This is Episode 2,435 of the Daily Meditation Podcast.

I'm Mary Mechley and here you are midweek getting ready to listen to today's meditation,

which has you exploring the theme of improving your emotional intelligence,

the way you respond to stress, that impacts how you feel about yourself as well as how others feel about you.

In today's episode, you're going to be guided as you use a meditation technique that helps you to cultivate peace of mind.

That is priceless these days as we continue to live during a pandemic and many people find themselves more and more stressed.

It doesn't have to be that way. This could be your time to explore inner stillness and here you are getting ready to do just that.

So we are on day four of this week's series and I want to ask you how is your meditation quest coming along for this week?

Your quest is to take the high road.

When you feel triggered or especially if you feel provoked to respond in a negative way towards someone and it may even be justified.

But as you explored in yesterday's episode, consider how worth it it will be to expel so much energy on stresses that in the big scheme of things don't really matter much.

Does it really matter if someone cut you off in traffic? There was no accident. You are fine.

What is this stress or focus in your life that requires the most attention?

And in yesterday's episode, you were guided as you rated your stress.

This is a fantastic exercise to do as you continue through this week. When you're feeling provoked, think about how much energy do I want to spend on this stress?

What is it that I'm really focused on? Maybe there's a bigger stressor that's requiring most of your energy.

And this is important because what you might notice is that when you're dealing with something incredibly stressful, such as a pandemic or a move or relocation, a difficult relationship, poor health, anything to do with your finances, those are the big stressors that require a lot of energy.

So you want to do two things. You want to consider how much energy you want to expend on certain stressors by reading the stress from one to three.

If it's a major stress in your life, it may require a lot of time and energy and focus. That's a one.

So you really don't have a lot of extra energy to spend time being stressed about things that are not as important.

If it's a minor stressor, today I had two back-to-back doctors appointments and I had to wait an hour for the first doctor.

And I really couldn't leave because I had waited six months for the appointment.

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