The Effects of a Good Night’s Dreaming

No question, the U.S. Military could use more sleep. For 6 years I taught aviators and special operators about sleep. I compared it to a performance enhancing drug without all the repercussions.

This article is based on my military teaching. It’s for anyone who thinks, “This weekend I’ll set aside some time to rest,” then wakes up on Monday and thinks, “Man, where did that weekend go? I’m still exhausted!”

When I think about sleep and dreams, I think about the movie Inception. We’ll come back to Inception.

First, let’s talk about what it feels like when you wake up well-rested. Imagine that. You’re smiling, wide-eyed, happy to see the sun, greeting people, feeling ready to eat, feeling ready to move, life is good, you know you’re ready to crush it. I want to feel like that every day and it starts with a good night’s rest.

WHY SLEEP IS VALUABLE

“They say we only use a fraction of our brain’s true potential. Now that’s when we’re awake. When we’re asleep, we can do almost anything.” -Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb in Inception

Sleep is an amazing phenomenon, you’re totally unconscious of what’s happening and yet you stay alive and great things happen while you sleep. Dreaming is especially fascinating. Think about it, what’s the coolest dream you’ve ever had? (I used to ask my students, the answers were always hilarious.) Dreams are exciting, that’s why Inception, a movie about dreams, could gross 292 million dollars. In that movie, Leonardo DiCaprio points out the power of dreams when he says, “They say we only use a fraction of our brain’s true potential. Now that’s when we’re awake. When we’re asleep, we can do almost anything.”

Dreaming is a huge advantage to our well-being. When we sleep our brains are sifting through the memories of the day, deciding what to take and what to leave behind — this thing I studied, that important conversation. Dreams are born from this process. When we visit our memories in dreams, we pull them out of storage and look them over. When we put them back into storage they are altered by the way we look at them and the story we tell about them. This is part of the reason psychotherapy works for most people. They talk to someone about their memories and take the memories out of storage and brush them off, put them back into storage, then they pull them out again later and they seem better. The same thing happens with recurring nightmares or long periods of mourning, your brain is pulling the memory out again and again, trying to adjust the memory. When a scary memory is first stored it is a strong trigger for the reactive part of the brain that is responsible for getting excited and keeping you alive. When it becomes something that can be discussed in a relaxed and detailed way, then, the more calm part of the brain is in control. That can take many visits to the memory with the guidance of a professional.

I recently read about a surprising example of these memory visits. There were children who survived a trauma, a school shooting, and then started to play a strange game. Every day, they would go out on the playground and pretend the shooting was happening again, but this time they would be ready and protect their friends or kill the shooter or build a fort. It’s the same kind of treatment as a recurring nightmare, taking out the memory, brushing it off, and putting it back. This can also work with smaller things that irritate or upset us. So, if you want to change yourself, to be happier, less irritable, less fearful of old traumas, I suggest dreaming. Let your brain work things out for you.

If you want to be smarter, dreaming is great for that too. Your brain will literally be cleaned up while you sleep. Through the day active neurons firing in the brain will produce toxins, but special cells reduce those toxins while you sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, your brain remains dirty with toxins, but if you do sleep, you wake with a cleaner brain. Think of it like this: You can press on through an extra long day of working slow and feeling like, “Man this is wiping me out, I can barely think straight.” Or, you can break for rest to clean up your brain’s toxins, then get back to work energized and more productive.

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” -Thomas Edison

Dreaming is so good for your mind that you can even do hard work while you dream. Dreaming puts your brain in a great place to solve problems. When you dream, the visual part of your brain is very active, but the part that inhibits you is very quiet. That’s how we have such ridiculous dreams, there is no mental filter to say,“Hey, this is crazy! You can’t fly like Superman!” This unfiltered process allows you to come up with new solutions to problems that would be inhibited during waking hours. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, understood this and was quoted saying, “Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” His point was that the dreaming brain can come up with amazing new ideas. The dreaming brain can literally solve your problems. For example, a chemist named Friedrich Kekule studied carbon bonds for years, but could not determine the structure of a compound called benzene. Then, in a dream, he saw a snake eating its own tail. When he woke, he realized that the dream was telling him the answer, benzene is not a line of elements, but a ring of carbon bonds. That’s an example of the kind of Eureka that can happen when the visual brain is going without inhibition. Think about that awesome power, what problem would you ask your dreaming brain to figure out?

HOW TO SLEEP

OK, let’s get you closer to solving that problem by getting into the nuts and bolts of improving your sleep. Just remember that sleep is a habit that can be changed. The more we sleep, the more our brains can change, making our habits better, helping to get more sleep. It’s a virtuous cycle more sleep, more brain change, better habits, more sleep, more brain change, better habits, and so on….

Let’s compare sleep deprivation to flying and oxygen deprivation… In the event of a rapid depressurization, what should you do first? Put your own mask on! That’s what we’re talking about with sleep too, if everyone around you is grinding away and doesn’t sleep, just put on your own mask first. When you get more rested, helping other people will be easier.

The keys to change are (1) belief, (2) practice, and (3) a whole new mindset. Believe that you can change. Find people who believe in you and will encourage you. Then practice. When you make a mistake, keep going, start again. Finally, completely change your mindset, look back at the way you used to do things and think, “What was I doing? I’m so much better off now. I’ll never go back.” That’s the real way to change.

Just to cover all bases, I will suggest a few very tactical approaches to better sleep

1. Stop looking at screens 60 minutes before bed. The bright light signals your brain “Stay awake!” Stop looking at screens 60 minutes before bed. You have a bedtime and your phone should too. A company called ThriveGlobal actually sells beds for your cell phone. You put the bed outside of your bedroom and tuck in your phone when it’s time to leave it alone.
2. Be strategic with caffeine. If you slam coffee in the afternoon, it’s harder to settle down for sleep. Caffeine can stay with you for a long time, so move your 3PM coffee break up to 11AM.
3. Nap strategically. Naps are great. That’s why I have a couch in my office. Just remember that your body has a rhythm about when to wake up and when to sleep. If you take naps, they become part of that rhythm.
4. Play the mind game. If you struggle to sleep, because it’s hard to quiet your stressed out mind at night, things get interesting for you. First, start lying to yourself. Tell yourself that you sleep like a rock. Then, when it’s time to sleep, write down the things that you are stressed about in a notebook. Put the notebook outside of your bedroom. All of those things will be there in the morning. This should protect you from the pattern of thinking about something that stresses you, then feeling your heart rate increase, then realizing you are not falling asleep, then getting stressed about how tired you will be tomorrow, then feeling your heart rate rise, then getting stressed about how tired you will be tomorrow, and so on… a vicious cycle.
5. Mindfulness meditation. I know mindfulness sounds woo-woo, but athletes like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant used mindfulness to win 11 NBA championships between the two of them. And the greatest of all time, the GOAT himself, Tom Brady recommends mindfulness too. Mindfulness is the process of acknowledging the thoughts that you are fixating on and then letting them go by focusing on reality. You feel yourself getting stressed about work tomorrow, like it’s a matter of life and death, then you stop and recognize that you are not in danger, this it not life and death. Just focus on the feeling of your hand on the bed. Very simple. Very effective. The imagination — your 6th sense — perceives stress, focus on your other 5 senses that signal safety. Remind yourself that you are not at work, not putting out fires, you are safe in bed.
6. Prime your body for sleep, because your body primes your mind. If your body is tense, that will affect your mind. Relax your muscles. Studies have been done where nodding your head up and down can prime you say yes to questions and holding a warm beverage will make you think more fondly about the people around. Use physical priming to enhance your sleep.

CREATING A STRONG SLEEP CULTURE

“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” -Tom Hardy in Inception

That’s all for the facts, because facts alone don’t matter. What matters is using the information. Remember, that takes (1) belief, (2) practice, and (3) a new mindset.

When you have your own sleep habits sorted out, then take a look around and create a better sleep culture. The world needs a better sleep culture. To help the world we don’t need more facts. We need people who believe in us, people who encourage practice, and people who share a new mindset. Arianna Huffington wrote a whole book about the destructive nature of our sleep culture. She sleeps 8 hours per night, religiously. And she still had time to build her own company, the Huffington Post, which she sold for 315 million dollars. I think she’s got something figured out.

Even with some good sleep role models, we still have a collective delusion that exhaustion is the price of success. I encourage you to challenge that and think bigger. There’s another great quote in Inception, Tom Hardy’s character says to Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” When it comes to the culture of sleep, I challenge you to dream bigger.

Dream so big. Imagine yourself smiling, wide-eyed, happy to see the sun, greeting people, feeling ready to eat, feeling ready to move, life is good, you know you’re ready to crush it. I want to feel like that every day and it starts with a good night’s rest.

REMEMBER THIS

Finally, let’s talk about yawning. Yawning is truly contagious. When your read the word yawn, you are now more likely to start yawning. This is beautiful. This is literally inception. This is me planting an idea in your mind and causing you to act on it. If you want to act on another idea from this article, that’s up to you. I suggest you write it down and think about it again.

On that note, here’s a final Inception quote, “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient-highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed — fully understood — that sticks; right in there somewhere.”

I hope this sticks with you.