Do you know how to find out what your dreams means? How many times have you asked the question, “What does my dream mean?” after a night full of twists and turns filled with imagery and storytelling beyond anything your own willful imagination could have concocted? What do you do? Take to the nearest search engine to rifle through the umpteen sites filled with symbols and their meanings? Maybe that’s how you landed here. Instead of getting lost within the countless encyclopedia symbols online to find the meaning of your dream, why not try this simple technique below to begin.

Turn Your Dream Into a Simile

Liken your dream as a simile to what is currently happening in your life. Forgot what a simile is? A little review here. Similes are for occurrences that are like or akin to something. Here’s an example dream:

You and your spouse are climbing up a tall sand hill. It’s steep. It’s very hard to keep your fingers clutching sand without sliding down. You look at your spouse who nods to you an inability to continue. So you both decide to let go and slide safely down to the ground.

Okay, this was a dream I really had a time where I was trying everything I could to make a business successful that just wasn’t making myself or my husband happy. But this is a great dream for using this particular technique.

The Simile Technique

This technique can be most helpful after you have written the dream down. Then you can peruse what you have written and pull your own quote. In the instance of the above dream it might go something like this:

“Where in my life does is feel like I’m climbing up a sandhill and just can’t get my grip?” or “Where is it like I’d just rather let go and come down to the ground?” Try it with the different imagery you’ve written down. When you’ve hit the nail on the head you will know. It will ring true. You might get those goose bumps. Then, only you can answer your simile question.

Turn Your Dream Into a Metaphor

Another good option is the use of a metaphor. A metaphor is stating that an object actually is that something to which you are referring. For example: My job is an anvil on my head. Got it? For our purposes it can help highlight the urgency of a what the dream may be trying to convey.

The Metaphor Technique

If using the same example as above, (the sandhill dream), then this technique sounds like: My life is a sandhill. My work is climbing up a sandhill. My life is unable to get a grip. My life is letting go in agreement with my spouse. My life is landing safely on the ground.

In this case the dream turns into to some hard evidence for good news!

Some Final Thoughts

Resist the temptation to get all tied up in rhetoric or grammatical law here. (“That’s not really a simile! That’s no metaphor!”) Probably safe to say that dreams do not live in a land of rules. These simple exercises can be very revealing. And isn’t that what you want? Some revelation? Some direction? These tools can open up for you a whole new avenue of answers as you seek to decipher your dreams.

Try it out and let me know in the comments how it worked!

How do you decipher your dreams? Check back for more on this topic. Want to read more on dreams? Go here.

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