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Hi, I’m Erin, an spiritual adventurer, tech marketer, and wife and mom of 2. I’m here to share the insights I learn, the joy I find, and hope to help others find a way to seek more magic in every day.
Erin McMahon: [00:00:02] Hello, this is Erin. Welcome to Seek the Magic. Last night I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I started by watching the Roger Federer documentary, which was great. And I'm not a huge tennis fan, I am auxiliary tennis fan and have had many of those close to me throughout my life love tennis, loved playing tennis and so therefore I'm interested in connection to them. I took tennis lessons when I was little. We lived in England at the time, so I have these memories of all these indoor lessons and these huge domes because the weather was always awful. I enjoyed it, but my hand-eye coordination was lacking in any developmental way to play as I got into middle school and high school and so ended my short run of tennis. Could pick it up again. Maybe will when my kids start playing, of course there's always a draw to pickleball. But anyway, I'm going off on a tangent. Watched Roger Federer's documentary, which is on Amazon Prime, and I loved it because even though I'm not good at sports, hand-eye coordination-wise, I love running, I love setting goals and pushing past them, and I love sports stories and I get so much inspiration from them. This is no different and it gave me a little bit more background into Federer, his decision around retirement, his feelings about the game, everything like that. It was a wonderful documentary in terms of encapsulating his reflection and his career, and also his, what seemed sure about like about retiring and his decision there, but then also his feeling about, you know, moving into the world of the unknown, which is what are you going to do next in your life? You know, I think for athletes, they, even though there's a lot of uncertainty and sort of the art of competition, whether they're going to win or lose, if they are good and they make a decision about their path towards a sport, at least they have, you know, sort of direction. And if they have any success and they're like, this is who I am, this is how I identify myself, and then, you know, at the moment they decide to retire or do something else, there's the question of what is my identity and how am I going to look at myself and present myself and connect with the world moving forward?
Erin McMahon: [00:02:36] That was a big takeaway for me, because I think that's something many of us face in, many of our mere mortals, but everybody faces at some point or another. I think it's valuable to realize how often that comes up, and I find strength in knowing that other people encounter that too. And it is, it's helpful in knowing that there are moments of uncertainty in both personal, professional, spiritual, whatever aspect of life you have or parts of your identity you have, there are moments where you say, who am I? What am I doing? Where do I want to go? And it certainly seems like Federer had that, but dealt with it in a beautiful way in terms of celebrating where he was and seeming to have strength and determination in what he was going to do next. And also, you know, showed celebrating with, you know, his competitors, which obviously we see the rivalry aspect of that on the court, but just overall celebration of the sport. And it was interesting seeing also legends that have come before him, like John McEnroe, you know, sort of usher him into this life transition that they do on a very public stage when they retire. But again, as a very human element of that.
Erin McMahon: [00:04:08] And I think there are certain aspects of those transitions which we can call the liminal space. I was listening to a meditation the other day, and they called it the liminal space, which is, you know, in meditation they talked about the pause between the breath. So between when your body is taking in oxygen and then exhaling carbon dioxide. You know, that is something that we can scale to life and say like, okay, what are those, what are those elements of transition and how can we take those and consider those and use them in ways that will benefit not only where we're going and what will be the most value to us, but also what will be the most value to society. Before I've talked about sort of the difference between the mind and the intuition and where what part of ourselves decides to listen and run with, you know, what the mind is saying, which, you know, sometimes can be smart and helpful, but sometimes can be lead us down a path of concern and worry, which limits what we do and can take that moment of decision and, you know, then we can either go forward and grow or we can hold back and not move forward.
Erin McMahon: [00:05:33] The good thing is that there's always another moment to move forward, and another moment between the proverbial inhale and exhale to decide or to make another choice to take the risk or to go into the unknown versus holding back and, you know, staying within the safe area. And I think what I appreciate it are, you know, looking at others and seeing those moments of strength where they've, you know, gone into the unknown and are facing that, bravely facing those moments of growth and expansion and knowing that often times they've done it before and they've been for the better for it. But our natural instinct as humans is, you know, survival, safety, stay in the known. So those two things are a conflict all the time. And I think it takes practice and also trust and, in my case, spiritual connection to lean into the unknown and go into the space of edge, uncertainty, that will drive and move us forward.
Erin McMahon: [00:06:55] So yeah, that was my experience last night from going down and watching, going and watching the Federer documentary. And then I went down the rabbit hole a little bit more because I recalled that a few weeks ago, he did a graduation speech at Dartmouth that went viral and spoke about his experience, the fact that he had recently graduated too, like the class of 2024. He graduated from tennis, which, you know, everybody loved. But he had a few points there too, that were interesting. Some, you know, I've highlighted that are confirmed in the documentary, some at the end he did, he showed everybody a little bit of tennis grip technique and, which went completely over my head, but one thing that was interesting was that although he had won so many games, there was a small differential between the points he'd won and the points he'd lost. And that, you know, I think while his record reflects, you know, one of the winningest tennis players of all time, he had to fight for each of those moments. And in each of those moments, he had to, you know, keep going and trust and have the confidence in himself and what he was doing to move forward. And even when he lost, he talked about when he was, you know, going for a record six times at winning Wimbledon, he didn't win and he knew he wouldn't have that moment again. But it was important to move on from that. And, you know, even though that was a pivotal moment of loss, he still went on and had a storied career from that.
Erin McMahon: [00:08:42] So I think that's really key because at moments where you think you have a loss and there's, you know, it all seems over to your known mind or, you know, from the expected, you're like, this is the path I should be taking, and this is the result that I expect, even though that doesn't happen, still having the faith in yourself and, you know, the universe and whatever your spiritual beliefs are, to have faith, to move forward. And I think that was very inspiring. Also, he talked about, you know, the fact that he has been seeing that he does everything with ease and grace. And he said, that's a myth. There's a lot of work that goes behind the scenes. And I think that's interesting, especially in the space we exist in now, which is seeing everything in, you know, clips and short soundbites and/or pictures, videos, posts, whatever. And you get one takeaway from something or one impression, but that is not the whole story. And I think that that's really key to remember for me, myself, and also to remind my kids when they get old enough to think about that, but to always to constantly, not constantly, but to remind each other at the appropriate moments that, you know, we see one, we see sometimes the final result, sometimes just one aspect of something, but it doesn't convey the entire story. And if we take that small takeaway, as, you know, oh, I shouldn't do this because I don't have that same, you know, sort of look or, you know, that person's doing that so much better. It seems so much easier or something like that. You don't necessarily know the whole story, and there's aspects of their journey or what they've shared that are great for you to take away part of it, but it shouldn't inhibit you from doing something or going on a journey.
Erin McMahon: [00:10:59] It's hard to talk about these in generalities. I can talk about it for myself, you know, I would say starting a podcast, I am podcast obsessed. And so I've had many wonderful people sharing lots of different, you know, points of knowledge in their life. And I have grown so much from that. And I want to share as well. And so I have this deep desire in me to share. And there's certainly part of my mind that says, what business do you have sharing? Other people do this so much better than you. All these things come up and, you know, that's probably true. I, you know, I look away from the mic and I've been trying to do this podcast since January and the sound quality has been horrible. So that's been a journey. And there are a list of like 100 things that I could think of, you know, for reasons not to do this, but just talking out loud and sharing my thoughts and hopefully sharing my thoughts with other people and exchanging information and sharing ideas will be helpful. And I'm really excited about that prospect and hopeful for the future.
Erin McMahon: [00:12:14] So I'm taking inspiration from Federer today and the, not on the court, but maybe someday I will have that opportunity again. And hey, maybe in a future podcast date I can interview Federer and talk to him more about his wonderful journey and where he is right now. I think that would be absolutely amazing. I think in terms of connecting with my inner voice, I think that that's been key throughout this journey, and that's something that helps me move forward. So if you have, you know, a desire to more deeply connect with your inner voice and, you know, make those moves forward, make those decisions in the pause that, you know, will push you in into the unknown that might be a bit scarier, I can help you connect with your inner voice if you're interested. So go to my website, ErinM.xyz, and sign up for an inner voice session. And other than that, I hope you can seek the magic in every day and know that part of that magic may be scary, but it can also lead to something wonderful. Thank you.