How can practicing lucid dreaming help you develop mental flexibility? Why is mental flexibility valuable?
Believe it or not, learning how to lucid dream can improve your life and your future prospects. If you dedicate time to practicing lucid dreaming, then you can literally improve your life in your sleep.
Here’s how to develop mental flexibility through lucid dreaming.
Develop Mental Flexibility
Mental flexibility is your ability to adopt new and different perspectives and to adapt your beliefs and behavior to challenges and changes in your life. The authors of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming explain that lucid dreams can help you cultivate mental flexibility because they provide you with limitless space to safely and creatively explore, experiment, and play with new ways of thinking and behaving.
(Shortform note: The authors don’t explicitly define or discuss the opposite of mental flexibility, which is often called inflexible thinking or cognitive rigidity. Psychology experts explain that when you have inflexible thinking, you tend to approach problems or situations in a persistent, and unchanging manner, even when that approach is ineffective or inappropriate for the situation. Anyone can exhibit occasional inflexible thinking, but severe cognitive rigidity is a characteristic of several disorders including autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Standard treatment for severe cognitive rigidity includes psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy and helping people build distress-tolerance skills.)
Lucid dreams can also expand your perspective of what’s possible for your life and future. The first step in creating the life you want to live is imagining it and believing it’s possible. Lucid dreaming provides a vivid stage for you to envision, enact, and really feel what it would be like to be the person you want to be and have the life you wish for yourself.
(Shortform note: In The 12 Week Year, Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington agree with the authors that the first step toward positive change is to create a compelling vision. This is because when you visualize the life you want, you create an emotional connection with it, and emotional investment is key to creating positive change because it transforms your wishes into goals. When you deeply care about a goal, you feel motivated to take the necessary actions to achieve it. Because lucid dreams allow you to actually experience your vision, they can generate an even stronger emotional connection than simply visualizing a better future while you’re awake.)
