french flea markets 🇫🇷 mean faster brains!
secrets to getting the best treasures for your home and your health!
Do you love an antique treasure? What about a great thrifted vintage designer coat at 1/3 of the price? Do you use Facebook Marketplace? Well how does a leisurely Sunday afternoon perusing a Parisian flea market sound instead? French flea markets just hit different!
Not only are they filled with items anytime from 50-100s of years ago (aka way older than anything found in North America), but you'll also find each French flea market has its own personality, so you just have to go to them all! They often make it an entire EVENT filled with food, passionate vendors, history-buffs, and people high on the vibe of feeling like they've stepped into a movie.
Welcome to this week's Fridays Are For France🇫🇷! On today's episode, you're going to learn about:
The history of flea markets
A little video from my favourite one I've been to so far (which is actually occurring in one week!)
A resource to find ALL the flea markets and "garage sales" in France at ANY time of year
AND how French flea markets are good for your brain🧠😍!
Allons-y (let’s go) !
📸 The Historical Snapshot
Did you know that the term "flea market" actually came from the French? Yes, bazaars and local markets have been around in every culture, but legend has it that the french came up with the phrase we use today "marché aux puces" after someone apparently saw heaps of junk on the sidewalk and said it was "nothing but a flea market" with disgust. Now we love it!
From all the way back to the middle ages when there was no trash collection, 'hook men' (“crocheteurs”) would use hooks to pick through the garbage for things they could resell. Some people were more romantic and called them "pêcheurs de lune" ("fishermen for the moon"). Due to health concerns, Paris expelled crocheteurs from the city in the 1860s, and they set up the Saint-Ouen Flea Market (sometimes called the 'puces de Clignancourt') on the Parisian border, and it's still open to this day!
You can also learn more history on this website where the vintage photos are from!
🥐 The French (External) Toolkit:
Bring cash! Not all vendors are tech-savvy in France! It's also better for bargaining.
If you only have a short time in Paris, I would recommend visiting the aforementioned Saint-Ouen Flea Market because it'll keep you busy for hours and it's a spectacle everyone should experience at least once! They're open on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and on Monday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Click here for more info about times and how to get there!
I LOVE this website because it tells you where ALL the different flea markets are in ALL of France at your chosen time, as well as “garage sales” and other places that won’t be so picked over and give more opportunities to find well-priced treasures! It’s my dream to one day take a roadtrip around France picking up gorgeous finds for my Parisian apartment💁🏼♀️! Here it is again: https://brocabrac.fr/ !
And now for…my favourite flea market I’ve been to so far in Paris:
Actually...it was a little bit outside of Paris on The Island of the Impressionists-dreamy! It's apparently the largest and oldest antique fair and market, called the Foire de Chatou (click here for information on how to get there etc.) and it only happens twice a year!
I went in the fall, and lucky you if you're in Paris right now because it's happening in ONE WEEK, next friday September 26th-October 5th this year!
I found all of my gifts for my family at the Foire de Chatou, so it's also a great place to get souvenirs (another french word for "memories")! The prices were good for any budget, whether you decide to buy beautiful antique spoons for €1, to vintage diamond rings, to those iconic gold mirrors above the fireplace in every Paris apartment pinterest board.
AND the food at the market was an experience in itself! There was everything from burgers to fries to escargot to oysters and wine! Something for everyone! I think my favourite part was seeing the vendors having lunch, taking the time to sit at a table and enjoy a full meal with their companions like break should be! I couldn't help but think that if it were in North America, the vendor would be scarfing down a sandwich, afraid to miss a sale. (Another tip from the French: take time to enjoy life!)
Here is a little 1 min video of my time there on my YouTube channel 😘!
🌿The Wellness (Internal) Toolkit:
(aka how French flea market are good for your brain🧠!)
The top people in any field- whether it's athletics, business, or the arts, all have something in common: strong cognitive flexibility. What is cognitive flexibility? The American Psychological Association defines it as: "the capacity for objective appraisal and appropriately flexible action. Cognitive flexibility also implies adaptability and fair-mindedness." In other words:
If your cognitive flexibility is STRONG, you are able to make smart decisions under pressure.
Some examples if you have strong cognitive flexibility:
you're a professional basketball player during a playoff game, you have a stronger chance of making the right call to pass the ball instead of shoot and it wins you the game!
you’re an actor in a Broadway play, and your costar flubs a line which means you have to improv in front of hundreds of people to get you both back on track!
you're a surgeon and have to change your game plan as soon as you take a look at the patient's insides!
you’re driving and able to avoid a collision and save your life!
According to this article by Adele Diamond (PhD) People who have this skill are not only able to think and act better under pressure, but are also better at planning, thinking "outside the box", seeing things from different perspectives, problem solving in their daily life, and much much more!
So how do we reach our highest level of cognitive flexibility? Through practice! Find ways to put yourself in mini versions of uncomfortable/medium-pressure environments to train your brain. One great way you can do this is...you guessed it! A French flea market! Specifically? Bargaining at a French flea market.
Thankfully, bargaining for an item you want at a market is not a high-pressure life or death scenario, but it DOES require a bit of emotional risk and mental work, which makes it an excellent place to practice and increase your cognitive flexibility skills by:
Practicing a foreign language (French, duh!)
Reading the vendor's expressions and adjusting your behaviour accordingly
Negotiating/bargaining through reason and a bit of theatrics!
Walking around getting exercise (more on that later)
Honestly, I’m terrible at bargaining, so I’ve looked up and copy and pasted these tips from the website “Paris is Perfect” for us both:
"Work in Pairs. “It helps to have someone like my husband around, who is great at saying in a loud voice that we don't need this mirror at all, it's too expensive, etc. If the dealers think they might lose the sale, it speeds up the negotiation”.
Play the game: “I'm giving away all my secrets, but I sometimes pull out my calculator, punch a few buttons, look up and say: ‘It doesn't work at €900; can you do it for €750? They realize I am a dealer and must have the lowest possible price.”
Thinking time: “You don't have to complete the sale on the spot; get a mobile phone number and call the dealer the next day to negotiate. If they haven't had a big weekend they are more willing to give a good discount.”"
Want more tips to increase your cognitive flexibility even if you're not in Paris?
1. Look for ways you can put yourself in unfamiliar situations (new group of friends, new environments, joining a new class for a hobby, etc.) to get your brain into the habit of problem-solving in "higher stress" situations. This is a good kind of stress! Think about when your heart fluttered and got a little stressed when you've asked someone out in the past or interviewed for a job you really wanted. Consciously putting yourself in these situations often will help you become more confident as well! Double win!
2. Recognize when it's time to let go of Plan A and try out Plan B. For example, say you've been telling yourself and all your friends that you really want a job in X, but instead you get a job offer with twice the pay at Y that sounds really cool to you. Having the cognitive flexibility to pivot should a great opportunity fall into your lap could lead to really exciting results! Obviously, if you REALLY hate the idea of working at Y, your gut is telling you to stick to your guns. However, we often *confuse* our gut with stubborn old narratives or *limiting beliefs*. Just because you wanted something 5 years ago doesn't mean you still want it now. You might be surprised by experimenting with something life is shouting at you to try.
3. Give your brain a *healthy environment* to grow cognitive flexibility. As written in this article, "if you are stressed, lonely, sleep deprived, or not physically fit" it can "cause you to appear to have a disorder[...], such as ADHD, when you do not." So often we (myself included) let these things get out of control and apparently you can actually see it in the physiological and neuroanatomical level in the prefrontal cortex! However since it's not something us everyday people can see ourselves without expensive equipment, like say you could with a broken arm, we ignore the warning signs.
I know this is a lot to take in! How dare I tell you to just stop being stressed and sad and tired??! Don't I know what a tall order that is? Listen, I get it. However, if you only leave with one takeaway on how to have a healthier brain for not only cognitive flexibility, but ALL of your EFs (Executive Functions) including self-control and working memory, some of the best results (including studies concerning the elderly!!) have come from improving your physical fitness! So let's all add in a little more movement to our days, shall we? We'll be rubbing elbows with Elle Woods at Harvard in no time.
Did you learn anything from this post? Please let me know! Thank you once again for reading and supporting me!! This week I was #48 Rising in Travel and #82 in Wellness on Substack!!! I also reached over 100 subscribers and had my first reposts and quotes which I know doesn't sound like a lot, but these *little* milestones are HUGE wins for a writer!
Thank you thank you thank you and à la semaine prochaine!