what do you think about when you're trying to sleep?

[BabyLlamaZen]

I only spoke to dh about this recently as feels so personal. Is there something you always get drawn back to?

Dh is him playing his favourite sport in really slow motion, mine is reimagining scenes from my favorite film, TV show or book. So detailed sometimes but really relaxes me!

Sorting thru my life. Tucking boxes for plans tomorrow, Work projects can be especially good to help me fall asleep. Any sort of fantasy wakes me up.

Any type of long list exercise would keep me awake. How can you fall asleep knowing you didn't finish yet?

It just occupies my brain enough to calm the whirring. I rarely get to the end but that’s fine.

On headspace there’s a meditation for waking in the night where you count backwards from 100,000 or something. Numbers panic me so that doesn’t work for me but obviously does for some.

Oh yes, I've tried counting backwards, in 7s. Recommended by a friend who is clearly better at mental arithmetic than me! She argued that it was failsafe but it kept me awake working out the sums.
As @BillStickers says, it did calm the whirring, but I find the alphabetic lists do that AND let me go to sleep as well.