Did you know that a lot of historical figures and many of the greatest celebrities kept a diary?
For centuries poets and writers have used the diary, the most personal and honest literary form, to leave traces of their experiences, free themselves from the burden of cares and suffering, or simply to describe to posterity the era to which they belong. Famous scientists added insights and reflections on their notebooks, from the journals of Albert Einstein to those of John Newton. The well-known composer Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as the eccentric diva Marylin Monroe, kept a private diary, too.
Why can writing a diary prove to be an important habit?
The answer is simple: writing a diary awakens your self-consciousness. Awareness can drive the most powerful changes! Moreover, writing your goals somewhere will make you more likely to achieve them.
Recently science made an even more interesting discovery: keeping a diary of your dreams increases your creativity.
If you are wondering why you should take the trouble to bring your dreams back to the pages of a diary, consider that dreams have been responsible for some of the most significant innovations in the history of mankind. Einstein attributed many of his brilliant insights to his dreams, and Niels Bohr, the father of quantum mechanics, often told of the dream that inspired one of his revolutionary theories.
There are a number of wonderful and unique benefits to be had if you can successfully start to capture your dreams and keep a diary of them. So, what are the actual benefits of keeping a dream diary?
5 Good Reasons To Start a Dream Diary
1) Having a diary allows you to get a record:
Dreams are usually fleeting. Most of them fade on awakening. You often remember a dream for only a few hours or a day, two at most. Why do we let our dreams be forgotten, rather than be taken care of by writing them down? Writing your dreams in a diary would allow you to keep them in a safe place and return to them whenever you wish.
2) Writing a diary of your dreams stimulates your creativity:
As already mentioned, dreams are a great instrument to foster creative inspiration. Rereading your dream diary and remembering what you felt, you would engage different parts of your brain and you would go on to trigger totally new thinking mechanisms.
3) Having a diary can lead you to exceptional discoveries:
A dream can translate into a brilliant invention capable of altering not only your world and that of the people around you, but also the world as a whole. How many times did you solve a problem in your dreams? And how many times have you forgotten the brilliant solution after a fleeing moment?
4) Writing a diary allows you to observe your personal growth:
Revising your dreams after a long time could be a lot of fun, making you think, “Ah, interesting!”, Or “Damn what a strange dream”. Surely you would open your eyes to the present, allowing a comparison between your wishes and your past expectations, and the current situation. This operation would therefore encourage an appreciation of your personal growth. For many people, this alone is enough to keep a dream diary.
5) Keeping a diary of your dreams helps you analyse your sub-conscious:
Even if you do not like the idea of analyzing your dreams, knowing your innermost thoughts could be enlightening. The very act of writing a diary of your dreams is fascinating and could be very therapeutic: this way you would have the opportunity to scrutinize your unconscious fantasies.
Dreams are not meaningless fantasies, indeed they can tell us a lot about ourselves. Today, psychology recognizes dreams as a process of continuous thought that takes place while we are asleep. Sigmund Freud first recognized the meaning and the psychological aspect of dreams, and he also encouraged his patients to keep a detailed dream diary!
Unfortunately, what actually happens most of the time you wake up in the morning is to have only a vague memory of a place or a feeling. The dream that we remember in the morning is called the “oneiric manifest content”. It is, in fact, an abbreviated and deformed substitute of the “latent oneiric content”, to which we arrive through an excavation work. If you have trouble remembering your dreams, be patient with yourself: dreams are irregular, and practice… makes perfect.
Writing a diary of your dreams is a great idea because it allows you to break down one by one the barriers that defend the inaccessibility to the conscience of your most hidden thoughts and affections and to understand what impact your dreams can have on your life.
Diaro can help you keep a detailed and fun dream diary: we especially recommend you try to write down and quickly describe what you remember as soon as you wake up!