Use your talents all day (and night) long

Just as you are constantly analyzing and learning during the day, don't think that it slows down at night while you are sleeping. Serge King's "Mastering the Hidden Self" has a great chapter on dream analysis. Start taking some time upon waking to discover and recall what you were just dreaming.

When you sort out what you were dreaming about, you'll find all sorts of lessons and advice there. Just because you take a nap or go to sleep for the night, this doesn't mean your subconscious or superconscious do. In fact, this is when they have a chance to review the day and sort out various conflicts. Also, it is a time to send you advice or summarize lessons learned.

Take some time (in addition to reviewing your goals/visions as per Hill's 6 steps) to review your day briefly and pose questions or problems for solution. What you have your attention on just before you sleep will get attention while you are sleeping. Often you will then have the solution when you wake - either a partial or full answer to the question or problem you want resolved.

People you know or heard of may keep a notepad by their bed so that they can write down what they were dreaming about when they wake up. This is how you train your memory to capture your dreams. Later, you might short-hand this by writing down the lessons learned - after taking a few moments to review the dreams in your mind and boil them down to the few or single idea which you were working on during the night. ("You" in this case includes all three parts of your being - the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious.)

This is what I started when I first read and started applying King's book. I got a spiral notebook and put it by the bed side. Then I started writing anything that came to mind on wakening. I had already gotten into the mode of wakening several times during the night for no "good" reason. But I didn't want to turn on the lights and then have to spend time "getting back to sleep". By taking some time to note what I was dreaming about in those short waking moments, I could then recall them when I finally "woke up" for the day. Then I'd write down the points I had been covering.

Sometimes, I'd find that the same dream was repeating over and over. Other times, the dreams would be related. Often, I'd have three or five or more different dreams - depending on how many times I woke during my sleep. There would be a lesson in each dream, or a common thread running through each. I'd write the summary down. Sometimes I would have a lot to write about, sometimes not. Later, I began blogging when I was thoroughly woken up - such as now. Being able to simply and quickly get your thoughts out into a computer has been a godsend.

And that's become the point of this year's blogging as I re-program myself. Write it all down and get it into a book (blook) format later. See if I come up with anything interesting and helpful to others as I go.

This early am, I'm writing about dreams, something I had made a mental note of during my day job and had "forgotten" until I was woken. So here you are.

It is said Edison took as many as eighteen short naps a day, needing only four hours sleep each night. Others, like Buckminster Fuller, had worked out how to sleep in very short spurts - he found that he only needed 15 minutes four times a day. I haven't tried either route as yet, since I am farming in the am and working at my books and artwork in the afternoon and evening, plus my weekend day job - which takes two 10-hour workdays.

Oh, and King is right about this point - you "dream" all day long as well as during the night. If you simply stop for a bit and close your eyes (or leave them open) you'll start seeing a complete dream right in front of your eyes start unfolding. There's more to this, but I cover some of it in Go Thunk Yourself, Again! - in that I worked out early on that your analysis is hardwired in the "On" position. (I have to come back to this later, in another post.)

For now, use your dreams to get some of your work done (just as sometimes you dream during your work).