Been a lurker for quite some time; this is my first post.

Summary
I was selling some big ticket items on Craigslist. I initially only had one interested buyer, who was very picky and difficult to work with. I begrudgingly jumped through a bunch of hoops because I was desperate for the sale. Later, when I had many prospective buyers, I nexted the guy because A) I was tired of dealing with his bullshit, and B) I had plenty of other options available. Cue epiphany.

Body I decided to sell a lot of stuff to make some space in my garage. One of the items that I was selling was a very expensive, nearly-new treadmill with all the bells and whistles. I still used it occasionally, and I didn't want to sell it for the peanuts that most of the other shitty 15 year old treadmills on CL were going for. I put some effort into the post (I have a sales background), and took some attractive, well-lit photos of the machine. My price was firm and reasonable.

Within an hour of posting the ad that morning, I had a guy text me and say he was interested. We discussed logistics, and then made a plan later that evening for him to come pick it up. I was pleased. I thought I had the sale in the bag. I was going to get a fat wad of cash while simultaneously clearing out a huge amount of space in my garage. I was also grateful, because as the hours ticked by at work, I received no more responses; his was my only bite.

Fast forward to later that afternoon, and suddenly this guy is inundating me with questions and concerns. He wants to know the exact dimensions of the device, down to the inch (I'm at work, can't help you, sorry). He asks me if I know if the treadmill will fit in the back of his SUV (htf am I supposed to know that?!). He wants to know if I can provide a truck or a trailer to transport the thing to his house (fuck no). He's mad because I no longer have the User's Manual, and then when I told him that you can find the user's manual online he asks me if I can put it on a thumbdrive for him (also fuck no).

At this point I'm starting to lose my shit, but I keep picturing that fat wad of cash in my hand and all that free space in my garage. I don't want to lose the sale. After all, he's the only one who's asked me to dance so far. Beggars can't be choosers.

So I acquiesce, as best I can. I put off my work to go Google searching for an hour, and I manage to find the User's Manual and email it to him. I even extrapolate the dimensions of the treadmill and helpfully type them up in big, bold numbers right at the top of the email. This seemed to appease him. We still had firm plans for him to come by and pick it up in a few hours.

Around this time, I received a couple of texts from others interested in the treadmill. They seemed genuine and eager, but I am a man of my word, so I politely told them that it was already spoken for, but if anything happened (ie the guy flaked), I would let them know. In hindsight this was pretty stupid. I've been in the business world long enough to know that money talks, bullshit walks, but I was trying to be polite, and plus I had already spent so much time and energy setting up the initial buyer (sunken cost fallacy much?)

So finally I made it home, got my garage open and ready to help Mr. Needypants load up his shiny new treadmill. Our agreed meeting time came and went. I waited (maybe he's stuck in traffic). And waited (maybe he just stopped and grabbed dinner, and now he's on his way). And waited... for four fucking hours, when finally I get a text from him.

He wants to know if I can pack it up myself and deliver it to him at his place.

An interesting thing happened at this point. I should have been furious. I should have sent him a long, hate-filled rant about personal responsibility, being a man of your word, and the dangers of wasting people's time. Instead I just typed five words:

no thanks got another buyer

And that was it. I shot one of the other guys a text, and within an hour the new buyer was at my house, cash in hand, ready to load up the treadmill. He even brought a friend with him to help load; I didn't have to do anything other than collect money and drink my beer while they did all the heavy lifting.

Now it could have panned out differently. The other buyers could have flaked, and I could have found myself wishing I would have just sucked up my pride, loaded the damn machine, and driven it to his house. With enough hoop-jumping on my part, I probably could have still made the sale, but I would have been compromising my goal. My goal was NOT to jump through hoops and spend a bunch of time and energy trying to make the sale. So instead I examined the evidence and made a decision. The evidence pointed to this guy being a pain in the ass to work with, who seemed hell-bent on wasting my time. The other buyers seemed eager and straight forward, and even if they didn't pan out, past experience had shown me that there were several people out there looking to buy what I was selling. Eventually someone else would have come along. The time I was wasting with the first bozo was probably better spent pursuing other prospective buyers.

At this point I had a moment of self awareness that I was literally exercising abundance mentality, and that was when the epiphany struck. I thought I had fully understood the concept, but I was wrong. Abundance mentality is not just about having other options, it's about recognizing whether or not those options will help you achieve your goals more efficiently. It's also about being dispassionate when moving on from the fact that you have sunk valuable time, energy, and resources into a course of action that hasn't led to the attainment of your goals. It's easy to get bitter and caught up in the emotion of your losses, but emotional reasoning is a woman's game. Men are about goals. Men are about efficiency. Being efficient means knowing when to cut your losses and move on to greener pastures.

Lessons Learned Abundance mentality does not mean you have to have abundance right now, it means recognizing whether or not your current efforts and resource expenditures are aligning with your goals in order to lead you to abundance.