{"id":3180,"date":"2012-05-22T23:19:06","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T03:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/blissblog\/?p=3180"},"modified":"2012-05-22T23:19:06","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T03:19:06","slug":"reasonable-demands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2012\/05\/reasonable-demands.html","title":{"rendered":"Reasonable Demands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/107\/2012\/05\/parkingspot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3181\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/107\/2012\/05\/parkingspot.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"109\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I grew up with parents who preached &#8220;If you can&#8217;t say something nice, don&#8217;t say anything at all.&#8221;\u00a0 Perhaps somewhat good guidance to prevent mean spirited communication, but I took it to heart in a rather co-dependent, self muzzling kinda way. It has take many years, dare I say 5 decades to trust myself to speak with tact even if I am delivering a less than desirable message. Sometimes the conversation is between myself and another person and then there are occasions when the communcation is between myself and the Universe. Sunday was one such.<\/p>\n<p>For those who didn&#8217;t see yesterday&#8217;s Bliss Blog entry, I spoke about a transcendent experience that occurred on Sunday when I joined 1699 kindred spirits on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum (Rocky&#8217;s stomping grounds:) for Yoga On The Steps For Living Beyond Breast Cancer.\u00a0 What I didn&#8217;t share was what happened before I set my feet and tush on my purple Gaiam yoga mat that has served me well since 2004 and has been the magic carpet that has taken me on many a journey both inward and outward.\u00a0 I left my Bucks County, PA home in what I figured was plenty of time to arrive for 8:30 a.m. registration. Smooth sailing all the way, including Kelly Drive which is generally filled with cars. I was enjoying the bright and beautiful early morning sunshine, arm out the window, doing what our family called &#8220;breezing&#8221;, with the childhood admonition from my Uncle Jim &#8220;Don&#8217;t stick your arm out too far, it might go home in another car.&#8221;\u00a0One of the perks of adulthood is that you get to breeze if ya wanna.\u00a0 As I approached the art museum, I saw a line of folks waiting to register, that stretched a good way down the block. I turned my head to seek a parking spot. The nearby lot was full, so I curved around the block, expecting that I would find an &#8220;Uncle Jimmy spot&#8221; right away.\u00a0 The same uncle who warned about the perils mentioned above was also adept at finding the perfect parking spot and he bequeathed that gift to me long before his passing. This time, the parking powers weren&#8217;t as forthcoming.\u00a0 I drove around a six block radius for 20 minutes or so, feeling increasingly frustrated, about to tumble into major meltdown. Here I was on my way to a yoga event, feeling all churned up inside.\u00a0I\u00a0had seen several people pull into vacating spots, literally right in front\u00a0of me.\u00a0This felt like a test of the emergency sanity system.<\/p>\n<p>It was then that I allowed myself to be less than zen and used words that aren&#8217;t in my spiritual vocabularly and let fly with a few expletives framing the word, &#8220;I demand a parking spot NOW, please!&#8221;\u00a0 (still managed a bit of politeness:) Whatya know?\u00a0 I drove onto a street that parallels the museum and the perfect spot was waiting for me, it was free and directly across from my destination.\u00a0Bonus\u00a0was that the registration line was much shorter by the time I got there.\u00a0I laughed with delight and relief, wondering if it was that final push that allowed the Celestial parking attendant to open a place for my Jeep. Being raised to be nice, I have a difficult time with people who are demanding and entitled and anger is not my favorite emotional state and yet, there are times when it is called for and making reasonable demands may get you what you are asking for. At least it works for parking spots.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/DUDtFdnn9oQ\">http:\/\/youtu.be\/DUDtFdnn9oQ<\/a>\u00a0The Car Song by Woodie Guthrie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I grew up with parents who preached &#8220;If you can&#8217;t say something nice, don&#8217;t say anything at all.&#8221;\u00a0 Perhaps somewhat good guidance to prevent mean spirited communication, but I took it to heart in a rather co-dependent, self muzzling kinda way. It has take many years, dare I say 5 decades to trust myself&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,1,19,3,6],"tags":[1788,64,1789,1791,1790,1781],"class_list":["post-3180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affirmations","category-attracting-what-you-desire","category-empowerment","category-gratitude","category-visualization","tag-art-museum","tag-philadelphia","tag-rocky","tag-the-car-song","tag-woodie-guthrie","tag-yoga-on-the-steps"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Reasonable Demands - The Bliss Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2012\/05\/reasonable-demands.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reasonable Demands - The Bliss Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&nbsp; I grew up with parents who preached &#8220;If you can&#8217;t say something nice, don&#8217;t say anything at all.&#8221;\u00a0 Perhaps somewhat good guidance to prevent mean spirited communication, but I took it to heart in a rather co-dependent, self muzzling kinda way. It has take many years, dare I say 5 decades to trust myself&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2012\/05\/reasonable-demands.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bliss Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/snuggleyoga\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-23T03:19:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/blissblog\/files\/2012\/05\/parkingspot.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Edie Weinstein, MSW, LSW\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@EdieWeinstein1\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Reasonable Demands - The Bliss Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2012\/05\/reasonable-demands.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Reasonable Demands - The Bliss Blog","og_description":"&nbsp; I grew up with parents who preached &#8220;If you can&#8217;t say something nice, don&#8217;t say anything at all.&#8221;\u00a0 Perhaps somewhat good guidance to prevent mean spirited communication, but I took it to heart in a rather co-dependent, self muzzling kinda way. 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She has also contributed to several anthologies and personal growth books. Edie has interviewed such notables as Ram Dass, Wayne Dyer, Debbie Ford, don Miguel Ruiz, don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. Marianne Williamson, Grover Washington, Jr. Noah Levine, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Weaver, Ben and Jerry and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She calls herself an Opti-mystic who sees the world through the eyes of possibility. Edie is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events on a planned and spontaneous basis. www.opti-mystical.com.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.opti-mystical.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/snuggleyoga","https:\/\/x.com\/EdieWeinstein1"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/author\/eweinstein"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3184,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3180\/revisions\/3184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}