Tag Archives: dreams

Uncertainty and doubt

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I had a dream last night. In it someone I care about was asking my why I even bother writing my daily blog? She called it boring and a waste of time. In all honesty, this being said in my dream bugged me more than if the person in my dream actually said it in person. It bothered me because I am the author of my dreams, not the people I see in them.

So essentially I was casting doubt on myself. That’s harsh.

Why bother? Why make the effort? Who do I think I am, that anyone would care to read what I have to say? These are the internal voices of uncertainty and doubt. These are questions that tear me down rather than build me up.

These are the pangs that prevent people from sharing their ideas, their writing, their art, their creative expression, and even their love.

“I’m not good enough.”

“Other people are so much better.”

“I’m not creative enough.”

“I have nothing of value to say.”

It’s easier to silence the naysayers than it is to silence your own inner voice. I can handle all kinds of feedback. I can learn from the harshest of criticism. A perfect example is an angry, yelling coach never upset me, I just took the feedback.

But that inside voice… that nagging self-doubt, that self-uncertainty, that is something I do not always battle well with. It holds me back. It keeps me from speaking up, from stepping up, from confidently sharing my thoughts and opinions.

Why is it that the internal battles we face are so much harder than the outside ones?

What helps me is consistency. It’s developing habits where I can push through the uncertainty and doubt. It’s creating small accomplishments that lead me to successful outcomes. No, I’m not going to be the athlete I was in my 20’s ever again… but I’m fitter now than I ever was in my 30’s and 40’s, and I suffer less back pain than I did in my 20’s. Oh, and no one workout got me where I am today.

In fact it wasn’t the good workouts that got me here, it was the days that I didn’t want to work out, the times I had to talk myself into just going through the motions that made me get to this point. I’m floundering a bit right now with working out, but I still get my butt on my stationary bike or treadmill every day. I still don’t let myself miss 2 days in a row, and rarely let myself miss 3 days in a week.

Some days I might hit the publish button on my blog and think ‘that’s not a great post’. But I still hit the button, I still make the effort. I still read over my work and try to edit it. And I still get mad at myself when I see a typo or wrong word published. The same critic that tries to stop me can also be my friend. It doesn’t just shut me down, it adds an element of high expectations towards all my final work.

And that’s why my dream this morning hurt me a bit. It was my inner voice being a gremlin, trying to find fault with myself, my work, my creativity. Uncertainty and doubt are not usually our friends, they are the bedfellows of procrastination and excuses. They are the enemies of confidence and productivity. And while they may lay dormant for a while, they can creep up on us when we least expect it. Like in our dreams…

But I’m awake now. It’s time to hit the publish button. It’s time to get on the treadmill. There is work to be done and I’ll just tuck the uncertainty and doubt away.

Dreams and goals

A few years back I had hoped to learn how to do an unassisted handstand for at least 30 seconds. But after a while I stopped training for it. I know I have the strength for it now, but I simply haven’t put the time in practicing the necessary skills. I could tell you all kinds of reasons why I never followed through, but the reality is that anything I share would be an excuse I could have avoided or worked around. So what’s the real reason? It was a dream but not a goal.

I like the idea of it, I’m just not willing to do the work. In the time since then I’m fitter, stronger, healthier, and I’d even say more capable. But I didn’t give it the time it needed. I didn’t put in the required work. Maybe one day I will, but not right now.

Sometimes it’s hard to admit to yourself that a dream was just that, a lofty idea about something that might happen, and not an actual goal. But admitting this is quite comforting in a way. I have hit a lot of health-related targets in the past few years, I’m happy with my progress. Sure I could beat myself up about failing to achieve a dream… or I could realize that not every dream is something I have to strive for.

This isn’t trying to make the point to give up your dreams, or to strive. On the contrary, it’s to recognize that when you have too many things you are dreaming about and trying to bring into reality the less likely you are to achieve any of them. I think the questions to ask are:

Do I really want this?

How hard am I willing to work for it?

What’s the next step?

And,

What’s the plan?

Because a dream won’t become an achievable goal until you can answer these questions, implement a plan, and develop the habits that dedicate time to your dream. Some things are better left as dreams, while others should get the time they deserve. But that shouldn’t stop you from dreaming… just know the difference.

Stuck in a loop

There is a theme to my dreams that I often get stuck in. In the dreams I am in a rush to get somewhere and everything is slowing me down. The entire dream is me unsuccessfully trying to get somewhere for something important.

The somewhere that I am going changes from dream to dream. So does the reason I’m in a hurry. So does my mode of transportation. So does the thing that slows me down. In this way the dream itself is not reoccurring, but the theme repeats… I’m in a terrible hurry, and no matter what I try, I can’t make progress to my final destination.

It’s a stressful kind of dream, and yet it doesn’t only happen when I’m stressed (or aware of stress). This kind of dream will happen just as often on a holiday break as when I’m busy at work. I’m in a rush and something prevents me from getting where I need to go.

I’m sure there is an unconscious message in the dream that I’m missing… Some unlearned lesson, moral, or reason that my dreams would be about me not getting where I need to go. But when I wake up from one of these dreams, unable to get where I needed to go, I will remember the things stopping me from being successful, but I never remember why I was rushing or where I was rushing to. Yet I’ll often go back to sleep and back to my dream to continue my lack of success.

Maybe it’s a message that the things I seek are unimportant. Maybe it’s a message to enjoy the journey no matter what life throws at me. Maybe I’m avoiding the things I think I am seeking. I have often thought of why this theme reoccurs in my dreams, but I don’t know the answer? I seem to be stuck in a loop and not making any progress, and although these are just dreams, I’m sure there is a lesson to be learned from them.

Stress dreams

I had a ridiculous dream last night. I was with a couple family members and we signed up to go on stage and play instruments in front of an audience. I can’t play an instrument if my life depended on it. Can’t read music, don’t know any notes. And I think it was a clarinet or a flute I was supposed to play. Such a stupid dream, to volunteer for something I’m incapable of doing.

A bad dream for sure, very stressful. But that wasn’t the problem, after all, it’s just a dream. The problem was that I woke up several times after the original dream, between 2:30 and 4:30am and each time I woke up I felt the stress of having to perform in front of a live audience not having a clue what I was doing. I’d realize it was a dream, be relieved it wasn’t real… then go right back into the stress of it all over again until I woke up again.

I finally woke up at a couple minutes to 5am, almost 20 minutes before my alarm and realized that I might as well get up rather than jumping into the dream again.

Does anybody else do this? And if you do, what strategy do you use to escape the dream? I ask because this pattern of re-entering a dream I didn’t like is one that I seem to repeat again and again, and it really doesn’t lead to a good night’s sleep.

I’m open to suggestions.

The Wakeful Lucid Dream

When I was in my early 20’s I went through a period where I had trained myself to lucid dream. It was challenging because often, when I discovered I was dreaming, I’d get excited and wake up, ruining the experience. When it worked, it was amazing! The thing that I enjoyed doing the most was flying.

Last night I had a unique experience. I went to the spare room late at night to meditate, because I wrote for too long in the morning and didn’t have time to both meditate and exercise as part of my morning routine. I lay down rather than sat up and ended up falling asleep with my phone on my chest, moments after hearing the guided meditation end.

Shortly after dozing off I opened my eyes and my body was frozen. I couldn’t willfully move a muscle. I could see my chest rising with my phone on it. I could even see that the reflection in my turned off phone changed with my breathing. However, I couldn’t move a single muscle no matter how hard I tried, because I was still asleep. The first time this happened to me decades earlier, it was a frightening ordeal. But this time as I struggled to raise my hands, I felt them dislodge from my locked body and lift up in my dream state, despite not seeing them move. This control of an invisible body let me know that I was still dreaming. I was dreaming with my eyes open, aware of my body on the bed, phone on my chest, fingers clasped just above my belt buckle.

It didn’t last long, I sat up in my dream and visually I switched to the dream world, seeing a mirror directly in front of me, and looking at my reflection. I wasn’t sure what I should do so I tried to fly. I floated towards the door of the room, got excited to be flying and found myself looking at my waking body, suddenly no longer locked in the sleeping position.

I wiggled my fingers. I saw my phone on my chest, and could see that as my chest raised and fell with my breath, there was a reflection of a picture on the wall that moved in the dark screen. Remembering seeing this movement made me realize that while I was sleeping I wasn’t just dreaming that I could see my body, I actually had my eyes open and was aware of my body.

This was a short but very freaky experience. I was dreaming with my eyes open, simultaneously aware of seeing my physical body and also aware that I had no control over it my my dream state. I’m not sure I’ll be able to replicate this, especially since I had nodded off with the light on, but on most nights if I opened my eyes and saw the world while I dreamt, it would be dark with little detail to see.

I’m going to spend the next few nights trying to see if I can start to lucid dream again. The strategy that worked for me years ago was to tell myself before bed that if I noticed I was dreaming to simply lift my palm in from front of my face. If I could do this in a dream, that meant I had control of my dream… and that meant I could fly!

Sometimes I had to flap my arms other times I could just soar at will. Last night for a brief moment I got to float, and I want to feel the sensation of flying again. I’m not sure I can replicate the wakeful, eyes open, aware of my body sensation while dreaming again? But hopefully I can once again start controlling my dreams and taking to adventures in the air.

Living in a dream

One of my favourite responses when someone asks me how I’m doing is “Living the dream!”

Yesterday I wrote about how there seems to be many people who think they ‘took the red pill‘ – revealing an unpleasant truth, but they have actually taken the blue pill – remaining in blissful ignorance.

Then this morning I was listening to a podcast and musician Baba Brinkman was quoted as saying, “What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.”

This made me realize how much reality right now (for many if not all of us) is literally like being in a dream. Let me explain… In a dream, when something doesn’t fit with reality, it doesn’t always trigger a response.

Examples:

  • You are in a dream talking to someone and turn away, you turn back and now it’s a different person, but having the same conversation.
  • You are in a dream and in it you are in your own house, you change rooms and now you are in a room you’ve never seen before, or even outside.
  • You are in a dream and cars can fly, or you can fly.

In each of these cases, had it been reality, the experience would be jarring, but in a dream it just makes sense.

Well in today’s reality, I think many people are living in a dream. So, you give an anti-vaxer, or a flat earther some profound point that undermines their belief, and what happens? Nothing. It doesn’t interrupt the dream. It isn’t jarring, it doesn’t ‘wake them up’. Their reality includes points and counterpoints that do not trigger a wakeful response. So, the dream can keep going… uninterrupted.

“What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.”

The problem today is that too many people are agreeing on hallucinations that just don’t fit our reality; hallucinations that undermine our future reality… and I’m not sure how we can wake them up?

Return of the bad dream

I have this awful habit of returning to bad dreams, even after I wake up in the middle of the night. It happened last night at least twice. I was dreaming about a house renovation and the builders added some ridiculous contraption above our counter by the sink to dispense soap. In was an ugly monstrosity and it leaked.

I was trying to get this block-headed, massive worker to remove it, but he would only try to fix it. Then he’d move on and I’d have to call him back. This was one of many complaints I had that was not being fixed. During the dream, I woke up, and was relieved that it was just a dream. Then I shut my eyes again, and jumped right back into the stressful dream.

Why?

Why would I want to return to an awful dream where no matter what I did, things were not working out?

Then I woke again. This time, I’m mad at myself for going back into the same dream, and I tell myself to think of something different. Then I fall asleep and return to this never-ending, overly stressful dream.

This only seems to happen with stressful dreams. Good dreams are hard to get back into. Bad dreams continue. They live on past short wake-ups despite being aware of how silly they are, and how annoying they are.

If anyone has any suggestions to change this please let me know. I’m not a fan of waking up tired in the morning after a night of stressful dreams that could have ended 2-3 times had I just moved on after waking up.

Dream tax

I have a buddy who I occasionally buy lottery tickets with. This isn’t something I normally do, but when the grand prize is very high, we’ll each take turns buying some tickets. It’s fun to do, and over a year, it’s not a lot of money spent. I call lottery tickets a dream tax. The reason I call it this is because I have no expectations that buying the ticket will ever win me anything more than money to buy a few more tickets. However, the buying of a ticket does give me the opportunity to dream about what I’d do with the money.

In that way, the money spent on lottery tickets is a dream tax. It’s a payment made that allows me to imagine something I wouldn’t normally dream of. A small fee that opens the part of my brain that imagines what I’d do with millions of dollars. It’s fun to dream outrageously sometimes, and for that reason, I don’t mind paying the tax every now and then.

Comedic Dreams

45 minutes before my morning alarm, I woke up from a dream smiling. At first the dream was like I was watching TV, the stars of the dream all unknown to me, and I was an observer, not a participant. It was a story of two thieves in the late 1800’s, and after escaping with stolen property, one was in tears because he had failed to do his part. The other was consoling him, when they were interrupted by a female pickpocket.

Comedy ensued as she stole items from them while the main protagonist stole them back in a display of slight of hands that would not have been possible were this not a dream. Then they were caught by an inventive farmer and his mechanical, human looking robot, and sent to a jail that was something more like a modern day rehab centre.

Here they all ended up in a scene that was right out of a movie they had all seen, one where a bus outside passes a window and one of them realized that this scene involved a shooter getting out of the bus and shooting up the place. So he warns the others that this is going to happen, just like in the movie, and all of them having seen the movie drop to the floor to save themselves… nothing happens, and one of them, a different protagonist than earlier but somehow the same person in my mind, scolds the person who warned them to drop to the floor, calling him an idiot for somehow thinking that they were in a movie. Others start laughing at the absurdity of this, and I’m laughing too as I wake up.

How does our brain entertain us in this way in our sleep? What kind of mental gymnastics musts our minds do in order to create comedy where we ourselves don’t know the punchline, or don’t see the elements of the dream that amuse us, coming before the funny moment occurs? How does my brain partition the joke creator from the joke appreciator such that comedy can occur?

This doesn’t just happen with comedy, how do we scare or surprise ourselves? How is it that our brains can convince us that dreams are real, and that we must somehow cope with the bizarre and unrealistic issues we face in them. How do we jump back into a dream after temporarily waking up?

I subscribe to the idea that we are made up of many parts. In simple form, part of us wants to work out, while part of us is lazy; part of us wants a second helping of dessert, part of us thinks we’ve had enough; part of us wants to sleep longer, while part of us knows it’s time to get up. Part of us creates the dream, and part of us is a participant in it. But even knowing this, how does part of us share a joke or funny scene in a dream, and the other part not see it coming?

Restless nights

Yesterday was a good day back to work. It was great to see staff and students, and it was a productive day. But the last two nights have been restless. Bizarre dreams and many times awake through both nights. It doesn’t feel like my usual insomnia that I’m prone to, but it is exhausting nonetheless.

I tend not to remember most dreams, but the ones I do remember are often stressful and include me waking up several times then stupidly going right back into the dream to continue them. Cognitively, I tell myself it’s just a dream, but I’m not awake enough to realize that I don’t need to maintain continuity and can just let the dream go.

I had one such dream that kept going and going last night, until I finally woke up to go to the bathroom. This is something I very rarely do, but last night it actually helped me get out of the restless dream cycle. Yet still my night continued to be broken.

I even tried meditation. I did 10 minutes timed with my meditation app to start the night, and I just focussed on my breathing to get myself back to sleep a couple more times. While these helped, meditation didn’t break the pattern of their uneasy dreams and many more wake ups.

I think I’ll try a hot tub before bed tonight. I’ll shut down my devices early. I’ll listen to some music without lyrics. Hopefully I can break the cycle and get a good night’s sleep. While I know I’ll be fine today, and I have a schedule that will prevent me from napping after work (which is a good thing), I know I’ve got to break my restless sleep schedule. It will lead to some very tiring days if I don’t.

I’m ready for some sweet dreams tonight.