the signal or what you witnessed and experienced in your dream that comes to you in those early moments of retracing, recounting and recording your dream – do not over think what you are capturing trying to remain faithful to the immediacy.
Scribbles – Drawings
If you can draw something in your dream. Draw it. By all means. Not everyone will have the confidence, and it’s not essential but if you can or need to draw something add the illustrations or depiction to your record do it without hesitation – this is not an art competition.
When starting out – Keep it simple
Dreamborders
If you do this as often as possible you are already doing a lot, more than you actually know, but in time you will be glad you started somewhere.
Bonus Tip:
The books with the elasticated straps are super if you use a pen with a clip – you can keep both your journal + pen all in the one place – preventing a scramble in the dark for a stick that writes good!
If you want to know even more, you can also read my substack: