A childhood belief about general

I used to have a lot of nightmares when I was little, so I always dreaded bedtime, because of my fear of the bad dreams. So one day, I decided that maybe if I wrote on a piece of paper what I wanted to dream about [happy stuff like mermaids or flowers or rainbows] and stuck it under my pillow right before I went to sleep, my brain would receive my "good" dream wishes, and the nightmares wouldn't be able to get through. And if I woke up the next morning without any recollection of a bad dream, that meant that it had worked.

This may seem silly, but I believe, even 20 years later, that it was a good idea. lol.