Did you know that each night you will have between four and seven dreams and that a total of around ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes will be spent dreaming?

That means that over your lifetime something like six years will be spent in the world of your dreams! So don't you think it would be great to be able to spend that time productively?

Well you can, because by learning the techniques that you need to fully understand your dreams you can then use them to achieve all of your goals in life. All you have to do is follow the simple steps that will enable you to uncover your dream secrets.

Follow these seven steps and you will be well on your way:

Prepare Your Environment

To ensure you dream truly significant dreams you must get a restful night's sleep. So the environment in which you sleep must be just right. Make sure you are comfortable and are neither too hot nor too cold. Ensure that the room that you sleep in is right for getting a good night's sleep – a room that is too light for instance will make it more difficult. And try to remove those things that might distract you before you go off to sleep, like TVs and computers.

Prepare Your Mind

If your mind is still full of the pressures or excitement of your day then it is not going to produce gainful dreams. So try to clear your mind by taking time to relax and wind down before you go off to sleep.

Use techniques like visualization to see yourself going off to sleep and becoming absorbed in vivid meaningful dreams. Tell yourself that you are going to dream about something significant.

Learn To Remember Your Dreams

It's no good having all those great dreams and then simply forgetting them. Within five minutes of waking it's reckoned 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 change this.

Ensuring that you wake slowly and keeping your eyes shut for a few moments will help to keep the images from your dreams in your mind. Then it's important to record what you can remember as quickly as you can.

Record Your Dreams

You should have a notebook and pen by your bedside so that as soon as you wake you can jot down all that you remember about your dreams. Note down the main objects, characters, and events that appear and include things like colors, shapes, sounds, even any smells.

There is no need to worry about being grammatically correct just get the details down in the best way you can. This will form your dream journal.

Examine What You Have Recorded

Start to examine more closely what you have been dreaming about. It is important before you start to try analyzing the symbols, that you ask yourself what the dream could mean to you. Ask yourself what was the location of the dream, what key images or symbols did it contain, how did you feel during it, and what real life experience could it reflect?

Record your thoughts on these areas and try to formulate what the theme of the dream is. Highlight the keys points and then leave it and get on with your day.

Analyze Your Dream

Set some time aside later in the day when you can go back to what you have recorded and start to analyze it. It's vital that you find a quiet place where you won't be interrupted.

Examine the key symbols in your dreams, maybe using a dream dictionary to find some initial possible meanings. The true picture of what they all mean though will come by looking at your life, both now and in the past, to see what the images mean to you personally. As you think about them you will be able to form associations with aspects of your life.

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.

Define The Interpretation and Act Upon It

It may take you a few days but soon you will become accomplished at understanding what the contents of your dreams mean to you personally. You will see themes develop and certain images will start to reoccur. Try giving each dream a title and see how the patterns emerge.

Get into a routine of doing your dream work and soon the clues to the actions you need to take in life will be revealed. Then act upon them.

These steps are the basics of what you will need to learn to be able to fully understand your own dreams. When you learn to uncover your dream secrets you truly will see the benefits in your life.

So take a step each day towards discovering the real meanings of your dreams and keep seeking new ideas to help you make the most of your every dream. You won't regret it.