Activate Your Imagination

Welcome to today's Kwik Brain Challenge. I am your brain coach and host of the Kwik Brain Podcast. My name is Jim Kwik, and if you're listening to this on audio, then I am actually on my— I'm on a bed. And so if you're watching this on video on YouTube, this is a bed, and we're gonna talk about the challenge. It's not about making your bed. It's actually, this episode is about remembering your dreams. I am going to challenge you To have better recall of your dreams at night. And this is a dream journal. Now, if you haven't yet listened to the episode that I did on 6 ways you could remember your dreams, I absolutely recommend you do that because we use this acronym DREAMS and they all stand for different ways to remember your dreams, things that I do to remember my dreams. And the R stands for Reflect, reflect. And that's where you're actually writing them down in a dream journal. And I have different dream journals you could see on video if you happen to be watching this on video, because I have a lot of dreams. So why do you want to remember your dreams? Why is it important for your brain? Why is it important for your life? Well, let's talk about this. Most people, let's say we, we sleep about 20 years of our life. That means we're spending about 3 to 5 years actually in the dream Now you're having these dreams, and what science is finding out is when you're learning throughout the day, or you're an entrepreneur running your business, your career, your brain does not shut off at night. If anything, your brain is more active at night. At night is when you're consolidating, you know, short to long-term memory. So if you have memory issues, you might want to check on your sleep. And you know this, you want to maximize and optimize your sleep. And the other reason though you want to be able to sleep is because that's when you dream, when you're in this REM sleep, if you will. And another reason you want to sleep is it cleans out plaque that leads to brain aging challenges. But in this episode, I'm going to talk about the power of remembering your dreams, because if you're not sleeping, you're not dreaming. Now, when your brain is active at night, what it's doing is not only is it consolidating short to long-term memory, it's coming up with answers. In your creative imagination. We've done episodes on this. So why do you want to remember your dreams? We talk a little bit about this, but great performers, they have huge lessons in their dream states. Top athletes like golfers and NBA players, they'll make a shift in how they hold the club or making their jump shot, and all of a sudden they'll learn something and they'll apply it in their real world and get a huge result and come out of a big slump. Slump, for example, but that means you must remember that dream. We knew the chemist who created the periodic table came up with it in a dream. Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in a dream. So what are you dreaming about? And so listen to that episode on dreams. But again, the R in DREAMS stands for reflect, and you want to be able to write, if you will, your dreams out. So my challenge for you today moving forward is number one, to buy a dream journal. Just go online, search dream journals. You can use a notebook, but I like these dream journals myself because what I do is when I wake up as part of my morning routine— if you listen to my morning routine, the very first thing I do every single morning besides before I make my bed, before I make my brain power smoothie, before I take my cold shower and I work out— is I write in my dream journal. All right, and what you're doing is you're training your brain to make those dreams important. So my challenge for you is 2 parts. Number one, get a dream journal. And if you don't want to get a dream journal, just get a pad of paper. I prefer a dedicated Journal though. And number 2, every single morning, do the best you can to record your dreams. Do the very best. And in the beginning, it might be a little fuzzy, but listen again to the 6 steps, the episode I did on 6 steps on how to remember your dreams. And again, in the beginning, you might not be good at it because we're not good at anything the very first time or the second time, or maybe the third time. But over time, you'll make it important. You'll start remembering more and more of your dreams. And then what I want you to do is start sharing those success stories. Because actually the S in dreams stands for sharing. When you start sharing your dreams with other people, you start remembering them more because you make them more important. So that's your quick brain challenge, if you will. So take a picture of your dream journal and then share if you want some of your dreams. We're not talking about interpreting your dreams. That's a different episode, if you will. But take a picture of your dream journal that you're writing on, post it, hashtag Kwik Challenge, K-W-I-K Challenge. Tag me @JimKwik. I'll share some of my favorites. On Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. So again, thanks for listening to this episode. I'll see you in the next episode, and until then, sweet dreams.