What is your relationship with your dreams?
Not your goals or visions for the future, but the actual dreams that appear when you sleep?
Deepening our understanding of our dreams is not just a trailhead, but a transformative journey to better understanding ourselves, what drives us, what limits us, and what impacts our choices and behaviors.
Today’s guest, Selden “Dee” Kelley, urges us to take the time to reflect on dreams so that we can better understand how our inner systems are processing our present and our past. He reminds us of the profound power of witnessing our subconscious burdens, a process that validates our experiences and our desire to be seen and heard.
Dee is a lifelong learner. He holds five degrees in religion, psychology, an MBA, and a PhD in Industrial Psychology and Organizational Development. He served 18 years as the Pastor of the First Church of the Nazarene in San Diego and held various leadership and administration positions before becoming a pastor.
He has a deep passion for helping others discover the rich guidance that dream work can provide for their journey toward health and wholeness, and helps people connect with the power of their dreams as a pathway toward new insight, better decision-making, and improved creative thinking.
Content Note: Dee draws heavily from Jungian male-female archetypes. I want to note that the discussion of gender expands across the spectrum and is not limited to the male-female binary.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How Dee’s approach blends hypotheses of the biological functions of dreaming and uses them in service of greater self-awareness
- How every person’s dreams have an individual dialect
- Advice for beginning to remember and take note of your dreams
- Why specific interpretation can matter less than the reflections the interpretation leads to
- How paying attention to our dreams can help us embrace imaginative, nuanced thinking
- Differentiating between dream crushers and useful contrarian voices, in dreams and awake
Learn more about Dee Kelley:
- Website
- Instagram: @drdeedreamscoach
Learn more about Rebecca:
Resources:
Transcript:
[Inspirational Intro Music]
Dee Kelley: Dreams, I think, are the training ground for our imagination, and I’m just contending in my journey that one of the great overlooked resources is bringing our nighttime dreams into our daytime consciousness, reflecting on those things and allowing them to be one of many tools of taking us to a new plane we never thought possible, moves us beyond binary thinking and allows us to think in ways and live in ways that push the boundaries of the limitations that are forcing us into lanes of life that are artificial and, at times, unhealthy in our current political and cultural climate.
Rebecca Ching: What’s your relationship with your dreams? Now, I’m not talking about the dreams you have for your future or for your life but I’m talking about your actual dreams that appear when you sleep. I know for me the more I understand the power of self-awareness and how we lead ourselves and others and our ability to imagine a better future, the more curious I am about the things that drive us that may not be fully in our conscious awareness. One powerful trailhead to understand ourselves better. What drives our choices, what limits our ability to imagine hope, and how we respond to our day-to-day challenges may be found in deepening our understanding of our dreams.
I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.
1:58
Our capacity to dream of a better future and take action on that vision today varies depending on our burdens and what weighs us down. When we sleep, our dreams offer insight into this capacity to imagine a better future and take action towards those visions today. I’m far from an expert on dream analysis, which holds many different schools of thought and approaches to analyzing our dreams on so many different schools of thought and spiritual beliefs. But I want to say, too, my training has taught me that our dream state (often called REM state, which stands for rapid eye movement) is where most of our dreams occur when we sleep. Our brain activity looks similar during this REM space to when we’re awake, and this is a space where we work through unfinished business from the day or our story.
I lean towards understanding that our brains use images and experiences from our day-to-day lives to help us continue to work through and process things that are unfinished business that we may not be as connected to in our present life or our conscious awareness. And, my goodness, life feels like it’s at warp speed right now, and we don’t have a lot of time to process the many shifts and changes and transitions that we experience at such an incredible speed these days, leaving many of us in a state of reaction or even shut down or numb versus reflection and proactive choice making. And one of the places that we process all that we’re experiencing is when we sleep and dream in that REM state.
Now, my guest in this Unburdened Leader conversation helped me understand the importance of taking time to reflect on my dreams with a little bit more intention than I’ve ever really thought about, so I can discover how my inner system and nervous system processes things from my present and my past, which in turn helps inform where my intention needs to go within me and around me.
4:18
Selden Dee Kelley is a lifelong learner holding 5 degrees in religion, psychology, an MBA, a PhD in industrial psychological and organizational development, and he served 18 years as the pastor for First Church of the Nazarene in San Diego and held various leadership and administrative positions before becoming a pastor. He has a deep passion for learning and is fascinated with new ideas, perspectives, and unexplored paths. Dee has followed his dreams for about 45 years and worked with others both one on one and in small groups for 15 years. A driving passion of his life is to help others discover the rich guidance that dreamwork can provide for their journey towards health and wholeness, and he now helps people connect with the power of their dreams as a pathway toward new insight, better decision making, and improved creative thinking.
I’m grateful Dee agreed to return to The Unburdened Leader podcast and talk about his lens and his approach to dreamwork and the invitations he offers those he works with to better understand their dreams. And you will find his delight and reverence for dreams firsthand as I share a couple of my dreams with him during this The Unburdened Leader conversation, and Dee reminds me of the power of witnessing also our subconscious’ burdens and the desire for us to be seen and heard. That desire is just constant for us humans.
A quick content note: Dee discusses and draws heavily from Jungian’s male/female archetypes, and I just want to note that the discussion of gender expands across the spectrum and is not limited to the male/female binary.
6:07
But Jungian kind of thought did start this way. But there are many thought leaders that have expanded on this spectrum and paradigm of gender. Just wanted to make a note of that. But as you go into this conversation, I want you to listen for how Dee defines the role of dreamwork, and I definitely want you to pay attention to when Dee discusses the role of dreamwork to support more self-awareness and improved leadership. And notice when Dee shares how reflecting on dreams moves us towards our goals of growth when we are awake. Now, please welcome Dee Kelley back to The Unburdened Leader podcast!
Dee, welcome back!
Dee Kelley: Thank you! It’s nice to continue the conversation. I love what you do with this podcast, and I’m honored to be a part of it.
Rebecca Ching: Ah, well, I just knew we didn’t cover the territory needed around this piece that you were doing in your life around dreamwork, and I think with just everything going on, this is something that I know a lot of those that I work with, both clinically and in my leadership work, they kind of go, “Dreams? Like, dreaming? My dreams?” [Laughs]
And so, I think this is gonna be a really helpful conversation, and I think I’d like to start off, just on a high level, for you to talk about what dreamwork is to you and how your approach to dreamwork differs from the conventional wisdom because it is such a big space, you know, around there. So I’d love for you to share with listeners what that is to you and what your approach is and how it’s different than maybe other approaches or other understandings of dreamwork.
Dee Kelley: You bet. There are a lot of things you’ve asked there. So let me just start with where you were at the beginning, and that is what is dreamwork.
Rebecca Ching: Yeah.
Dee Kelley: And for me, it quite simply is a pathway to greater self-awareness through the use of dreams with a particular focus on self-awareness that we would approach dreams with the intent to dig deeper into who we are, not simply our identity, but the components of our self that often go unnoticed and the parts that we sometimes miss out on when we are trying to engage in leadership, relationships, just trying to bring about in our life the things that we want in life.
8:36
And so, dreamwork is an effort to use this part of our journey to help us dig deeper into that self-awareness piece. You mentioned how my approach might differ than maybe conventional wisdom. I think that I probably need to unpack a couple layers of that.
First is that I think that conventional wisdom in the sense of our culture relegates, for the most part, dreams to the white noise of life, kind of this aspect of being an alive biological creature, we have artifacts from our evolutionary journey and that dreams are just kind of an artifact that nobody pays attention to. I’ve used this illustration a couple of times. Maybe you’ve heard me use it in our conversations, but when I moved into the house that we had there in Point Loma, the first couple of nights I woke up at about 3:25 in the morning because the pipes were banging, and I had never lived in a place where pipes were just making this horrible noise. And it took me a little while to realize that first night that this was simply the sprinkler system coming on, and old pipes that weren’t particularly secure, when they came on, there was this loud rattling that felt like there was a party going on in the crawl space beneath the house. It was horrible, and I thought, “There’s no way I can live in this house. Something has to be done.”
10:14
And within less than a week, my mind had relegated that to something that for which there was no need to fear, nothing was wrong. It became white noise, and it was several years later when I happened to be awake at 3:25 in the morning where I realized, “Oh, my goodness! That’s still going on!” And I had completely ignored it because in my mind it was no longer important, and I feel like that’s what we’ve done with dreams.
Everyone dreams every night. we spend close to a third of our life asleep and about twenty percent of that time dreaming, and yet we’ve relegated it to banging pipes for which we need to pay no attention. And so, I think the conventional cultural wisdom, if you want to call it that, or misrepresentation maybe is that dreams play no important role in our life, in evolutionary artifact. I think that’s beginning to shift through the work of some great researchers, neuroscientists, plus psychologists who are tapping into some of the historical significance that not just psychology, which is a relatively new science, but spirituality, human reflection, and cultures that have valued dreams throughout history is now beginning to shift the tide a little bit.
And so, there are a number of ways by which people look at dreams, and so, that’s the next layer. But there are several kind of primary theories of what dreams are doing. One is what’s sometimes called the Simulation Theory where we are simulating in our dreams situations to help our endocrine system form in vitro, but then as we grow up to prepare us for fight, flight, or freeze, simulations that help that system to operate so that we’ll be prepared in case of emergency.
12:26
I think I’ve heard it referred to what pilots use as simulators, a safe environment to try and test out difficult moments. And so, dreams become the simulators of life.
I think that there might be some truth to that, but it probably is not a complete description of what dreams can do for us. There is a continuity hypothesis, which really just says that our nighttime dreaming is a continuation of our daytime experiences, sometimes referred to as residue, things that are left over from the day get processed through the course of the night.
Rebecca Ching: Yep.
Dee Kelley: And there is no doubt, for anyone who tracks their dreams, there are residue pieces that show up that you go, “Oh, yeah. I had that confrontation at the corner of 5th and J street, and portions of it appeared in my dream. So yeah, there are portions that that probably is true as well. But there’s also a view of emotional regulation hypothesis, which says that during dreams, the portion of the brain that is stimulated corresponds to what we experience in terms of strongly emotional moments.
Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.
Dee Kelley: What is fascinating with the current neuroscience research is that that portion of the dream can be stimulated to a much higher level that we almost ever experience while we’re awake and conscious, which means that the brain or the body uses dreaming as a way by which to take emotional weight and further research talks about pulling away the emotional content so that the facts of an event or a situation can actually be stored in helpful ways in the brain for future use, but it becomes this emotional therapeutic work that takes place every night, whether we pay attention to it or not.
14:40
So my question is if this wonderful gift does this every night, how much greater would our self-awareness, our leadership, our imagination, our creativity, our decision making be if we actually worked during our conscious hours with what is happening during our unconscious hours to make us more prepared for all the things we’re gonna face.
So I think all of those hypotheses are portions of the story that lead us to this place of greater self-awareness, and to me, what I think is so important is that we have so many examples of how self-awareness leads to better leadership and how leaders that are not self-aware are subject to manipulation and erratic behavior and short-term employees and a long list of problems in leadership if we’re not aware of those things that trigger us, those things that hype us up, those portions of our self that we’re not paying attention to, that we mask, those things that we project on others. All of those are symptoms of lack of self-awareness, and I believe dreams can help us get to a place where we are far better prepared to lead through that increased self-awareness.
16:08
Rebecca Ching: Yeah, it seems like the way that you frame this, and I totally co-sign it, is it’s an essential part to us wanting to grow and lead ourselves and lead others better, be a better human, be prepared for the hard things of humaning. It’s an intrinsic part of doing that, and I’m thinking as I’m listening to you, I’ve kind of heard over the years, when it comes to dreams, kind of polarizing views of, “Oh, my gosh. This woo-woo stuff? Come on.”
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: “This is weird.” There might be some of those folks listening like, “Dreams, Rebecca? Really?” And then there’s this other camp where I know folks are so into it. There isn’t necessarily a tethering in the reel too. Can you speak to a little bit of some of those maybe polarizing responses to dreams, of, you know, “This is ridiculous woo-woo stuff,” to sometimes over-kind-of-diving-in to it so much, maybe putting more meaning onto it versus gleaning from it?
Dee Kelley: Yeah, it’s a great question and a really important point. I’m glad you brought it up, and it just immediately makes me reflect on those two tendencies. I think the tendency to be dismissive of it is going to be more and more difficult with the increase in neuroscience research that is really placing a value on this portion of our journey. It’s an essential component to health, certainly it works in the background, and we can go a whole life, and many people do, with just allowing it to do its work in the background. But for me, this is kind of the comparison that helps me in my journey, and that is I don’t pay attention to my heart or my heartbeat until something goes wrong.
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
18:08
Dee Kelley: If I ignore it, then, it can affect the longevity of my life, the quality of my life, all of those kinds of things. It, behind the scenes, is doing its thing every day, every hour. In a similar fashion, dreams working behind the scenes are creating this sense of emotional balance, are taking care of emotional weightiness, but there are times when it seems like it jumps out and says, “Pay attention!” And if I ignore it, I kind of ignored it at my own risk, and beyond that, if I am desiring to be physically healthy, I’ll probably start paying attention to how often I get my heartbeat up to 240 beats a minute, how quickly my recovery is, all of those things that I can do to work in conjunction with this part of me that works behind the scenes, and likewise, as we’re learning more neuroscience, like we learn more heart science, cardiovascular stuff, it’s gonna be difficult to ignore this as an important part of our journey. The flip side, equally important, are ways of looking at dreams that actually produce more problems than solutions.
Rebecca Ching: That’s a good way of saying it, yeah.
Dee Kelley: Looking at dreams as some way that I am predicting somebody else’s behavior or I’m tapping into universal symbols and not paying attention to individual journey and kind of the dialect of the dream language, and I believe that everybody has their own dialect. If there is, for example, in a dream something about water, for me, my go-to first question has to do with what’s beneath the surface of the water in my life, what’s in my unconscious that’s drawing my attention? For somebody else who maybe, as a child, had a traumatic experience with water, the dialect of that particular symbol may be very different.
20:12
So there’s no universal dictionary. It’s the most, in my opinion, foolish approach to dreams is to grab a dream dictionary. What I think that does is it provides a biography of the person who wrote the dream dictionary and their dreams.
Rebecca Ching: Mm!
Dee Kelley: It has nothing — it can have something to do to alert me to how others might view things, but the hard work is to look at the dream and say, as a starting point, “Every part of the dream is a part of me.” So what does that part of me say in this dream? What’s the language in this dream speaking to me, and how might I learn something about myself that will make me better? It keeps me from thinking that a dream about my life has anything to do with my wife. It has to do with the part of me that has been imprinted by her and that I can dig deep into that part of me that gets depicted in the dream.
So I think one of the great safeguards on the other end of the spectrum is to reel it in a bit and say — and these large generalizations we make when you tell me about your dream, we’re on pretty dangerous ground because if we get a chance to talk about one of your dreams, Rebecca, it will be a reflection of you not a reflection of the names of the people you see in the dream or something like that, and how do we get at those parts? That takes a work at self-awareness to begin to unpack in my own life the stuff that I’m not aware of, by definition, in the unconscious takes work to dig it out of the unconscious to bring it to my self-awareness.
Anyway, a great point you make: both extremes are dangerous. Trying to find a middle place for dreamwork is really important for health.
22:11
Rebecca Ching: So what signals do we need to take from our dreams? If we were to develop almost a dream practice, what are some of those things that you, when you work with people and do dreamwork with people, what are some of these signals? Because I know, for me, sometimes I want to just figure it out, but my training has taught me not to do that anymore, and usually I’m like, “Okay, what is it that my brain grabbed onto to work through whatever it’s working through?” That’s kind of how I — but when I was younger I used to get into, “Oh, this means this,” and I was very literal.
So if we were to start just noticing our dreams and noticing the signals from our dreams, what’s a place to start?
Dee Kelley: You make a huge assumption with the question and that is the assumption that people are even remembering their dreams.
Rebecca Ching: Thank you for naming that because a lot of people don’t. A lot of people say they don’t dream.
Dee Kelley: Absolutely.
Rebecca Ching: And I’m like, I say, “Well, you don’t remember it?” So thank you. Good catch right there.
Dee Kelley: If people are paying attention to dreams, they literally aren’t paying attention to articles about dreams or books on dreams or whatever the case might be and have dismissed them kind of like the white noise of the pipes. And so, there are some people who literally don’t think they dream, and the truth of the research behind that is if I keep you from dreaming, allow you to sleep but wake you up every time brain activity indicates that you’re about to dream, you will be one of the most unrested humans on the planet, and you will begin to hallucinate. It is such a compelling drive that it will begin to happen during our waking hours because our body demands it.
So we dream every night. “But I don’t remember my dreams.” I would propose two things. One is maybe in part because you don’t think they’re helpful, meaningful, or serve any purpose.
24:08
If I can’t get you to begin to change that viewpoint, we begin to pay attention to those things we think are important. So there is a shift that needs to take place for people to believe that maybe they are valuable enough to pay attention to.
Then the simple technique of at night, before you fall asleep, if you want to put the words on a 3×5 card, but you say out loud, “I intend tonight to remember a dream, and when I wake up I will write it down immediately or record it immediately.”
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
Dee Kelley: And I haven’t yet had anybody who goes more than a week, maybe ten days, if they actually do that exercise, begin to remember a dream. That then doesn’t necessarily lead to engaging until somebody actually experiences how that dream might speak toward their journey because the first dream people typically remember seems like nonsense or seems like residue or seems irrelevant. So that’s why sometimes it’s incredibly valuable to work with somebody who can begin to tease out the way in which that dream can be a springboard to self-awareness.
Sometimes for people I might question the interpretation they make of the dream, but if it leads to greater self-awareness, well, I have no debate with whatever interpretation that might have been if it causes you to dig deeper into the things you’re now paying attention to, your fears, your anxieties, your hopes, the voices inside of you that are longing to be at the decision-making table and you’re not allowing them to be at the decision-making table. If you see some evidence of that, dream’s doing its work, not only at night but also during the day.
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
26:04
Dee Kelley: So it’s having an experience where you actually see personal growth is the result of reflection on a dream that begins to help people feel like there’s worth in recording it and moving forward. Then comes the question, “Okay, then what’s the pattern that you begin to create?”
For me, once again, this is helpful to have somebody you’re working with who has some type of framework of understanding of personality, whether it’s an Internal Family Systems perspective, or maybe and I tend to draw on some of the Jungian masculine/feminine within us. I find that very, very helpful. If you begin to use a framework of personality and tap into how the dreams lend themselves to an understanding of personality, that then begins to tip the scale to get the pebble rolling down the hill of learning about myself and realizing, “Oh, my goodness! There’s so much more in here that I’m wanting to learn and get at.” It’s like a waterfall that I just get excited to take a drink from. Obviously I’m getting excited myself now.
Rebecca Ching: I love this, and so I’m just thinking about — I want to share a different dream, but I’m thinking about this one dream that I had. You know my husband, Gavin, and we had met when I was here in San Diego. We tried the long-distance thing. I freaked out, broke off the thing, moved here for grad school, we bumped into each other, and we ended up chatting a little bit. He was like, “Why do I want to hang out with you? You kind of left me.” [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: Anyways, and I’m making this very abridged. Gavin gets a little like, “You’re leaving a lot out.” I’m like, “Not because I want to make myself look good.” [Laughs] I just want to say that for the record. But he ended up asking me out, and we kind of just like had a reconnection time, and I remember that night, I still remember to this day. Now this is in the early, early 2000s. I was a big fangirl of Dave Matthews, and I had a dream that night that I was, like, hanging out with Dave. We were at a house party or something, at a place I’ve never been, and Dave’s like, “Yeah, do you want to go out?” And I was like, “Me? You want to go out with me?” [Laughs] And I woke up, and I was like, “Okay, Rebecca, that is ridiculous!”
28:47
But I sat on it, and I’m like I think parts of me are just really excited that Gav’s giving me a second chance. And my brain used my fangirl for Dave — that was my — I don’t know if that’s right, but I’ve just been thinking about how we put our own thing. But it actually is helpful, and it stayed with me ‘til this day because I think it was such a healing thing for our early relationship, at least for me. I know Gav’s like, “You were dreaming about Dave, and you’re saying it’s about me!” [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: And I’m like, “But I think that was my brain giving, ‘This is a good thing.’” But anyways, this led to many funny conversations. But I’m curious what your thoughts are on that. [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: Oh, thank you! I always — when somebody shares a dream with me, I have to just tell you right up front to anyone who’s listening, I feel like I’ve been invited into sacred space.
Rebecca Ching: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dee Kelley: There’s something incredibly personal and emotionally vulnerable of sharing a dream, and it just feels like the most sacred of moments, whether it’s humorous, harsh, violent, any of that. Just to be invited to hear that kind of a personal piece. So thank you!
Rebecca Ching: Yeah.
30:02
Dee Kelley: Secondly, just listening to you process it out loud years later still carries all of those components of how can you not value a dream when it leads to a reflection of your emotions in the moment, a movement towards a relationship that has been incredibly important and spans decades and causes you to be honest about the emotional weightiness of the moment and to own it, hold it, and actually take action on it.
You asked the question, “Do you think that that was the appropriate interpretation?” My answer to that is it’s irrelevant.
Rebecca Ching: Yeah.
Dee Kelley: What is relevant is that it took you to a depth in that moment that if you weren’t paying attention to the dream, it would be easy to gloss over or be inattentive to what was stirring inside of you. I think that’s just the most beautiful example in the world. I appreciate you sharing that.
[Inspirational Music]
Rebecca Ching: Leading is hard. Leading is also often controversial as you navigate staying aligned to your values, your mission, and your boundaries. Navigating the inevitable controversy can challenge your confidence, clarity, and calm. Now, I know you don’t mind making hard decisions but sometimes the stakes seem higher and can bring up echoes of old doubts and insecurities during times when you need to feel rock solid on your plan and action.
Finding a coach who gets the nuances of your business and leading in our complex and polarized world can help you identify the blocks that keep you playing it safe and small. Leading today is not a fancy title or fluffy bragging rights. It is brave and bold work to stay the course when the future is so unknown and the doubts and pains from the past keep showing up to shake things up even in our dreams.
32:07
Internal emotional practices and systemic strategies are needed to help the protector of cynicism stay at bay and foster a hope that is both actionable and aligned.
When the stakes are high and you don’t want to lose focus, when you want to navigate inevitable conflict between your ears and with those you lead, when time is of the essence and you want to make hard decisions with confidence and clarity, then Unburdened Leader Coaching is for you and where you deepen the capacity to tolerate the vulnerability of change, innovation, and doing things differently than the status quo.
To start your Unburdened Leader Coaching process with me go to www.rebeccaching.com and book a free connection call. I can’t wait to hear from you!
[Inspirational Music]
Rebecca Ching: I’ve been thinking about this as I was preparing for this conversation. I’m curious how you see the connection, because you talk about understanding our dreams, what we dream when we sleep, but what do you see in the connection between our awake dreams, the dreams of what we want to do with our lives, what we want to see in our country, in our world (I’m just saying, really timely right now). How do you see those awake dreams that we’re moving towards, wrestling with, and the dreams we dream when we’re asleep?
Dee Kelley: You’re excellent in your questions. Thanks, Rebecca. I think I’d like to answer that kind of hailing back to both leaders, people who don’t even think of themselves as leaders, a conviction of mine that lack of self-awareness naturally leads to binary thinking.
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
Dee Kelley: Binary thinking where there are two answers, one’s right, one’s wrong, where it’s either A or B where you’re in or you’re out, you’re part of us or you’re part of them, that the world becomes oversimplified, and we do that for a lot of reasons. We do it out of fear. We do it out of uncertainty. We do it out of lack of identity. A lot of reasons lead to that binary thinking.
Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.
34:27
Dee Kelley: Imagination leads to the possibilities of C through Z. It’s moving away from A or B, and it says, “Wow, what if both is a possibility?” or “What if it’s not really either of those but something else?” Imagination takes us past the line that’s been drawn in the sand and actually starts drawing other figures that could take us in new directions.
So coming back to your question about daytime dreams, how we would like the world to be, our current culture seems obsessed with binary thinking, and that’s why I think our current culture is starving for more imagination out of the people who lead but I’m not sure it’s gonna come from the people who lead because I think the people who lead have this natural proclivity to hang onto power, and power leads to binary thinking because it gives me the ability to say I’m right and you’re wrong. So I think that imagination is gonna come from other sources.
Dreams, I think, are the training ground for our imagination. The portion of the brain that’s locked into reasoning, it’s not completely dormant, but its activity decreases significantly. So the boundaries of reasoning begin to shift so that we can think outside the box. The great classic nine-dot exercise with three dots by three down. Can you cross all nine dots in four straight lines without picking up your pencil? It’s really popular in business about 35 years ago. It still is around and gets used.
36:14
You’ve got to think outside the box. When I’ve used that with businesses, somebody always knows how to solve it because they’ve done the exercise before. I say, “That’s great! Now can you do it in three straight lines without lifting up your pencil?”
Rebecca Ching: [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: And they’re like, “What?” And then they get stuck but then somebody comes up with a solution. I said, “Could you do it in two lines? Could you do it in one?” And there are answers, solutions to all three of those, all four of those levels. Back when we did it in business, all we wanted to do was get somebody to think outside the box but not to think imaginatively, and pushing with questions that press the boundaries out further forces us to think in ways we haven’t been thinking before.
So when I think about the history of science and the incredible breakthroughs that have come through actual nighttime dreams, supposedly the periodic table came as the result of a dream. The Benzene Ring in organic chemistry came as a result of a dream. Somebody who’d been working on these problems for months and gave themselves over to the reasoning portion of the brain being drawn back a little bit and new insights, new ideas. So do I think there’s a connection? A hundred percent. It’s a training ground for imagination. It actually can be problem solving at night, but also research, wonderful research is now coming out that problem solving during the day that happens after a rest, actually a nap, is exponentially greater, not just additionally greater, but there are some huge leaps that come in problem solving after some rest that takes place, compared to those who were prevented from resting during the day.
38:10
And so, accomplishing those goals, those dreams, those hopes we have, we need to partner with everything very resource we have, and I’m just contending in my journey that one of the great overlooked resources is bringing our nighttime dreams into our daytime consciousness, reflecting on those things, and allowing them to be one of many tools, not the tool, but one of many tools of taking this to a new plane we never thought possible, moves us beyond binary thinking and allows us to think in ways and live in ways that push the boundaries of the limitations that are forcing us into lanes of life that are artificial and, at times, unhealthy in our current political and cultural climate.
Rebecca Ching: So if we were paying more attention to our dreams, increasing our self-awareness but also what’s percolating, the forward-facing awake time could be very generative and, in fact, healing, transforming in our world. I don’t think we have to look far to find — it’s not hard to find a dream killer, you know? “Oh, gosh,” you know? “Well, that’s too hard. That’s not realistic,” you know, with the awake dreams, right? But there’s something about when my brain, when my psyche, when all parts of my inner system are running without some of the awake constraints, some cool things come together or get worked through.
I guess I’m just wondering how can we be better at not being dream killers with ourselves and with others?
Dee Kelley: I am looking forward to when you do a workshop series on that, and I can learn from how you do that. I will offer one way that it has helped for me in relationship to nighttime and daytime dreams, but I want to qualify it by saying this is just me. I don’t know if this is true for anyone else or if it would work for anyone else. But here’s one of the ways that my dream journey at night has changed my — I loved your term — generative way of trying to live.
40:35
As I said a few minutes ago, one of the things that I borrow a bit from Jungian work is the notion of being created with a masculine and feminine side, dynamic, masculine and feminine and kind of a static masculine and feminine. I use those component parts to look at the characters in my dream and if all the characters in my dream are a part of me. So for you, it wasn’t really Dave Matthews or your future husband. It was the part of you represented by the Dave Matthews fandom that you had, that part of you was being reignited, in my viewpoint. But for me, I look at those component parts of the dream, and I know where my dominant approach to life is. In the static masculine, I like to organize, I like to bring things together. I find justice through the equal application of the systems that are in place. You know, I come to a variety of things in my life through the way in which I typically approach my world. The dreams show me times when, for example, the dynamic feminine creative side, the thinking way outside the box, the prophetic voice, when it’s trying to get my attention in a dream, “You’re ignoring this part of who you are, Dee. You are not only not paying attention to it in yourself, but as a result of that, you’re not listening to it in others.”
42:24
And so, as a leader, I’m not listening to that really important prophetic voice that is thinking of a future that I had never thought of as we plan out what we’re trying to make of the world in which we live, and it comes up in my dream, and so, that’s a voice in me that wants a voice at the table of my own personal decision making or the more conquering voice, the voice that takes on a challenge without thinking of the consequences. And no, that’s not like me at all, but there’s a part of me that knows that. As I pay attention to those things in me, when I’m interacting around the table and we’re considering what this business is gonna look like a year from now, if I’m not self-aware, I’m going to naturally screen out the people that don’t think like I do as opposed to, “Okay, I need to hear that prophetic voice from this person over here. I need to hear the contrarian voice, the skeptic that fits into another particular category.”
For some, there is this cringe inside because in their own family of origin they had a contrarian skeptic voice that would — they were the dream killers of their life, and so, they push them away. So I agree with you that we need to be very cautious about dream killers in our journey. But if I’m self-aware, I actually know when I need to invite the contrarian voice in and not let it kill the dream but learn from that voice how it might refine the dream for its greatest potential for success. That, for me personally, has come through my dreamwork, and the laborious process but fun process of letting dreams speak to my journey.
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
44:27
Dee Kelley: One of the things that has shifted in my journey is — because I have some naysayers in my life. They don’t trigger me like they do some other people with whom I am close where they can be quickly debilitated by a naysayer.
Rebecca Ching: Not all naysayers are created equal. Yes, I agree.
Dee Kelley: Absolutely. Absolutely. Some have the potential to trigger things inside of us. One of the wonderful pieces of my journey for which I’m very grateful is to have done enough work with the naysayer voice that when there is an external person that — and I tend toward believing that the people are doing it unconsciously, not trying to kill me or my dreams, but it comes across that way. The ability to step into that moment and laugh and throw the jab back, like turn the comment and point out what a naysayer comment that is has come about because the defensiveness in that area has decreased because I know who I am.
Rebecca Ching: For sure.
Dee Kelley: I think I struggle more when a naysayer actually tugs at your own personal identity. Those can be real triggering for me, I assume for others as well, at least the people with whom I’ve worked. But the good kind of work that can lead you to a place where you don’t assume the motive in the other is malevolent but see it as, “Ah, man. I am so disappointed for you that you live in that world of feeling like you have to drag things down, that must be a horrible place to live.”
46:19
In my head that kind of thing is going, “I don’t want to assume I know what leads you to a life, a place like that, but that’s your stuff not mine.” So I try to move through that in that way.
Rebecca Ching: I think this is coming from a place where I have become very discerning about who I’m inviting into my dreams and who I’m not, and I work with my clients on that too because I think there’s a pattern sometimes of inviting naysayers all the time versus champions. And I think for me what it comes down to is the relationship, connection, trust versus am I inviting somebody in to confirm the doubts that I have.
Dee Kelley: Yeah.
Rebecca Ching: And so, I’ve been just really paying attention to that in my own journey and in those I work with. Who are we inviting in to have a say on our awake dreams and maybe if we’re processing our at-night dreams.
Dee Kelley: Yeah.
Rebecca Ching: My husband is my number one filter, and sometimes I’m like, “Ahh! You just needed to not say that!” But he’s usually right, but I just am not ready to hear it because he’s so frickin’ wise. And so, he’s someone that I go to and even if I don’t — he’s like, “Oh, crap. I’m gonna get some backlash here, but here it is.” I want more of those people in my life versus the folks that are gonna push back because they’re not really invested in me or my family or how working with clients and saying, “Who are you inviting in to have a say over your dreams, over your vision, and what is that playing into? Is that generative or is that playing into your fears and insecurities or other beliefs that parts of you are holding?” So my brain is just going — a lot of what you just said, so I appreciate that.
Dee Kelley: I love that. My question for you in that, though, is how do you get to that place that you can discern who is and who isn’t?
48:16
Rebecca Ching: Relationship. I slow down. I slow down. I’ve slowed down because I think I’m a raging extrovert. I love people. So it’s like, you know, I’m wearing a white linen shirt today, and if you have a white linen shirt on, I have a white linen shirt on, okay, let’s go deep!
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: And I’ve evolved from that, but I still have those parts that get so excited about connection. But for me it’s about boundaries too. I’m having boundaries around things that are more sacred, more treasured for me or my family and, again, working with clients on that too. And so, who’s earned the right, and sometimes those younger parts of me that are just so enthusiastic and just want to share and I’m like, “Oh, they hadn’t earned the right.” And so, I’m slowing down and just asking who’s earned the right to speak into this dream that I have, my awake dream, or in anything that’s vulnerable to me. And sometimes that’s through relationship. Sometimes that’s through building trust in a different way, whether reading someone’s work, studying under something, or other roles. And so, I think that’s how I’ve done that because I think there’s just — I miss those young, naïve parts like, “We can all get along. It’s all good.” [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: And then I was like, “Oh, wow. I surrounded myself with what I’m calling the dream crushers,” is probably a better way than saying dream killers. But dream crushers.
Dee Kelley: Yeah.
Rebecca Ching: And that’s what I grew up with. I had dream crushers, and they didn’t mean to be. They were trying to protect me. But they were dream crushers.
Dee Kelley: Sure.
Rebecca Ching: And I was replicating that and then I’m, you know, through my own work and awareness I’m like, “Okay, so a dream crusher can still be in my life, I just may not be sharing something that’s really tender or sacred at the moment with that person at that time.” So, you know, it’s relationship. It’s trust and connection for me.
Dee Kelley: Well said. Well said. And sometimes that just takes time.
50:08
Rebecca Ching: Oh, it does take time, Dee. It really does, and I think that’s the other thing too is we’re in a culture that wants to rush our dreams or rush being fixed or rush figuring it out, and that’s why I think this conversation is sometimes — I love the openness of what makes sense to you, you know? But sometimes we want to put meaning on something when I think it just needs to percolate for a while too.
Dee Kelley: Mm, couldn’t agree more.
Rebecca Ching: How do you hold space or someone’s, “All right, this is what this means,” or “I’ve got to figure this out!” Because I have got my ways, but I think sometimes that’s tricky. Sometimes there’s the need for certainty when it feels like especially so much is flailing. How do you, even in your own life, slow yourself down to let something breathe a little bit more before attaching a meaning on it prematurely?
Dee Kelley: I often like to take the approach of if this is true, then it seems to me it will be confirmed if I give time for it to be confirmed. Why do I feel like there is a rush to have decided? I feel like I’m back to binary thinking. “I have to know it now one way or another.” Well, what if I take a guess and allow time to see how that plays itself out in terms of implications. Is there anything that affirms it? Is there another dream that kind of comes alongside it and gives me a picture that’s the same but different? And what does that difference hold for me? How is it played out in the way I live? Does it produce the kind of outcomes that I want to see it produce?
So I think, for me, part of the question is if I sit with it, will I find that my certainty has been confirmed? Great, I keep moving forward with that. It may be that it gets confirmed, but I realize, “Hey, yeah, but there are nuances to this that it’s not quite complete.” Okay, great! Time will help me with that.
52:16
Rebecca Ching: You touched on this a little bit but I’m wondering if you can say more specifically about a time when you had a particularly powerful dream that revealed something important to you or about you and how that awareness shifted how you lead yourself and others.
Dee Kelley: There are certainly dreams that bring people to seek help that were so troubling or raise such a level of curiosity that I need to dig deeper on this. Sometimes they fall into categories of nightmares or unusual sexual dreams or violence or panic over spiders or snakes or whatever the case may be. I think that my reaction — or I don’t think. I know my reaction to that is something’s trying to get your attention from the inside. What is it that’s trying to get your attention that it takes that kind of a strong emotional dream for you to pay attention to what’s going on inside of you? Let’s just dig deep first to what that might be. A snake in your dream might represent something completely different than a snake in my dream.
I certainly have a default that a sexual dream in my journey has typically had implications about an integration of some portion of my personality. I’m finally integrating something. I’m finally becoming intimate with that part of who I am, and that’s my default. But there may be, in another person’s life, residue of something that’s maybe more traumatic or more invigorating or something else. So I have to ask the question about your dialect. When you tell me a dream that’s grabbed our attention. I don’t have a ready-made response. I have some ready-made questions that help us dig deeper into it.
54:06
The other piece, though, that to me has to do with time and how you do some of this work is when I am intentionally being attentive to my dreams, and it goes through seasons, but I will record my dreams and I will, almost every night, be able to record two to five dreams a night. So in the course of a week, I’ve got 30 dreams that I could look at in depth if I had the time to or wanted to.
For me, that volume begins to chip away at some of the certainty of the theories that people put out there because some of those theories don’t hold up when you begin to realize how many dreams we have and how the mind is at work behind the scenes constantly doing what we needed to do to hold us steady and healthy and emotionally whole. So then I pick and choose what is it that I want to dig into thematically in some of these dreams because I’m ready to do so. I’m ready to dig deeper into my aversion to some part of my journey, my hesitation to dig into listening to the feminine voice in my life or allowing myself to take the risk of stepping into that dynamic masculine and jump off the precipice of decision making without having done all the analysis. I’m ready to dig into that and say, “What about my past, what about my preconceived notions, what about my religious faith keeps me from taking those kinds of risks?”
For those who choose to do dreamwork, one of the problems is time. You can record a ton of dreams and there’s just not a time to do the reflection. That, then, becomes a defense mechanism. Well, sure I dream. Sure, I look at them. But I’m not going in depth with the work that it takes to work in conjunction with my dreams to become whole, healthy, a better leader, a better husband, a better friend, a better dad. That takes hard work, and I need to decide that I’m gonna dig deeper into the symbolism, what my dreams seem to be teaching me, my own life, and then how I’m gonna live that out. That takes time.
56:37
Rebecca Ching: Tell me what your dreams are teaching you today.
Dee Kelley: I hinted at it already in the notion of binary thinking. I am susceptible for a number of reasons, and I would say primarily my faith upbringing, the political culture in which we currently exist, and the privileged position that I am in for a whole bunch of reasons. To fall into binary thinking and preserve all of the things that work to my advantage, my dreams keep pushing me on the ways in which that thinking leads to injustice, the way in which that thinking leads to limited possibilities, decreases my imagination, and leads me to a place of preserving what I have instead of using what I have. My dreams work on me over and over again on that, and sometimes it shows up in fear, nightmare-ish-type dreams when I am frightened of what it will be to take that risk, to step into that place, to try.
Those are some of the things that my dreams are currently helping mold me in good ways, I hope good ways.
58:08
Rebecca Ching: Okay, so that got me thinking about this dream I wanted to share with you. I didn’t know I was gonna share with you my Dave Matthews dream from two decades ago.
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: But okay, so two nights ago from recording this conversation, I woke up with a start. I was so tired, but I had slept really deep. I remember I had a super heavy workout day, was super active, and I crashed. But it was also like a big-news day, and so, there are parts of me curious about that. But this dream, you know how dreams at least — I was with a bunch of people that I knew but I didn’t know but they were my friends. We were in this outdoor Jeep, and we’re on a camping trip adventure that’s super fun and cool, but we’re near this forest, and then these — [Laughs] just okay. You probably have these thoughts when you’re trying to say your dreams out loud like, “This sounds ridiculous!” But these alien-type spider creatures, they’re kind of like the creatures from A Quiet Place. There’s a new movie of A Quiet Place coming out, but I typically have reoccurring zombie-type dreams. So this had the same feeling.
And so, it was in that dream. We were in this Jeep, and there are five other people in this big Jeep that wasn’t covered. And it was this forest and then this high grass that we’re driving through. And I’m in the part like, “Let’s have fun! Oh, wait. There are these creatures that are coming to kill us.” But then everything is going slow, right? The whole thing. Like you try to go fast in your dreams, and it just kind of was on a loop where I’d go from we’re having fun and then these creatures, where all of a sudden we’re trying to get away from them. And it was like this on repeat thing that would vacillate between being with this group of people, having a blast, doing this cool adventure, clearly those are people that I knew in my dream. I don’t know who they represent. But then I woke up and I’m like, “Something’s chasing me.” And so, I’m like, “All right, I’m bringing this to Dee for our conversation.”
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
1:00:05
Rebecca Ching: You know, and again, it’s like I could analyze it, but I just think there was also the part of, I do regularly — well, it’s not uncommon. It’s not weekly but probably at least monthly I have at least one dream where I’m being chased, and I can’t quite get away, but I don’t quite ever get hurt but I’m not getting away and I’m in that stressful place too. So anyways. That was from two nights ago, and I was like, “What was that?” [Laughs] So…
Dee Kelley: Again, thanks.
Rebecca Ching: Yeah, you’re welcome.
Dee Kelley: What a matter to hear a dream. I will tell you the questions that I would ask.
Rebecca Ching: Okay.
Dee Kelley: They may not be the questions that you should ask.
Rebecca Ching: All right.
Dee Kelley: So I’m gonna preface it by simply saying what kind of rises within me as I’m hearing you say that I can’t completely separate myself from myself in asking questions, but we haven’t spent any time talking about the language that is often used around being conscious that has to do with the shadow.
Rebecca Ching: Right.
Dee Kelley: And if all the parts in your dream represent a part of who you are — so the Jeep has some symbolism about being a part of who you are, maybe part of the ego or a desire to sometimes maybe escape the daily grind and be able to be a little bit free from the things that cling onto you during the day, the daily exercise task of not only exercise but the exercise work and all of those other things.
Rebecca Ching: Parenting. [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: So sometimes something like that can be an indication of an emotional weightiness that just for a period you’d like to let down, go out in the woods, and let nature do its thing. But the woods have always seemed to keynote both life and growth, green space, oxygen, all of those kinds of things but also the canopy of the forest, that space also has an unknown to it, and in this case the unknown of the spider people that are coming.
1:02:12
If the spider people are actually part of your own shadow, the shadow side that’s trying to get your attention, the stuff that’s in the unconscious that you know is there but aren’t turning around to look square on enough.
Rebecca Ching: No.
Dee Kelley: What parts of you might that be that are wanting you to pay attention, not to destroy you because you never quite get destroyed because the shadow never does. The shadow actually always moves us toward higher ground, and it’s in some ways chasing you toward higher ground but you’re slogging through it all.
And so, for me, the question I’d be asking myself is, “Shadow seems to be trying to get my attention. What might it represent at this point in my journey that might have been different than three years ago in my journey that would be difficult to face but beneficial to get me where I need to go?” that constellation of questions would be where I would encourage someone, in this case you, to spend some time reflecting. Do any of those things resonate? If not, dispose of them. If one of the questions kind of hits a trigger, go deeper with it.
Rebecca Ching: I actually am gonna be really spending some time on my own journaling practice. I want to spend a little more time especially with the idea that what’s chasing me wants my attention. That really fits with some of the things I’m working on with my life. I’m trying to acknowledge some lifelong dreams and work on them right now. But there is the grind of life and responsibilities that seem to be getting in the way. It’s interesting that you brought attention to the Jeep too.
So anyways, yeah, I’ve got a lot of good trailheads to think about that. I think sometimes I have a dream about that and actually approach it with some judgment. “Oh, my gosh. What’s wrong with me? What am I stressed out about? What do I need to fix,” right?
Dee Kelley: [Laughs] Yeah.
1:04:01
Rebecca Ching: And especially when there are those stressful dreams or dreams that make us uncomfortable, right? And so, I love the approach of us bringing in the shadow of the unconscious or what are parts of me that don’t get airtime that only get airtime when I’m sleeping that are expressing themselves with the way they know best to get my attention. So that lands. So yeah, I feel like parts of me want to add more to that because I want to honor that in my own process and see what comes of that in my own continued writing and reflection and all that. So thank you! Thank you for that. Well, I’m glad we could give people a little bit of a taste of what working with you would be like.
When you first came on the show, I have these quickfire questions that I ask, and so, since you just came on the show I didn’t want to ask you the same questions. So I made a dream version! [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: [Laughs] Good deal!
Rebecca Ching: And so, if they’re not succinct, you could pass or whatever. But what does a nightmare tell us about what needs attention? Or what nightmare that you have had recently, what did that bring into attention for you?
Dee Kelley: A nightmare, first and foremost, says, “Something needs my attention.” I think acknowledging “something needs my attention” is often more important than being able to identify exactly what it is. But then a nightmare typically is descriptive of the shadow side of our life, which means that there are some unconscious components to it. Give yourself permission to say, “This may not be easy to figure out what that is completely,” because it’s in the unconscious. It’s not like it automatically becomes conscious when I realize there’s something trying to get my attention. So give yourself permission to go, “I’m not sure yet, but I think it might be this.”
Rebecca Ching: [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: Back to that point about I think it will confirm itself if what I’m thinking is correct and pay attention to that.
1:06:05
So a nightmare, to me, is this incredible gift (I think it’s a gift of my creator) to all of us. But the gift of dreams and a nightmare is that wonderful gift that says, in a very safe way where there’s no danger involved, “I’m gonna get your attention,” says the unconscious, before it starts popping out in very unproductive ways like an emotional response to an innocuous comment by a partner, and you just jump all over it. That’s the shadow coming through. I have not dealt with some things in those moments if it’s disproportionate, and so, the shadow coming out in a dream is actually a wonderful gift, particularly to your spouse or family member because then it won’t come out there. [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: [Laughs] For sure! What is a dream that you feel comfortable sharing that you’ve had on repeat?
Dee Kelley: When anybody asks about repetitious dreams, the most significant one in my life is the one that started me on this journey. It happened through my elementary school years where I would have a dream that a gentleman would come to park a car in front of the house. I had this God-like view. And I’d go running to my mom and I’d say, “He’s here! He’s here!” She’d say, “Go hide.” I’d go hide someplace in the house, and then the only thing that was ever different about the dream was where I would hide. It would be in a closet. It’d be under the bed. It’d be under the sheets. It’d be in various places. In a God-like view, I’d watch this guy get out of the vehicle, walk into the house, and he had an electric cow prod, and he would go directly toward where I was. He would shock me, and I would wake up in a panic. That was my childhood dream.
Rebecca Ching: Oh, my gosh.
Dee Kelley: I had no memory of it. But during my late, great school years, I came to hear the story of what happened one time.
1:08:01
When there was a construction site behind my house, my mom felt very uncomfortable about one of the construction workers. On a Saturday, my dad happened to be gone, and she got a phone call that no one answered when she said, “Hello.” She immediately called my dad and said, “I think it’s that guy.” He immediately left. He was at work for some reason on a Saturday. He said, “Lock all the windows and doors. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.” It turned out he pulled up in front of the house and knocked. Then he tried the door. Then he walked around to try the windows. And during that time, mom had my sister and I huddling under a table or a desk in the guest bedroom.
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
Dee Kelley: And she was just trying to keep us quiet. So it’s a little bit of a traumatic event.
Rebecca Ching: Yeah.
Dee Kelley: Not necessarily any more traumatic than anyone else but for a little kid, I sensed my mom’s panic, and that stayed with me.
Rebecca Ching: Very much so.
Dee Kelley: So I had that recurring dream. It stopped. I go to high school. At the beginning of my second year in college, the dream came back. I was startled that it came back. I went to a school psychologist who, after hearing my whole story, said, “Well, let’s see what we can do to help you not remember your dreams.” And inwardly I thought, “I think that’s wrong. I think that’s wrong advice.”
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
Dee Kelley: “I don’t think I should not remember this. I think I should be figuring out how to talk about it.”
Rebecca Ching: Hello.
Dee Kelley: And I never went back to him. And then I sought help in a different fashion from a gentleman who happened to be one who was well versed in his own journey in dreamwork and started sending me articles and was an open forum if I needed to interact with him.
That dream in different forms comes back periodically when I’m panicked about something. And so, a dream that’s on repeat that’s been my life’s journey is one that has childhood roots that is a reminder to me of the emotional weightiness that we have in our daily journey that often doesn’t get addressed, and dreams are kind enough to say, “You’re carrying a heavy load, and we need to unload some of that tonight.”
1:10:22
And I am emotionally grateful for the fact that dreams do that behind the scenes every day of our life. So grateful.
Rebecca Ching: That’s beautiful. Thank you. What is your favorite movie or TV show that honors your approach to dreams?
Dee Kelley: I actually — there are two movies that I think are actually pretty good when it comes to dream theory. What Dreams May Come, Robin Williams is the star of that one.
Rebecca Ching: Oh, my gosh.
Dee Kelley: What a powerful movie that actually does a pretty good job of depicting dream theory, and I also think we haven’t even gone into the topic of lucid dreaming, which I probably have differing views than some people but Inception —
Rebecca Ching: Oh. Ooh. [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: — is a movie that, again, I think actually does a pretty good job with depicting dream theory. Obviously they take it, for dramatic purposes, to an extreme. But I think those are two great films.
Rebecca Ching: What is your mantra about dreams right now?
Dee Kelley: Mm, I would say my mantra was just depicted a few moments ago. “What a gift. Thank you, God.”
Rebecca Ching: Mm. What is an unpopular opinion you hold about dreams?
Dee Kelley: That they’re this important. I think there are people out there that agree with that but, man, you’re swimming against the tide, at least in my circles. So to have a posture that they are this important to our life’s journey and potentially this valuable to us, being whole and healthy, I have to do a really good sales job to convince a lot of people of that.
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
1:12:07
Dee Kelley: Let me put it this way. There are some dream crushers out there. [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: I get it. And what inspires you the most to do this dreamwork? Who or what inspires you to do this dreamwork?
Dee Kelley: I think what’s been so inspiring for me has been the way in which my attentiveness to dreams has been a spiritual transformation for me.
Rebecca Ching: Mm.
Dee Kelley: So I carry my imagination into how I read scripture, to pull back three, four, five layers of a story and say, “What’s the story behind this story behind this story? What might be another layer to that? What would be a question that would unlock something fresh and new in this particular portion of sacred literature,” whatever your faith tradition might be. It carries into my prayers where I have a mansion of prayer and go into different rooms that carry different imagery and symbols of the things that are important to the journey of life from my perspective and how that might be different.
So I think it’s been an inspiration to seeing faith and the spiritual disciplines of life in a whole new way, and when I see somebody grab hold of it and I see something click inside of them and they go, “Oh!” that keeps me going for another three months.
Rebecca Ching: [Laughs]
Dee Kelley: [Laughs]
Rebecca Ching: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming back on the show, Dee, to talk about this in more depth.
Dee Kelley: Thank you.
Rebecca Ching: Just to repeat for those who maybe missed our last episode but where can people connect with you and your work?
Dee Kelley: Yeah, probably the simplest way is on my website www.inyourdreams.coach. That gives you a little bit more background of my journey and some of the things that I do and can give you links to other things that you can access if you want.
1:14:06
Rebecca Ching: Awesome. Well, thank you again, Dee, for your time and for your wisdom.
Dee Kelley: What a joy to be with you!
Rebecca Ching: Before you go, I want to ensure you take away some key learnings from my Unburdened Leader conversation with Dee Kelley. Dee shared the important connection between self-awareness and a better understanding of our dreams, and he also noted how leaders with better self-awareness are less likely to react and act out and instead learn and lead from a more grounded and curious posture and we can do this through a better understanding and reflection and connection to the dreams that come up when we sleep. And Dee also shared how understanding our dreams can deepen our emotional intelligence and capacity, especially during challenging times. [Laughs]
It sure feels like we’re holding on for dear life at times with all the changes and shifts happening in our lives right now. Taking time to listen and reflect on our dreams that come up during our sleep can help us better imagine and dream for a better future today, and this is the ongoing work of an Unburdened Leader.
[Inspirational Music]
Thank you so much for joining this episode of The Unburdened Leader. You can find this episode, show notes, and free Unburdened Leader resources along with ways to work with me at www.rebeccaching.com. And this episode was produced by the incredible team at Yellow House Media!
[Inspirational Music]
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