New research from Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business shows that when people remember their dreams in the morning, it can actually affect how they think, feel, and behave at work.
The researchers did three studies involving about 5,000 full-time employees who reported their dream recall. They found that this dream-related impact on work persisted even when they took into account how much or how well people slept. This suggests that the mental effects of remembering and finding meaning in dreams can sometimes outweigh the physical effects of not sleeping well.
A sense of awe
“Similar to epiphany, we found that connecting the dots between dreams and reality gives rise to awe—an emotion that sparks a tendency to think about ourselves and our experiences in the grand scheme of things,” the researchers explain. “This makes subsequent work stressors seem less daunting, bolstering resilience and productivity throughout the workday.”
Even though it might not seem like dreams have anything to do with work, most people have dreams just before they start their workday. This study shows that when we remember and make sense of our dreams, which can feel very real when we’re asleep, it can actually shape how our workday goes.
“People experience awe when they undergo something vast—something that challenges their understanding or way of thinking about things,” the authors continue. “These experiences can come in different forms, whether physical, such as when witnessing aurora borealis, or conceptual, such as when grasping the implications of a grand theory. Awe often borders on the extremes or upper bounds of other emotions, for example, when people experience profound gratitude or admiration. Dreams are conceptually vast experiences that have a striking capacity to elicit feelings of awe.”
Lightness of being
The authors suggest that when we’re made to feel awe in our dreams, we’re more likely to view even cumbersome tasks at work as relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and therefore more achievable.
They suggest that the first step towards achieving this is to ensure you get a good night’s sleep. The most vivid dreams are likely to occur during REM sleep, which in turn, tends to take place during the latter stages of our sleep cycle. Various sleep tracking devices claim to be able to effectively monitor one’s sleep cycles, and therefore how much time you spend in REM sleep.
While monitoring employees’ sleep may be stretching managerial reach a tad, the authors argue that inspiring awe in other ways could be similarly effective. This could be achieved via exposure to nature or music, or even access to senior leaders.
