229. Discover the Transformative Power of Dream Interpretation with Kelly Sullivan Walden

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together, and since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

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Today's episode is amazing, and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at Coach. Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

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Kelly Sullivan Walden, it is such a privilege to be talking with you today. And before we started recording, just to give the audience a little snippet here, you're an international bestselling, author of ten books. That's incredibly impressive. And you're an award winning dream expert. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited to talk to you.

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Thank you, Sandy. It's a pleasure to be with you. And I love the name of your show. Happiness solved is so wonderful. Like, okay, how do you do it?

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Let's do this. I'm excited to be with you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

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Yeah. That's the name of my second book that was released right around the time the podcast started and was launched. Yeah. And I think that if you listen to all the different guests that I have on, you're going to hear so many different words of wisdom because happiness is such a broad topic and there's so many areas of our life where it comes into play. And so I love that I get to talk to so many people that are experts in their own right, in their fields.

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And I'm excited to talk to you because I'm so into my dreams and I'm always like, what does that mean when you wake up? And all of that. So we're going to dive into that. But I want to hear a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are today to be this award winning dream expert. Oh, my goodness.

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Well, the long story short is I was fascinated with dreams and by dreams as a kid, as most of us are, I believe, because the walls are thin when we're little between realms, so we tend to be big dreamers. I had a sister I still do, who is a big dreamer, who is a year and a half younger than me, and she and I were kind of partners in crime with our dreams. We shared a bedroom, so we shared that space, but we also shared actual dreams together that had nothing to do with our waking life, or didn't seem to anyway. So that's called tandem dreaming, and we didn't think of it as a big deal. It was just like a fun thing.

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But I think that kind of propelled me on the path and got me maybe more interested than the average kid. I was always like a Dear Abby type growing up, where even in junior high and high school, everybody would come to me with their problems and their challenges and they knew that I was a big dreamer. So I would get people dreaming and talking about dreams, and that sort of characterized my life and the work I'm doing these days. I talk about in my new book, which really isn't a dream book. It does have some really big dreams of mine in it, but it's more of a memoir as opposed to a straight ahead self help book.

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In a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. I talk about how I hit like a pretty big bottom in my early twenty s. I was pursuing acting, and during that time, interestingly, I wasn't thinking about my inner world. I was trying so hard to be the people pleaser to get everybody to like me that I really sold myself out and didn't honor my inner life. And that led pretty quickly to what would be considered these days a quarter life crisis where I just didn't want to be on the planet.

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But it propelled me back into the metaphysical. I got into therapy, went into twelve steps, all different twelve steps and hypnosis hypnotherapy, shamanism, all the spiritual things. So I always think that a cris is a terrible thing to waste. That's the title of my latest book, it's over there. But that crisis that propelled me into therapy got me back into dreaming.

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And I always think about that Joni Mitchell song, you pave paradise, put up a parking lot or don't not always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone, right? So I didn't value my dreams and my inner life until it was gone, until I didn't have it. So once I started to get it back, I feel like I grabbed a hold of it and I've never let it go. And that's become more sacred to me than had I not been the prodigal daughter and hadn't left it behind. So I'm grateful that I got it back, and I got it back with a vengeance.

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And now I'm like now I just teach everybody to pay attention to dreams. And I've written a lot of books and never sought out to become Dr. Dream or what people would consider a dream expert. But I think sometimes the best things happen to us when we're making other plans and the universe has some magnetic connection to us about where we're supposed to go. So I don't think ultimately, we can't screw up that bad.

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We always get back on track somehow, even though we try to screw up, but we get back on track somehow. And that's led me to you. Oh, my goodness. And I love that. And as you were talking, I can see for those just listening in your background, you've got the COVID of the book, and I'm looking at that as you're talking.

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And what came to me, which is what I talk about all the time, is that when you go through something tragic in your life, as long as you work through all of the feelings and the emotions and do that inner work that you're just talking about, you come to realize that that happened for you and not to you. Exactly. And it can't tell anybody that when they're in the midst of it, because they might smack you. Exactly. But it is true.

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And actually, I was just working with a client recently, and I was acknowledging her for being so wise, and yet there's still PTSD from issues. And I said, It just means there's more wisdom yet to be mined. You're not done with those situations. You still have to deal with these things because there's more wisdom in store for you. So it's not just, oh, I want to get over this thing that's been haunting me forever.

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I think we need to switch it to I don't want to get over it until I've gotten all the gold out of that situation, until I've owned it. Because if you're going to go through hell, which all of us do, we all have moments of it. If we're going to go there, we might as well learn something. We might as well get something from it. And like I always say, if you drop down to the bottom of the ocean, you want to not come back up until you've grabbed a handful of jewels from the treasure chest.

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That's always down there. So we just don't want to waste it. And this is where the best wisdom, the wisdom that I teach isn't from anything I learned in a book, isn't from any teacher. And yes, I've had great teachers, and I've read some really wonderful books, and I recommend that people read the books. But I think the greatest and deepest wisdom is what we do from our own what we get from our own dreams and from our own inner excavation when we have to, when things fall apart.

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Well, and I love how you turn that around, where you can make a crisis, a tragedy, something horrible, that we all go through something. And pain is pain, I always say, right? Comes in different shapes and sizes. But you kind of did a little bit of a switch on that and give it a little bit of a positive twist to it to really pique people's interest. And it's a little bit of a clue into how I suggest that we work with difficult dreams.

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If we have some scary creature that's chasing us, I always say, why don't you chase them? Chase after them to ask and find out, what message are you trying to give me? What's the gift you're trying to give me? So I always teach people to turn the tables on the difficult things happening in dreams. If you feel overpowered in your waking state or in a lucid state, you imagine that you're the big one looking at this scrawny little thing that's just like it's about chasing after it.

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Instead of being stalked, you become the stalker. You go after it to get your gold. Instead of being ogled, you become the ogler that gets the big eyes, and you want to see what's in it for you to see. And then those things that are so difficult, they kind of give up on you because you're no fun. Or it's like you solved the case too quickly.

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They're like, okay, moving on. Okay. I haven't had a profound dream where I actually went online to Dream Dictionary and looked it up or whatever, and they just give kind of a generic scenario. Is that really the case that I used to dream all the time? That I would be out in public and I'd look down and I'd realize I was naked?

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Yeah, I know that's a common thing, but is it a generic thing for everybody? Well, if you're dreaming that you're naked in public, then there's this going on. Or can you oh, my heavens. I have so much to say. The nutshell.

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My disclaimer, because I've written two dream dictionaries, and I always say in big, bold letters that you, the dreamer, are the best interpreter of your own dreams. No one, myself included, can tell you definitively what your dream means. You are the best decoder of that dream. However, a lot of us will have a dream that is so bizarre or just doesn't make any sense that we will just discard it, because when we don't know something, we just think, oh, that doesn't matter. So what I think a Dream Dictionary can be helpful with is to at least give you something to consider.

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And maybe that takes you a couple of steps closer to what that insight is. But it's not to take away your own intuition. It's to help move you closer toward it. So, yes, there are some general things. I think, as humans, we have more in common than we have that's different about us.

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For example, for most of us humans, if it's a sunny day, we all tend to say, oh, this is a good thing. Things are looking brighter. That tends to represent something. And when something falls, like, if we drop something off a cliff. Oh, my God.

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Something falling tends to be about failing, and so that tends to be in common. However, there's nuances. Not everybody thinks that a dog is man's best friend. Some people, like me, have been attacked by dogs, and I love dogs at the same time. So it's complicated.

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We have to ask ourselves. I use a jetset. I call it jetset. It's my formula for dream interpretation. And I give this formula away for free.

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It's a jetset free worksheet on Kellyullivanwalden.com. But one of the questions I ask you first is to identify, what does this mean to me? What does it mean to you, the dreamer? And then also, why do you think this has come up now in your life? So these are some questions that are very personal, and then you might consider what the more generic responses?

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Can I give you a little feedback on my well, first let me ask you, what do you think your dream is about the one that you're like? Oops, I haven't had it in a very long time, but I used to have it a lot. Okay.

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And I haven't even really thought about it for a while, but I guess I used to think that maybe it was about me being afraid to be vulnerable, maybe to really show who I really am or what I don't know. Yeah. Well, there you go. These are important first associations. And then I would say if you were going to look at one of my dream dictionaries, I had the strangest dream, the dreamer's dictionary for the 21st century.

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It's one of the ones over here somewhere. There that one. And then next to it is the one called the Love, Sex, and relationship dream dictionary. But my interpretation is that I think as humans, we are coded to be civilized and to be socialized, and and what other people think about us is so important. I mean, there's some tribal part of us that knows if we don't fit in, we could die.

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So there's some, I think, when it comes to issues of clothes or lack of clothes, it's about, oh, my god, am I wearing the right thing? Am I wearing enough or not enough? Oh, my god, am I going to be cast out? Are they going to see too much of me? But I love your instinct, because I think as we evolve as a species, if we have a dream that we're naked or underclothed, the telltale sign that we are evolving is that we're okay with it.

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We're like, okay, what's transparent about me is what's most beautiful. I've got no shame in my game. Like, what you see is what you get. The walk matches the talk, and that's kind of the goal. And in the meantime, with social media, a lot of us are saying things.

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We'll put something out on social media without even thinking about it. We're like, did I say too much? Did I expose myself too quickly? So it's issues of exposure and transparency. But ultimately I love what you said about maybe I want to be okay with that.

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If people see me, then maybe that should be just fine. That's the goal. Got it. So I want to ask you because when I was twelve years old, right before my 13th birthday, and I write about this in my book as well, that my older brother died. And it was very, very tragic and it was a very life defining moment for me, but a couple of things happened.

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One was that I decided and this is why I'm on this journey for happiness, right? Because I decided that because I was having such a happy day and he died that I couldn't allow myself to be happy because if I did, then terrible things were going to happen. So that was one story that I made up. The other story I made up was that on the day of the funeral, my mom made me go up with her to pay our last respects to the open casket. And she made a comment and she said, he doesn't look real.

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He looks like a mannequin. So as a little girl, I took that like, he's not really dead. He's a spy. I would make up, oh, he's a spy, and he's just in the witness protection program or something like that. When I hit rock bottom 33 years ago and started on this journey, of course I know that he's not coming back.

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But what started to happen to me, and it happens to me, and it happens at least once a year, and I have it every year for about 33 years, is that I open up the door in my dream, and he's standing there and he's visiting me. Wow. And I'm like, oh, I knew you were still alive. And we hug and we have wonderful conversations and a spiritual with somebody I was mentoring with who is a psychic medium at one point years ago. And she's like, he's visiting you in your dreams.

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I'm like, okay. And I've just always written, but what do you think about that? Because I always find it to be like, okay, is this really bizarre or what is this? Well, I think dreams like this are among the most special kind of dreams that we have because there's so many layers of what's happening in there. It's not just what's on the surface.

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I believe that these kind of dreams yes, I agree with the psychic medium friend of yours that said that these are visitations. I think more often than not, they are visitations. And what does that mean? That it's a visitation? I mean, that does mean that the real him is still intact.

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And that means that we do survive the body after the body goes. And that does mean that the relationship is still intact and that there's still an open door policy for being able to stay in touch and being able to communicate and to have there be. I know there's a lot of people that will dream about an open door and they invite the person in and they're not necessarily able to come in. Is he able to come into your space or do you speak to him while the door is open?

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There have been times it's happened like, I wake up right after that. And then there's times we sit down at a kitchen table and we just have a long conversation. Yeah, well, I write about one of the stories I wrote about in my book is my death experience when I actually was gone for about 15 minutes. Oh, my goodness. And towards the end of that experience, because I didn't know I was coming back, so I was trying so desperately to communicate with my husband and my friends that I was okay.

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And I was, like, screaming, trying so hard to get through to them. And it was like the thick brick wall. They couldn't hear me, they couldn't feel me. And I was like, oh, my God, you people. What does it take?

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You think, this is so tragic and I'm right here and I'm fine and I'm good and we can continue, but oh, my God. So it just makes me appreciate when our departed loved ones come to us in a dream, it's usually one of the only places that they can because our walls are in abeyance, our walls are down, and that space between realms is more accessible. It's real. And if we knew how much effort it takes to actually come in and make that imprint, we would realize, oh, wow. This one dream that I have once a year represents about a thousand other attempts.

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So it's packed. It's like a boolean cube of so much love and so much depth and so much communication that I think we would just take those moments. And I'm so happy that you remember these dreams and that you're able to even talk about it after the fact. And this means that I imagine he's really happy that you got it. And I hope that you get that there's a lot more communication where that comes from.

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This just happens to be the one that really landed. It's like so many seeds get planted, but not all of them take root. But they try. So I think there's a lot there. And then we could also say from a symbolic place, we could say, well, what's the brother aspect of me?

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What part of me needs my brother aspect? So from another perspective, more of a symbolic point of view, everyone and everything in the dream is an aspect of ourselves. So why is that coming into my life right now? What do I need from that more masculine part of me? That kind of thing.

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But mostly I think it's a visitation. Nice. Love it all right. If there was one thing that you would like to share with the audience when it comes to interpreting their dreams, what would that be? Well, I'll give you my Jetset formula.

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I'll tell you what it is, what the main points are, and then, of course, people want a little bit of a deeper dive. You can get it for free on my website, Kellyolivanwaldin.com, but I would say start off with when you first wake up in the morning, grab whatever Snippet of a dream you can and write it down immediately, otherwise it's gone. And then when you get to a place, you get your coffee, whatever, you want to start to unpack that dream, that use the Jetset formula. So J stands for just the facts, ma'am. So these are just the main elements of the dream.

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You don't have to know what they mean at all, so don't judge it. Just be a good secretary. Just take notes, take dictation. And then the E is for the emotion. So now we get a little bit deeper.

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How did the dream feel? What were the nuances? What was the emotion in the dream? So that gives us a deeper layer to unpack. And then the T stands for the title and or subtitle.

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So this is just something that it's kind of like automatic writing, like without thinking about it first thing. What's the title? My brother came through the door. Or my open door policy to my brother, whatever that is. So that will often give us this deep clue about what the dream means in a nutshell.

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And then we go to the S. The S is for the standout symbols. And I suggest I always have the magic number as three. You don't want to spend like, if it's a very long, elaborate dream, you don't want to spend all day on the dream, because we don't want to work on our dreams to the exclusion of the things that we have to do in our waking life. We want it to be a yes.

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And so just keep it simple. Three dream symbols that you remember, for example, brother Door living room. Isn't that interesting? He comes into my living room, into the room where I'm alive. He's still alive.

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And what does those symbols mean to you? But this is before you compare any notes for anybody else. If you want to later, after you've written what you think it means, then you can cross reference it in one of my dream dictionaries or online. And then we move to the E. The next E is for enlighten.

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So from one perspective, every dream comes to us in the service of our happiness and our health and our wholeness and our healing. So from that perspective, in a word, I would say enlightenment. Your word would probably be happiness, but E for enlightenment. How is it trying to teach me something, give me something, make my life better? And let yourself write the first thing that comes to you without even and then sometimes if you want to get a little more 2.0 about it, you can ask somebody from the dream to tell you how this dream is trying to enlighten you.

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For example, Brother, how is this dream trying to enlighten me? And let yourself channel what he has to say through you. So you can do this, even if it's a scary character, if it's like a monster, or if you can say, I want you to tell me how this dream is trying to enlighten me. And that's really powerful. And then the T that's the final letter in jet set is for take it to the street.

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So this is imagining that the dream jet took off and took you to wild places, and then it takes you down for a landing. So this is about what will you do with this remembered dream? I believe every remembered dream requires some form of action in our waking life. So it might simply be that we tell somebody about the dream. It might be that we do a little extra journaling on that.

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It might be that we actually go somewhere, change plans, or wear a crazy outfit that we were wearing in the dream, or play a piece of music that the dream reminds us of. It's a way of being able to close the feedback loop from our dream, putting out all this effort to give us this delicious, juicy thing. And it's us being able to say thank you. It's like sending a thank you note back to the dream saying thank you and keep it coming. I love that.

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Wow. I didn't even realize I never really connected, that they were some sort of feedback loop, that we kind of want to close that loop. Yeah. I think we should treat our dreams like it's a relationship with a person. If somebody tells you, oh, my God, I love you, you're so beautiful, here's the winning lottery numbers, and we just walk away like, Cool.

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And just keep going. They might be like, maybe I'm not going to tell them the lottery numbers next time. But if we're like, oh, thank you. I really heard you. That was awesome.

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Got anything else? The person's like, oh, yeah, there's a lot more. Okay, wait till next. So it's just a way of priming the pump and keeping that relationship alive. To me, that's one of the best ways that I like to think about dreams, is it's like a relationship with a being and we want to treat it with respect.

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And as we take one step toward our dreams, I think it takes ten, maybe even 100 toward us. Wow, this has been such an amazing conversation, and I think we could probably have a whole episode just on your book talking about that and on dreams. Yeah. But I appreciate everything that you've brought to us today. Thank you.

00:27:09
So much. And is there anything else you want to share with the audience before we close up? Sure, I'll just remind people if they want to get my free Jetset Dream Interpretation formula, and that's on Kellyullivanwalden.com. And that's free. You just have to put your name and email in and you get that.

00:27:28
And I also offer a free ogle worksheet. This is a formula that I use for being able to transform difficult dreams or a difficult challenge in our waking life as well. And that's something that we could talk about at another time. But there's a free ogle worksheet for being able to transform the tragic into magic. And the Ogle formula is explained in more depth in my book.

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A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The art of transforming the tragic into magic. And it's out now. And I have a trip to Costa Rica that's coming up in June and it's almost full, but there's a few spots left, so if people want to go, they can find out all about that on Kellyullivanwalden.com. And let's see, all my social media is mostly on Facebook.

00:28:19
It's Kellyullivanwalden dreams, instagram, twitter and TikTok. It's Kelly walden. Awesome. Well, I will make sure your website is in the show notes. And Kelly, thank you so much.

00:28:32
This has been such an enlightening conversation and I really appreciate it. I so appreciate you too, Sandy. And you are more beautiful than Sandra D in Greece, that's for sure. Olivia Newton John from the other side is. Yeah, I agree.

00:28:48
Oh, thank you. We had that conversation before we started recording, so thank you. And thank you for listening, everyone, today. We appreciate you all.

00:29:09
Song, I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care, everyone.