The Magic in Life’s Transition Moments

Seek the Magic

Erin McMahon shares the thoughts inspired by watching the Roger Federer documentary. Federer, the tennis legend, retired recently and the documentary explored not only his career but what comes next in his career and life. Erin reflects on how his situation mirrors a lot of everyday experiences we find ourselves in and what we can learn from how public figures transition through life phases.

How we identify ourselves in one stage of life can come into question when we are faced with a transition or period of change. Who are we in the moment of change? What will we do next? It isn’t just great athletes who face moments of wrestling with their identity as life moves forward, we all experience it. Erin reflects on how one aspect of these transitions is akin to breathing in meditation where we reach something called “liminal space”, or the space between breaths, that place between the inhale and the exhale. In that space, how do we redefine ourselves? Do we take a risk moving forward? We have that moment to decide and, scaling that moment up for the grander expanse of life, that space gives us somewhere to assess our journey and make a choice. Erin shares this and more inspirational thoughts that she pulled from the Federer documentary, thoughts that affect everyday living and offer us insight into how life can unfold.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Federer: Twelve Final Days

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Contact Erin McMahon:

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Transcript

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 ...