Each night you will have between four and seven dreams, a total of between ninety and one hundred and twenty minutes, so over your lifetime somewhere around six years will be spent in the world of your dreams! So don't you think it would be a good idea to be able to spend that time productively?

Learning the techniques that you need to fully understand your dreams will help you to use them to achieve all of your goals in life. And you can uncover your dream secrets by discovering the simple steps that will enable you to quickly do so.

Follow these seven steps and you will soon be making the most of all your dream experiences:

Set the Right Environment

It is important that you dream truly significant dreams and to do so you must get a restful night's sleep. So you must be sure that you create the right environment by making sure that you are comfortable and that you are neither too hot nor too cold.

The room that you sleep in must be set up for a restful night. If it is too light for instance it will make it more difficult and anything that might distract you before you go off to sleep, such TVs and computers, should ideally be removed.

Fine Tune Your Mind

Try to clear your mind by taking time to relax and wind down before you go to sleep. If your mind is still buzzing from the pressures or excitement of your day then it is not going to produce meaningful dreams.

You can use techniques such as visualization, seeing yourself going off to sleep and becoming absorbed in vivid meaningful dreams, or positive affirmation to tell yourself that you are going to dream about something significant.

Learn How to Recall Your Dreams

Within five minutes of you waking up it's likely that around fifty percent of your dream content will be forgotten. After ten minutes as much as ninety percent simply can't be remembered. So you need to learn the steps required to help you to improve your powers of recall.

Ensure that you wake slowly and keep your eyes shut for a few moments. This will help to keep the images from your dreams clear in your mind so that you can then record what you remember as quickly as possible.

Record What You Dream About

Keep a notebook and pen by your bedside so that as soon as you wake up you can record all that you remember about your dreams. Make a note of the main objects, characters, and events that appear and be sure to include things like colors, shapes, and sounds. As you repeat this process each night you will build up what will become your dream journal.

Review All That You Have Recorded

You must examine closely the things you have recorded but before you start to try analyzing the symbols ask yourself what the dream could mean to you personally. Ask yourself where the dream was located, what key images or symbols it contained, and what real life experience it may reflect?

Record your thoughts on these areas and also make a note of how you were feeling during the dream. Highlight the key points and try to identify a main theme. Then leave it and get on with your day.

Analyze Your Dream

Later in the day, when you've got some time to yourself, find a quiet place, sit down, and start to go over what you have recorded. Examine the key symbols and images and explore their possible meanings. You need to see what the images mean to you personally and so must consider aspects of your life, both now and from your past, and see what connections you can make with the things that featured in your dreams. For example the people in your dreams are there to tell you something, possibly about the qualities or skills they possessed. If they are from your past think about conversations you may have had with them or ideas or hopes you had at the time. You will soon get clues about the areas of your life your dreams are prompting you to look at.

Act upon the Interpretation

After repeating the steps above for a few days your understanding will improve and what the contents of your dreams mean to you personally will become clearer. You will recognize themes and some of the images will start to reoccur. Very soon you will discover that your dreams are presenting you with clues to the actions you need to take in your life. Then simply act upon them.

By learning and consistently applying these methods you will have the basics to be able to fully understand your own dreams. If you take a step each day towards discovering their real meanings and keep seeking new ideas to help you make the most of each and every dream, you will soon uncover your dream secrets. Then you will truly see the benefits in your life.