Bad days at the flea...

I will start off on a positive note saying that a bad day at the flea is still better than a great day litigating!  That being said, having days where you make little money is hard.  Not just financially but emotionally.  So today we made nothing - I mean really $17 dollars profit and I spent that in the first 10 minutes I was there buying new merchandise.  My mind goes dark and I start to think things like:

Am I priced too high?

Did I pay too much?

Do people not like my merchandise?

Do people not like me?

Is this all just an incredible waste of time and resources?

Should I just hang it up?

I like to live in the problem for awhile - brooding over my very apparent lack of success and then still not wanting to let go of the angst I do what I have been doing since I can remember - I begin to recall all of my other failures:

Blue hair in the 80s

Basketball

The California bar exam (twice!!)

Selling children's clothing online.

The dreaded Kids Club (please don't bring that one up if you ever meet me unless you want an ear full).

And the list goes on and on...in my mind anyway!  And in very short period of time I have conjured up so many failures in my life that I am immobile on the couch...or floor as the case may be.

But why is it that I am oriented that way?  To eek all positives out of a situation when there are really more positives than negatives.  I think I grew up believing that the world was out to get me - I have no idea where I got this idea but I had it.  It has taken a long time and year of therapy (kidding) to work myself into a newer way to view "the negative".

Now I see it as a process - my perception of a given situation is my first thought - bad or good, pleasurable or painful, never ending or too brief.  Most of my life I let this first thought that I have absolutely no control over be the ONLY thought.  I think I was over 40 before I realized that it didn't have to be the lasting thought.  Some might call it denial - but I choose to call it thoughtfulness.  So now when faced with a bad day at the flea or just a bad day in general, I acknowledge the first impression as I would someone that I see at my children's school that I don't want to talk to - a quick wave or head nod and then I am on my way!  I acknowledge it exists but I don't feed the thought.  I give it as little of my energy as I possibly can and then I move on to more thoughtful thoughts - relish in my successful days or better moments.

We are all going to have bad days and for me those days can be shortened into moments.  I can start my day over any time I want to.  My first can simply be my first thought and nothing more.  So on bad flea days I am going to spend more of my time relishing the fact that I get to hang onto my treasures a little longer, that I got to spend the day outside in the beautiful sunshine with my husband, that nothing lasts forever - not even bad days at the flea.