How Does Your (Imaginary) Garden Grow?
by Starcat

I’ve written before about encouraging yourself to live a life of the imagination. Tonight we watched the movie Hugo, and toward the end the elderly filmmaker uses the phrase “world of the imagination,” which reminded me of the concept. We use our imaginations all the time, but to what end? Even worry is a form of imagination, though it’s one that encourages stress rather than fun.

Take a look at what you’ve been up to over the past week or so. How have you been allowing your inner creativity and playfulness to flourish? Don’t worry if you’ve had your imagination under lock and key. It’s never too late to open the door and coax it out to play!

First, have a mini-brainstorming session to come up with some fun ways to bring your imagination into your daily life. Make a long list, without censoring the ideas at all. Next, pick three of them and make them happen! Choose a couple that you can do right away, and perhaps one that will take a bit longer to implement (road trip!).

If you’re already feeling creative, find some new sources of inspiration: nab ideas from your nightly dreams, tap into the deep mysteries of your intuition, or check out our Cat-a-List. Having some silence in your life is essential for a blossoming imagination. When you get quiet and set aside the usual external sources of stimulus, then your original ideas have a chance to surface.

Before sleep, during that liminal space between waking and dreaming, is a perfect time for your imagination to come out and play. Take a nap and then wake slowly, savoring the flavors of your otherworldly journeys. It may sound counter-intuitive in our productivity-focused culture, but in order to be at your creative best, you need time to relax, daydream, and goof around.

Take a look at the gardens of your mind, and open yourself up to the life of the imagination. Feed your joy!