Swaptree’s ‘Storybook Ending’

It’s Monday morning and you’ve dragged yourself out of bed after a long weekend of crazy chores and running around. You’re cursing the weekend because you spent most of it standing in line at retail stores attempting to get done every errand in two days, because you can’t find time for it during the 5-day work week. You’re exhausted, and you have to get up and start all over again. We understand… so when we found this awesome post by Canyon Ranch on the “Seven Practical Steps Toward Serenity” we had to share.

If you don’t know of Canyon Ranch, allow us to explain: It’s more than just a spa, it’s a total state of mind. You walk into Canyon Ranch a bundled up ball of stress and nerves, and you leave a newer, more relaxed, you. Thanks to specially prepared food, spa treatments and daily fitness regimes, you can get your mind and body working clearly again (and sometimes in as little as a weekend). So if Canyon Ranch says this is the way to serenity, we believe them!

You can read their tips to salvaging your own serenity, but we loved this one in particular:

Live happily ever after: Develop a storybook ending.

According to Robert Rhode, Ph.D., clinical psychologist at Canyon Ranch in Tucson, once you understand that anxiety is the result of your imagination working overtime, you can use that knowledge to create your own ending.

“Instead of trying to stop thoughts about the future, make up alternate endings. No matter how bad one ending is, you can develop one that is worse – and you can also imagine endings that are better.”

Well put, Doc! So we put his advice to good use and thought up our own storybook ending. It goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, in a land called “Bahston”, the Swaptree team spent a summer working on new member initiatives and adding new products to our platform. The initiatives launched earlier than planned, thanks to an upsetting basketball game against the LA Lakers and the sad and early end to our country’s World Cup run. There’s a silver lining to everything and this was no exception: Swaptree launched a few new categories to the site that put our members in a tizzy. “Finally!” they chanted, and went online to add their much-anticipated items to their Want Lists. All the while, the great minds at Swaptree had more plans in the works…

While members squealed in delight at the addition of new categories like ______ and ______ (did you really think we were going to announce the new categories this way?), our development team was hard at work getting ready for the even bigger category announcements, scheduled for later this summer.

A few months passed and all was well with the nearly 1 million Swaptree members. Time passed by, people got older, children were born and grandchildren were welcomed in the world. Swaptree stood by them all – and helped them swap their old items – and today remains the same, stable, and honorable site it’s always been know for. The end.