This is episode 1,922 of the Daily Meditation Podcast.

I'm Mary Meckley and here you are.

We are at day two of our theme we're exploring this week and the theme is how to release negative thoughts and emotions so that you can sleep better so that you can

fall asleep and stay asleep. In this week's series, you will discover a meditation technique in each episode to help you release those thoughts that seem to dominate your mind.

And they may not only prevent you from sleeping well, but they may prevent you from reaching out and connecting with

others or from doing your best work or from following opportunities that may enhance your life

in some way. In this week's series, I gave you a challenge.

That challenge is called a worry hierarchy.

This is where you have the chance to focus on which thoughts most frequently occupy your thoughts negatively and to organize

those negative thoughts in a hierarchy. So become aware of your top three negative thoughts.

Place them in the one, two, and three position of their order of frequency.

And this might surprise you because as I did this, I noticed that the most negative thoughts

that were occupying my mind weren't what I expected them to be.

I was thinking that the big stressors in my life and those things that cause me ongoing anxiety

would be what passes through my mind most frequently.

But what I noticed is that it was the little, I'll call them subtle thoughts, that I wasn't

so aware of that actually occupied my thoughts the most.

And digging a little deeper with this awareness, I realized that those were the underlying thoughts that contributed to the bigger stressors in my life.

So you may surprise yourself with your worry hierarchy.

I hope that you have the chance to do it more than once throughout your day.

If you could do it in the morning when you wake up, and maybe midday when you have a little

break, and then do it in the evening before you go to bed, this will possibly enlighten you

...