1000 Dreams List
A simple and beautiful practice that expands our mind to thinking bigger for our lives, is the ‘1000 dreams list.’ I read this in a book one day and have had a little tally of this running since then, just in my notes app in my phone.
We often dream too small. The more we can grow our thinking to believe in bigger and better things,
the easier it is to start to take action on the smaller steps required to reach our goals.
Create a list, somewhere easily accessible, and title it ‘1000 Dreams.’
Start by writing a few of your big obvious dreams, the ones that have been with you forever. After that, think of something small or obscure or new that you can add to the list. One that comes to mind for me, that is not related to work, career, motherhood, health etc (the things we think about daily), is to go on a horseback safari one day. Another is to complete a yin yoga training, or experience New York at Christmas Time and go ice skating, or drink hot chocolates in the Swiss alps, or take a ballet class in Paris. Can you see where I’m going with this? The dreams don’t have to be related to a grander vision for this exercise, they don’t have to connect with one another, they don’t have to be ‘realistic,’ just get in the habit of writing them down when they come to mind. Start with 20 dreams today, and then add to them over time, whenever something pops in your head. This trains you to look for the exciting, unusual and novel, and dream bigger and more often.
The neuroscience behind the 1000 Dreams list -
When we imagine future experiences vividly, the brain activates many of the same neural pathways as when we actually live them. This is because the brain doesn’t sharply distinguish between a vividly imagined experience and a real one — the prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning and envisioning the future, lights up in remarkably similar ways either way. This is why visualisation is such a powerful tool, and why simply writing a dream down begins to make it feel more possible.
There’s also something important happening with the reticular activating system (RAS) — a network of neurons in the brainstem that acts as a filter for the enormous amount of information our brain receives every second. Whatever we focus on, the RAS is primed to notice more of. Think of it like buying a red car and suddenly seeing red cars everywhere. When we regularly write down and revisit our dreams, we are essentially programming the RAS to scan our environment for opportunities, people, and ideas aligned with them. The dreams start finding us, in a sense.
Regularly expanding into bigger, more joyful thinking also has a measurable effect on our emotional baseline. Positive anticipation — the simple act of looking forward to something — activates dopamine pathways in the brain. This isn’t just a fleeting good feeling; dopamine is deeply tied to motivation and goal-directed behaviour. The more we practice dreaming, the more motivated and energised we naturally become.
Finally, this practice gently works against a cognitive bias called the default to the familiar — our brain’s tendency to keep us looping through the same thoughts, plans, and possibilities we’ve always had. Writing 1000 dreams literally rewires us toward novelty and expansion, one small entry at a time.