How New Year’s Resolutions Can Affect Your Dreams

How You Can Use These Dreams to Keep Your Resolutions!

If you’re anything like me, you’re “all about” New Year’s Resolutions. I love them to distraction and I always have.  Making a fresh new set of resolutions is such a traditional process for me that I’d never dream of breaking my streak.

I think it’s safe to say that most people either make New Year’s Resolutions or at least THINK about them in one way or another each January. I’ve noticed a trend with dreams around this time of year.  Resolutions actually play out in dreams in several different ways.  Best of all, realizing why and how they’re affecting your dreams can actually help you keep your resolutions.

Below are the main ways resolutions show up in our dreams (with examples!):

• Annie had a “frustrating” dream that stayed with her for days. Although she was actually bank teller, in her dream – she worked in a library. She said that as soon as she put a book on the correct shelf, it’d turn up somewhere else. She’d take the time to put all of the books exactly where they were “supposed” to go, but someone would always be unable to find the book they were looking for and when she went back to the shelf to get the book for them, it would be gone. She said the dream left her feeling “frustrated and helpless” and feeling like she was “letting everyone down.”  Because the dream was around the first of February, I saw a correlation between potential resolutions and wayward books.  I told her that the books represented at least one resolution that she’d probably made.  The fact that she felt frustrated and helpless in the dream indicated that she lacked confidence in being able to keep at least one of her resolutions.  Also, the fact that she felt that she was letting people down in her dream suggested that she was afraid of letting people down if she were unable to keep her resolution.  She replied that she’d made a resolution to lose weight but that it had been the same resolution she’d made for at least 6 years in a row and had not been able to keep it yet.





• Jack began having a series of dreams in January that had similar themes. Although the situations in each dream were different, the gist of each dream was indecisiveness. Irregardless of what was going on in his dream, his dream self couldn’t make a single decision.  In one dream, he couldn’t decide which top to wear to work and ended up being an hour late. In another, he was in a restaurant and couldn’t decide what to order and the server got angry.  The third dream involved indecision in choosing a cell phone – and leaving the store without one because he couldn’t decide.  Because each dream had its own consequence, they stemmed from the fact that he wasn’t fully committed to one of his resolutions.  It turns out that, sure enough, he wasn’t 100 percent behind his resolution to give up eating meat.  His indecisiveness was manifesting itself in his dreams. When he realized that he wasn’t really feeling this particular resolution, he changed it to simply cutting back on red meat and the frustrating dreams went away.
• Not all resolutions dreams are negative. In fact, many people are so inspired by their own resolutions (or, more to the point, by the promises they bring) that they dream about positive results that the resolutions will bring about.  Someone who resolves to lose weight may dream of fitting into a smaller size. Someone who vows to control their anger may dream of being level-headed and calm (even in a trying situation).  By providing a “taste of things to come,” dreams of this nature inspire the dreamer to stay on track!

Whether your dreams follow under one of the three categories above or branch off into their own category, spend a little time with the dream and try to discover what it’s trying to tell you. Is your subconscious mind inspiring you to stay on track because the goal is worth the struggle? Is your subconscious telling you that you need to find ways to build confidence if you’re going to be successful? Or, maybe, your dream is suggesting that your heart really isn’t even in it and that one of your resolutions should be scratched out altogether???

Only you can say for certain, but make no mistake about it – your dreams are trying to tell you something!