Penney Peirce

Your dreams are trying to tell you something. If you can interpret your dreams, they offer you greater self-awareness, knowledge, and success. Don't overlook the details in your dreams — messages may be lurking there. Keep a dream diary to uncover themes and insight in your dreams. Study the meanings of common dreams, because they represent situations most people experience at some point in life.

Dreams come in many shapes and sizes, some vague, some detailed, some frightening, some inspiring. They all contain encoded messages aimed at improving your life. As you become ready to start a dream diary to interpret your dreams, you might realize that many dreams deal with the functioning of the physical world.

If you're interested in recording your dreams in a dream diary — or in interpreting your dreams — some emotion you've experienced is probably the driving force. Every time you express or deny an intense emotion, you can be sure there is fodder for a powerful dream. Though dreams heavy with emotion can be disturbing, they provide guidance about what's going on in your subconscious.

To fully understand and record your dreams, it's best to start with some knowledge about your sleep and dream cycles, and how your dream cycles affect your waking life. Science tells us that everyone dreams for a total of approximately two or three hours per night. Robbed of vital dream activity through sleep deprivation or stress, you might become irritable and disoriented and will balance yourself by dreaming excessively the first chance you get.

Most people don't think about the effect that dreaming has on their waking lives, but dreams help your imagination grow, help you develop what's in your psyche, allow you to tap into your inner wisdom, and drive you to increase real life success. Dreams really are a doorway to greater self-awareness, knowledge, and success.