2. Smile. This clues your body into the fact that daydreaming is good.

3. Deliberately unhook your mind. Imagine yourself with a remote and turn off your to-do list, your schedule, your emails, and all your other action-connections.

4. The silence in your head will make you uncomfortable. Keep smiling. It lets you know you are all right.

5. When a distracting thought pops up, look at it, imagine yourself sliding it into a plastic bag, closing it up and putting it down, while saying, “Not now.” All your panicky ideas will be there when you are done.

6. You may suddenly be aware of the Inner Critic, Gremlins, or other voices you use to keep yourself criticized and angry. Put those in plastic bags, too. “Not now,” you say, and stack them up.

7. Close your eyes if you are too distracted by your surroundings. Imagine yourself in a room that is beautiful. There is a door in the room. You are curious about it.

8. Walk over to the door. Listen to your footsteps. The room smells good. It’s just the right temperature.

9. Open the door. Wait. There may be nothing at the door. Except opportunity to daydream. Keep waiting. Not the impatient waiting for someone to get to your meeting. Not the panicky waiting of the doctor’s office call to tell you the result of the test. The waiting of waking up and wondering what it’s like outside. The waiting to unwrap a present, not knowing what it is.

10. Keep waiting. If you have not allowed yourself to daydream, nothing may happen this time.  Daydreaming is a skill, like not falling off the Stairmaster or knowing how to fold paper butterflies.  The longer you wait, the better you get.

When you get to the point where waiting is restful instead of stressful, you have stepped onto the road of daydream.  It happens differently for each person. Maybe you see a green bean walk into a bar, and you wonder if it is a perfume or a novel. Maybe a fat old woman walks into the room and you love her and don’t know why.

Opening the door to imagination is not automatic. We no longer learn it at school. It is strongly discouraged at work. We didn’t notice it was missing from our lives until we noticed our lives were routine, focused around work, and we were angry and tense more often than happy and content. What’s missing is daydreaming. It is an honorable and necessary experience for joy and satisfaction.