Dreams Transmit Solutions & Insights About Problems
NEWSFLASH! ...Dreams are a source of insights, solutions, and breakthroughs which scientists, medical researchers, and those who work in innovative technologies, can tap into. The mind problem solves with you as you sleep. Modern folklore has many examples of dreams that led to masterpieces in literature and music. Less well known are dream breakthroughs in science, math, business, and dreams of athletes to perfect their skills. As you sleep, the mind becomes a default problem-solving partner. Michaels explains how to mobilize this problem-solving function of sleep in a chapter called, Ask a Question, Get a Dream Answer, in her book: A Dream Workbook — a technique she modernized which works because: 1. The default stance of the mind is to problem solve with you. 2. As you sleep, the mind generates ideas, insights, and breakthroughs. 3. Dreams act as the courier between the waking and the sleeping mind.
SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSWOMAN C. J. WALKER WENT FROM DREAM TO MILLIONAIRE. Entrepreneurs do not look to dreams as a source of success, yet modern folklore is full of stories of dreams that led to wealth yet many receive stock market and business insight from their dreams and beat the odds. Madame C. J. Walker (1867-1919) is cited in the Guinness Book of Records as the first female American self-made millionaire who was also the first member of her family born free as an African American. Walker founded and built an African-American cosmetic company that made her a millionaire many times over. She suffered from a scalp infection that made her lose her hair and began to experiment with medicines and hair-care products that were available at the time. None helped. Then she had this dream: "He answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big, black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa. I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it." Walker was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and social activist. She described her rise from a childhood of poverty to being head of an international corporation: "I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I built my own factory on my own ground."[On Her Own Ground: the Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. Lelia P. Bundles, 2001. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture, Kathy Peiss, 1999, Owl Books]
MATHEMATICIAN HENRI POINCARE tried day after day to discover a general method by which a whole group of equations could be solved. In his biography, he described that one night he retired after thinking deeply on the problem and went to sleep. Waking during the night, he wrote feverishly but did not remember what he wrote. When he got up the next morning, he was astonished to find several sheets of paper on which he had worked out a complete solution to the problem.
TERRY FATOR HEARS THE SONG, "HORSES IN HEAVEN," IN A DREAM. Terry Fator won “America’s Got Talent” in 2007 as a singer, comedian, ventriloquist, and celebrity impressionist who spent twenty years on the road performing—before he become a Las Vegas sensation. Dream expert Michaels saw Fator's show in Las Vegas which she described as “roll-in-your-seat” hilarious. Fator sang a song that he wrote for a young boy dying of cancer, called “Horses in Heaven.” Before singing the song with the voice of an angel, Fator explained, “I got the entire song and lyrics in a dream … true story.”
CHEMISTRY - THE PERIODIC TABLE. Nineteenth-century Chemist Dimitri Mendeleyev fell asleep while chamber music was playing in the next room. In a dream, he understood that the basic chemical elements are all related to each other in a manner similar to the themes and phrases in music. When he woke up, Mendeleyev was able to write out the entire periodic table for the first time, which forms the basis of modern chemistry.
JOHN BROOKS SCORES THE WINNING GOAL. In her book, A Dream Guide: 27 Kinds of Dreams & How to Recognize Them—Michaels explains a Practice Dream, during which you practice a skill or talent. It can mean the difference between winning and losing. Brooks spent the entire first half of the match watching from the bench before replacing star defender Matt Besler, who was struggling to shrug off a hamstring injury. A little-known player at the time, he scored a goal that gave a decisive win to the United States in their opening match against Ghana in the 2014 World Cup soccer game. On June 16, 2014—in the 86th minute of the opening World Cup match for the U.S. in Brazil—the 21-year-old defender executed a perfectly timed header from a corner play to grab the lead against the U.S.'s perennial World Cup nemesis—Ghana. After he scored, Brooks collapsed as three teammates piled on top of him to celebrate. The game was Brooks’ first competitive match with the U.S. team and his debut at the World Cup, the most watched sports tournament around the world. Brooks told reporters afterwards that the game-winning goal was a literal dream come true. “I told some teammates that I would score in the 80th minute and win the game, and I did it – in the 86th minute. I had the dream two days before the game, and in the dream, it was a header from a corner, just the way it happened.” Proud U.S. coach and former World Cup–winning Germany striker Jürgen Klinsmann said: “He played his first World Cup and scored. It was quite a special day for him.” The decisive goal sealed the U.S. triumph over Ghana who had beaten the American squad in two previous World Cups.
JACK NICKLAUS FINDS A NEW GOLF SWING. Jack Nicklaus told a friend he improved his golf swing after dreaming of a new way to hold his club and credited the dream with improving his golf game. In 1964, Nicklaus was having a bad slump and was routinely shooting in the high seventies. After suddenly regaining top scores he told a reporter friend: “Wednesday night I had a dream and it was about my golf swing. I was hitting them pretty good in the dream and all at once I realized I wasn't holding the club the way I've actually been holding it lately. I've been having trouble collapsing my right arm, taking the club head away from the ball, but in my sleep—I was doing it perfectly. So, when I came to the course yesterday morning, I tried it the way I did in my dream and it worked. I shot a sixty-eight yesterday and a sixty-five today.” [As told to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, 27 June 1964.]
THE STORY OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE WAS BASED ON A DREAM. Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of favorites such as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In his biography, he wrote that he got many of his best stories from dreams and said his novel about Jekyll and Hyde was "conceived, written, re-written, and printed in ten weeks," thanks to the following dream:“For two days I racked my brains for a plot of any sort. On the second night I dreamed the scene at the window. The scene afterward split in two in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took a powder and underwent a change in the presence of his pursuers.” His wife relates how one night Louis cried out, horror-stricken, so she woke him up. He scolded her, saying, "Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine tale!" The next morning, he ran up to her, excited, and said: "I have my chilling shocker, I have my chilling shocker!" Stevenson saud his passion for writing interacted regularly with his remarkable dreams. With vivid dreams from childhood, he discovered he could dream complete stories and go back to the same story the next night; he trained himself to remember plots for books. [Chapter on Dreams by Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the Plains, 1892, Chattus & Windus; Robert Louis Stevenson, A Critical Biography Vol. 2, John Stuart, 2005, Kessinger Publishing]