"I had been applying to the same creative agency for two years. Third rejection, I'd essentially given up. Then I had this incredibly vivid dream — a massive orange koi leaped straight up out of the water and landed in my arms. I woke up feeling strange, not happy exactly, just certain. I decided to apply one final time with a completely different portfolio direction. Hired within the week. My manager told me later they almost didn't open my application because of the previous rejections. Something made them open it."

"My family is originally from Guangdong and my mother always said fish dreams mean money — koi especially. I dreamed of a large golden koi swimming in circles in my restaurant kitchen, which struck me as strange because I don't serve fish. That month my landlord unexpectedly offered to sell me the building at well below market rate — he wanted a quick sale and trusted me as a long-term tenant. I bought it. That building is now worth four times what I paid. My mother was not surprised at all."

"I'm a PhD student and had been stuck on the same research problem for four months — genuinely couldn't move forward. One night I dreamed of koi swimming in the most impossibly clear water I've ever seen in a dream. Every scale was perfectly visible. I woke up at 3am and for some reason immediately wrote three pages of notes. That became the breakthrough section of my thesis. My supervisor said it was the strongest work I'd produced. I'm not superstitious but the timing was too precise to ignore."

"I'm ethnically Indian but grew up in Singapore surrounded by Chinese colleagues who take dream symbolism seriously. I dreamed of a koi jumping upstream — almost comical how determined it looked. I mentioned it at lunch the next day as a joke. My colleague immediately said 'go apply for that senior role you've been hesitating on.' I'd been sitting on the application for six weeks. Submitted it that afternoon. Got the offer two weeks later — 40% salary increase. My colleague just nodded and said he wasn't surprised."