Dreams - The key to your creativity

Monday 7th March 2011

When you dream, you are transported to a realm of fantasy which can sometimes be better than the reality you are in. Dreams can spark your creativity to life and can lead to improving and influencing your day to day decisions. Martin Luther King uses the term 'dream' in a different way in his 'I have a dream' speech. An iconic time in American history, he sees his dream as something to aspire to, or daring to 'dream' of a better world. If you do not get enough sleep, not only your physical short and long term health is affected, but also your mind and mental activity can diminish over time. It is therefore important to make sleep a priority, as sacrificing it could lead to problems in the future.

A good night's sleep energises you and keeps you focused throughout the day. You will find if you do not get enough sleep, you will be lethargic and easily irritable. Waking up still feeling groggy, and taking a lot of time to wake up and function properly are signs of sleep deprivation which have a detrimental affect to your creativity and thought process. You dream when you are in a comfortable phase of sleep, just before experiencing REM (rapid eye movement) and having good sleep hygiene and structured sleep-wake cycle allows you to experience healthy sleep. Ideas while dreaming have led to the solving of several problems, and here are a few examples of how a dream can impact everyday life.

Paul McCartney

The incredibly popular Beatles' song Yesterday evolved from a classical tune which Paul McCartney dreamt. When he woke he found the notes on the piano in his attic room of his family house and began to play, writing the words at a later date. The song was a massive success and has had the most cover versions of any song ever written and been played over 7 million times in the 20th Century, according to the Guinness Book Of World Records and BMI respectively.

Jack Nicklaus

Jack Nicklaus has the most major wins (18) of any other professional golfer, and this may only have been made possible because of a dream he had which showed him how to improve his golf swing. This came during a slump in his career in 1964, after his dream, where he played a round of golf with a different technique; he went to the golf course and tried out the grip he saw himself using, going on to win 16 more majors throughout the rest of his career.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The classic novelist Robert Louis Stevenson began to dream full stories from a young age, and learnt how to commit the dream to memory and use them as plot lines and features in his books. This is how the storyline for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde came to fruition in just 10 weeks, after Stevenson dreamt about the same scene two nights in a row but with the second dream split into two. This gave him the foundations to build his characters around the transformation of the main character in one of the greatest classic novels.

Stephen King

Stephen King is one of the most read authors in the world, with accolades for best novel, author of the year and international awards. The main plot for Misery, which won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, came to him in a dream on a Concorde flight. He dreamt about the plot in great depth and subsequently wrote the basis for the book on landing. This was not the only time he attributed a dream to the beginnings of a novel and with his bestseller IT, he dreamt about a specific section of the storyline and knew which direction his writing would go.

These examples show that sleep can lead to creativity, and dreams can form a basis on every day activities and professions. It is important to get the sleep you need and complete all stages of the sleep cycle. This is key to getting a good night's sleep and feeling refreshed and alert throughout the day. A better night's sleep results in a higher quality of life; sacrificing your body's need for sleep can be harmful to your health and lead to long term problems. Sleep not only fuels your mind but also gives your body energy, which makes it a vital part in maintaining a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

Tags: dreams creativity memory sleep hygiene

Category: Sleep Research

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