So you've had an important dream last night... But you can't recall nothing of it, no matter how much you are thinking...
Don't worry. There is a great chance that you will be able to remember your dream, you just need to find a single clue. Once you have the clue, that will help you remember the rest of the dream.
When we dream, the events usually take place in multiple locations and multiple people are involved in it.
More often than not, a dream revolves around multiple people. Once you manage to recall a single person from your dream, that will usually help you to connect the dots and remember the entire dream.
In the example above, if you manage to recall Person A from your dream, will usually lead to remembering the locations you were at, and the interactions you've had with them. Remembering Person A will take you mentally to Location 1, 2 and 3, and once you are there, there is a great chance that you will remember the other people that were at the same location with you.
Alright... so once we remember the person, we unlock the path to the dream.
But how do we remember the person??
Read on...
Luckily for us (?), we rarely dream with complete strangers, which means it shouldn't be that complicated to uncover the identity of the people in our dreams.
Once you go through mentally each people you know, there is a great chance you will stumble upon someone that was part of your dream.
Start the mental exercise going through the list of people in your immediate circle:
- Parents
- Grandparents
- Siblings
- Husband / Wife / Girlfriend / Boyfriend
- Close friends
- Colleagues
- Classmates
- Neighbours
- Pets (yes, sometimes it's a pet that helps you locate the dream!)
Don't just rush through the categories. You need to visualise every single person from each category, otherwise you may accidentally skip the one.
If no one from your immediate circle was part of your dream (quite rare), try widening the circle:
- Former partners
- Former classmates / colleagues
- Distant relatives
If you still haven't found anyone, time to bring out the big guns: Facebook.
Log into your Facebook account, open your list of friends, and start scrolling through. It is important to visualise every single person, not just look at the name and move on to the next. If you don't use Facebook, replace it with some other system you have your list of friends recorded in (e.g. your phonebook).
If your dream is still a mystery to you, time to change tactics. Let's see if you can remember the location instead of the person.
Most of the times dreams take place at locations you have been to, or want to go to. Our mind rarely comes up with completely unknown locations to play out the dream.
We can use this to our advantage. Once you recall the location, there is a great chance you will be able to remember the people you were with and also the events that took place.
Start again with the locations you visit most frequently:
- Home
- School
- Workplace
- Gym
If none of the above locations help, try these instead:
- Previous home
- Former school
- Former workplace
- Houses of relatives / friends / former partners
- Parks
- Shopping centres
- etc.
Again, it is important that you see these places in front of you; try to visualise yourself being at these locations, don't just simply read through the list.
Still nothing? There is one more thing you can try...
So you have gone through dozens (perhaps hundreds?) of people and locations you know, but your precious dream is still out of your grasp...
Next on our dream-hunting checklist are the events that unfolded. Each person have their dreams revolve around different themes, but here is a non-exhaustive list of events that could happen in anyone's dream:
- Fighting with someone
- Saving someone from injury / death
- Helping someone accomplish something
- Flying (?!)
- Running away from danger
If these don't help, try recalling the emotions you may have gone through while experience these events.
Do you remember being...
- Happy?
- Sad?
- Loved?
- Scared?
- Ridiculed?
- Relieved?
I hope that by now you have managed to recover (at least part of) your dream!
My success rate with this technique is about 80%, or in other words I manage to remember 8 out of 10 dreams by going through the list above. For me it's the people that help me locate my dreams. Once I have the face, I know the dream I had with them.
Why did I create this page? Simply because I found this technique to be working quite well for me, and found no mention of it elsewhere. If I could benefit from using it, I am sure it can help others as well!
If this technique helped you recover your dream, and you are in such a position, please support me with the running costs this page, so that together we can help other people remember their dreams too!
Thank you!