We Aren’t A Sleep Business. We Are In The Business Of Dreaming
Our vision at Wildest Dream is to help you become what T.E. Lawrence called, dreamers of the day:
“Dreamers of the night dream dreams that sit in the rusty recesses of their mind and they wake to find it was just vanity. But dreamers of the day, they are the dangerous men and women, for they dream with their eyes wide open and they make their dreams a reality.”
To truly become dreamers of the day, we must first understand what happens during the night.
Dreams are not just abstract ideas – they have shaped humanity’s greatest works
So, I had this tune, and I think the first person I saw was John. I said, “What’s this? It’s been bugging me, what’s this song?”
[Paul sings the tune].
And he said, “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve never heard it.”
So, then I went to George Martin. He’ll know it, because he’s got a much wider knowledge. I said, “What’s this?”
George said, “I don’t know, what?”
And I said, “Well, I don’t know. I dreamed it.”
After a couple of weeks of this, it became clear that no one knew it, and it didn’t exist except in my head. And so, I claimed it. It was like finding it on the street.
This was Paul McCartney, of The Beatles, on how he heard Yesterday in a dream. Most of our dreaming happens in a phase of sleep called REM (rapid eye movement).
During this dreamy phase, MRI scanners show the brain’s hyper-rational pre-frontal cortex to be blue, cold, inactive. Meanwhile, our visual, emotional, autobiographical and motor regions of the brain are lit up like a Christmas tree. These are the regions that help us to clear emotions and boost creativity.
“Dreaming is overnight therapy” – Matthew Walker
Have you ever gone to sleep with an emotional challenge on your mind? You’re human, so I would guess you have (unless this is ChatGPT reading my article). Then once you wake up in the morning you have a real sense of clarity around it? What had expanded into an overwhelming challenge at night, shrinks back to its true size by morning.
Here’s the crazy part: we could be dreaming our most nightmarish scenarios – yet our brain is doing it in the most relaxed and peaceful setting, without noradrenaline [1].
Noradrenaline (or norepinephrine if you’re American) is the brain-based brother of adrenaline. Think of it as your inner critic – that voice in your head that judges ideas and jumps to conclusions. It is that jolting shot we receive when we are public speaking or a deadline looms – thrusting us into the famous fight or flight mode.
In dreamland, without noradrenaline, all that complex, pent up emotion from the day, is suddenly viewed in an incredibly detached way. We are now able to strip away the drama and see a challenge for what it really is.
Back to Paul and creativity
If Paul McCartney’s retelling of how he came across Yesterday in a dream sounds familiar, it should, it happens all the time. Mick Jagger unconsciously wrote the opening guitar riff for Satisfaction in a dream, and Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein in a dream whilst staying at Lord Byron’s home (he features in a blog I wrote on Passion).
Even if you haven’t dreamed up a world class song, I bet you’ve woken up with a solution to a problem that had you stuck the day before?
In one of the greatest books on sleep, Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker lays out study after study to show how our creativity is boosted when we dream. One study showed how people were 30% more likely to solve complex puzzles if they had REM (dreaming) naps between sessions compared to naps without dreams.
What’s going on here? When we dream, we release dopamine which spotlights certain ideas, telling us: this is important, pay attention. We also release acetylcholine which links memories and experiences that ordinarily wouldn’t meet. Combine that with the absence of noradrenaline – our inner critic – and suddenly we can build new ideas totally free of judgement. Together these three chemicals help us humans write Yesterday, Satisfaction, and Frankenstein.
T.E. Lawrence told us that dreamers of the day are dangerous because they make their dreams reality. Adam Grant cites research [2] in Hidden Potential that proves this:
“People with bigger dreams go on to achieve greater things.”
We can see that being a dreamer of the day is indeed a remarkably beneficial thing to do. So the question is:
How do we encourage this dreamlike state, this cocktail of chemicals, even whilst we are awake?
We can reduce our noradrenaline by doing breathwork. One technique I like to use is box breathing. Sitting comfortably with your back straight and your eyes closed, you breathe in for a count of four, hold your breath for four, breathe out for four, then hold your breath for four. You can repeat this cycle five to ten times.
An amazing way to boost our dopamine – in a healthy way – is by journalling. Answer these two questions: Where am I winning? And what am I grateful for? The first question helps us spot those micro-wins – it could be going for a walk, eating a healthy breakfast, waking up on time. These two questions tap into our reward and motivation system because the brain evolved to reward progress towards a goal and achievement of a goal.
Acetylcholine receives a boost from focused learning and play. Have a think, how can you bring more focused learning into your day. Can you spend five minutes after reading a book, or catching the news, or listening to a podcast, to note down what you learnt? That act of reflection strengthens memory and focus by releasing acetylcholine. We get an acetylcholine boost through creative play – this could be doing a jigsaw, playing a musical instrument, or (my favourite) doing Lego.
Just like Paul McCartney claiming Yesterday from a dream, we can claim our own Wildest Dream in daylight. Breathwork, journaling, play, these practices help recreate the same brain chemistry that fuels creativity at night. Because in the end, we aren’t just a sleep business. We’re in the business of dreaming, with our eyes open.
Deepen Your Curiosity
Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep is an incredible book and is also available as an audiobook on Spotify.
Listen to Paul McCartney of the Beatles describing how he came across Yesterday in a dream.
This episode of the Diary of a CEO with Dr Anna Lembke on dopamine was enlightening - give it a listen.
[1] Curiously one of the challenges with PTSD is that noradrenaline is present in the brain whilst dreaming. This significantly contributes to the inability to process the emotion, leading to the brain trying to process the emotion again the following night. Matthew Walker talks about this in Why We Sleep.
[2] Adam Grant discussed this research on p225 of the paperback version of Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. The paper shows that children’s educational and occupational aspirations strongly predict their later achievements, even after accounting for abilities, family income, parental education, and school environment. You can see the research: All I Have to Do Is Dream? The Role of Aspirations in Inter-Generational Mobility and Well-Being by Warn N. Lekfuangfu and Reto Odermatt here.
