Return on Intuition

Erin dives into the mysteries and power of hormonal cycles and personal thinking styles with inspiring guest, Claire.  Claire is a certified health coach who specializes in helping women understand and leverage their power. Claire's unique journey from a professional dancer in England to a health coach in Australia has equipped her with profound insights into the hormonal journey women experience. As a late-diagnosed ADHD mom, Claire shares her story of discovery, self-acceptance, and empowerment, offering valuable wisdom for women and families alike.

Claire introduces the concept of cycle thinking, a method for aligning daily activities with the four phases of the menstrual cycle—Wisdom, Daring, Harmony, and Freedom. By tracking and understanding these phases, women can optimize their energy and productivity. From the daring phase, perfect for tackling heavy workloads, to the wisdom phase, an ideal time for self-care and reflection, Claire’s approach is both empowering and practical.

Imagine a life where you can plan your tasks and activities around your hormonal strengths, leading to more productivity, better self-care, and a deeper understanding of yourself. Claire’s insights are not just theoretical; she shares how implementing this knowledge has transformed her family dynamics, creating harmony and mutual understanding. 

Tune in to this empowering episode of Seek the Magic and discover how understanding your hormonal cycles can lead to a more harmonious and empowered life. Claire’s insights and practical tips will inspire you to embrace your natural rhythms and unlock your true potential. Learn more about Claire's insights and services at https://femmway.com/ and on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/femmwaylife/. 

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Join me on the Seek the Magic podcast as I share the insights I discover, the joy I experience, and how we can all find more magic in our everyday lives. ✨🚀 Ready to unlock the secrets to a more empowered and harmonious life? Don’t miss this enlightening episode. Join Erin and Claire as they explore the power of hormonal cycles. Your journey to understanding and celebrating your hormonal superpowers starts here. 

Listen to the latest episode on your favorite platform: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/seek-the-magic/id1742650919. New episodes are released weekly, so be sure to subscribe and stay inspired!

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Connect with Erin McMahon:

Website: https://erin-mcmahon.mykajabi.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinlmcmahon/

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Connect with Marie Claire

Website: https://femmway.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/femmwaylife/

• (00:00) - Welcome to Seek the Magic / Introduction to Claire

Erin shares a raw and heartfelt glimpse into an out of the ordinary week. Faced with a household sickness outbreak, she dives deep into the chaos that disrupted her routine, balancing work, childcare, and personal wellness. She candidly recounts the struggles of maintaining equilibrium and how it led to reinforcing and deepening her understanding of lessons learned through meditation and breathwork.

As she prepares to introduce exciting new guests to her podcast, Erin invites you to join her in exploring diverse perspectives and the magic in everyday life.

Tune in to discover how Erin  chaos into a deeper understanding of self and connection. Her story will resonate with anyone seeking balance and purpose amid life's storms. 

Click play to immerse yourself in a tale of perseverance, gratitude, and the pursuit of magic in unlikely places.

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Join me on the Seek the Magic podcast as I share the insights I discover, the joy I experience, and how we can all find more magic in our everyday lives. ✨🚀 Tune in to hear how embracing life's disruptions can lead to surprising moments of clarity and growth.. Listen to the latest episode on your favorite platform: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/seek-the-magic/id1742650919. New episodes are released weekly, so be sure to subscribe and stay inspired!

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Connect with Erin McMahon:

Website: https://erin-mcmahon.mykajabi.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinlmcmahon/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erinlmcmahon/

Erin McMahon invites you to discover the enchantment of serendipity. Dive into this captivating discussion where Erin passionately reveals how life's unexpected moments and delightful surprises can transform your journey in the most magical ways. 

Erin emphasizes that balancing logic with intuition and being open to moments of surprise can lead to immense creativity and personal growth. She connects serendipity to the brain's default mode network, explaining how daydreaming and mind-wandering can spark creative breakthroughs.

Are you ready to experience greater magic, excitement, and delight in your life? Erin encourages you to follow those spontaneous connections and inspirations. Embrace new experiences and trust in the unexpected. This episode is your invitation to seek out the magic in everyday life and let serendipity guide you to beautiful places.

Click play now and let Erin McMahon inspire you to welcome the enchanting power of serendipity into your world. Don't miss out on this insightful and transformative episode of Seek the Magic.

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Join me on the Seek the Magic podcast as I share the insights I discover, the joy I experience, and how we can all find more magic in our everyday lives. ✨🚀 Tune in to explore the enchanting world of serendipity and unexpected connections that can transform our lives. Listen to the latest episode on your favorite platform: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/seek-the-magic/id1742650919. New episodes are released weekly, so be sure to subscribe and stay inspired!

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Connect with Erin McMahon:

Website: https://erin-mcmahon.mykajabi.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinlmcmahon/

• (00:00) - Introduction: Embracing Serendipity

Erin McMahon opens up about the inner voice work that has helped her sort through emotions in the past year. Connecting to her spirituality taught her about her inner voice and how emotions and the feelings associated with them don’t simply live in the mind but manifest in the body. She shares her technique for learning how to feel emotions and work through them with intention. It’s the magic of understanding mind and body and the way memories and emotions live between both.

Inspired by the teachings of Bella Lively, Eckhart Tolle, and Michael Singer’s writings, Erin learned how to identify where different emotions were living in her body, which was a completely new concept for her. She understood then how blocks would form in processing the emotions because they were held in stress or tightness. What she shares is the process of understanding the story of an event in life and the memory of what occurred and then identifying the emotion attached to it and separating it. In separating the emotion, it can truly be felt. Once felt it can be worked through. Join Erin for exploring the revelatory process of scanning body and mind for blocks and learning how to release them to move forward with a lighter feel and a calmer mind.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Bella Lively
• Eckhart Tolle
• Michael Singer’s books

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Contact Erin McMahon: 

• Website
• Instagram

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Transcript

Erin McMahon: [00:00:02] Hello and welcome to Seek the Magic. Today I want to talk about something that has changed over the past year for me, and that is really getting into my emotions and feeling them in my body as opposed to just my head. And really, you know, separating what's going on in my mind from what is going on in the rest of me and kind of just navigating that and feeling more in my body than just in my mind. I think prior to connecting with a lot of spiritual works and first the work of Bella Lively, who taught me about my inner voice and then, you know, other work with Eckhart Tolle and many others, I mainly thought about just my mind as a mind doing its thing. And then, of course, after reading Michael Singer's book about, you know, looking at what is happening in the mind and then observing what is happening in the mind, I realized that, you know, there is sort of a duality in terms of what's happening in our head at all times. And so that sort of got me into speaking and thinking about the inner voice and versus what is, you know, running in my mind and the thoughts that I used to kind of let take over my emotions and everything like that.

Erin McMahon: [00:01:22] When I started learning about inner voice and how to connect with your inner voice, there's a technique associated with that where you quiet your mind and you breathe out as you try to listen to your voice, as you ask a question to your inner voice, then you breathe out. So your kind of constant chatter of thoughts quiets, and then you can hear your inner voice more. Part of Bella Lively's technique in doing that is if you can't hear your inner voice, it may be because you have an emotion blocked somewhere, and when she references that, she says, it's important to feel where that might exist in your body and to feel through it. A lot of the times it is in people's chest or in their shoulders or wherever, but just the act of doing a body scan and taking yourself out of your head and into your body was totally new to me. And this is you know, I've always been very active, like in terms of exercise, working out, so I felt like I had been connected to my body. But in terms of being mindful with my body and sort of still and understand what is happening and where different emotions were living and/or stored in my body, that was a completely new concept to me. And it was revelatory and amazing because I noticed, you know, yes, I did have blocks because I never really tried to clear them before. So of course, once I started sort of scanning my body and understanding where I felt, you know, different stress or tightness, I could, you know, identify emotions that were potentially living in one place or another.

Erin McMahon: [00:03:14] Typically it's not a completely transparent thing. I think when I first heard about this concept, it sounded foreign and it took me a while to grasp and understand it. But the idea is to feel where there's a tightness or a heaviness or something like that in your body and try to breathe through it. And typically, if you're asking yourself a question and then you are not hearing a clear answer from your inner voice, then that block is somehow associated with keeping you from connecting to your inner voice. And so the block is usually associated with an emotion that is standing between those two things. For example, like if I say I'm, you know, inner voice why, you know - well, it's hard to give examples - inner voice why do I have trouble speaking in front of an audience? And this is, you know, a question that I had and I've confronted many times in my life and now I've processed through it, but I think the answer is still blocked with the fear of judgment. And it's something that I've worked through and hopefully I'm making progress on because I'm, you know, speaking over the internet waves to, you know, whoever decides to listen. But, you know, that's something that was, you know, a tightness in my chest and a block.

Erin McMahon: [00:04:48] And when I felt that block, sometimes what happens is you start to breathe through it and you feel memory associated with it. And sometimes these memories are associated with, you know, something you felt when you were little, or there could be a trail of memories that, you know, come up as this block and/or emotion that you've felt and suppressed, as it comes up, these emotions and these feelings are stored and usually there are multiple memories associated with them. But then the core memories are when you were little. The practice is to feel the emotion, identify it, separate the story from it, and then breathe through it. And it really helps if somebody else is holding space for you and somewhat witnessing you in this, because then you can process it, express and feel heard if someone is holding a safe space for you.

Erin McMahon: [00:05:53] Express the story to a certain extent, but the point is to separate the story from the emotion, and instead of suppressing the feeling, which is what we tend to do when we're little or as we are going through life to just, you know, survive and to get through things, instead of suppressing the emotion, to feel it, feel it fully. And it really doesn't take that long. And it seems scary at first, especially when you think about the story or the event that is associated with that scary thing. Your head, your mind's, you know, protective reaction is, you know, okay, don't go there, don't think about it, do something else. And instead the idea is to breathe through it, feel through it, you know, believe it takes 90s to truly process through an emotion. And if it takes longer, then that means you are kind of looping your story in with it. But to fully process the emotion and then move on and see if you can, you know, truly connect with your inner voice.

Erin McMahon: [00:07:05] This also helps with not being as tr...

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: 

• Website
• Instagram

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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 ...

Erin McMahon unpacks the magic of teamwork and working well together in this episode. In order to have a cohesive and effective team, the leadership role in any team is key. Leaders at all levels set the tone, they keep the elements of a team unified, and they facilitate clear communication. Erin’s experience with workplace teams gives her insight into what inspires great leadership and which in turn makes solid teams.

While communication is often the key to a team’s success, the tone of that communication is set by the leaders. Leaders have a responsibility to understand how their team communicates most effectively, on what platforms, and that they’re all clear about the overall goal and mission. Erin’s spiritual foundation drives her to also infuse the qualities of compassion, integrity, and unity in the base level of leadership. She elaborates on how these qualities drive team dynamics while also keeping up morale. What base qualities do leaders possess? Whose leadership inspired Erin at a young age? And how can we each rise to our best in leading and being led each day? Erin’s insight paves the way for an exploration into those very questions.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• “Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life” by Mike Krzyzewski, Donald T. Phillips, and Grant Hill

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Contact Erin McMahon: 

• Website
• Instagram

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Transcript

Erin McMahon: [00:00:03] Hello, this is Erin. Welcome to Seek the Magic. Excited to speak with you today on a lovely Friday. Today I want to talk about the magic of teamwork and working well together. I worked on a lot of teams in my life, and I've also witnessed a lot of teams because I am a huge sports fan and specifically college basketball, I love Duke basketball, but I want to talk about working together and achieving common goals. I speak to a lot of teams, not only on the teams I work with right now at Anchor, but also talking to friends and peers who are in the leadership marketing community, overall tech community, there's a lot of elements that make up a good team or a bad team, and so it's not a one size fits all solution in terms of how teams work well together. But, you know, wanting to speak a little bit about what I think makes an effective team work together and also what, you know, makes an organization work well together.

Erin McMahon: [00:01:12] So first of all, my fundamental definition of teamwork and why it makes a difference in organizations. So communication is key. Deciding on how and when things are communicated, how teams communicate together, which channels they use, which in the distributed workforce tech world is crucial, whether they communicate on Zoom, Slack, Telegram, combination of those things. But learning how and when teammates can rely upon each other and how they talk to each other is very important.

Erin McMahon: [00:01:53] Collaboration, trust and mutual respect. Leaders role in the organization is also very important. The leader sets the tone. Leader and/or leaders set the tone for how teams work best together. So with my team specifically right now, my team at Anchor, have a group of people who are really all-star in terms of what they do and the creative ideas they have and what they come up with. So I feel like my main role when you have team members is to set a clear goal and mission, help them work in their best capacity, and help them develop and cultivate the skills they have and the things they want to do in the best way you can. And also make sure other teams are connecting and collaborating well with them, and making sure that they feel confident and comfortable to take risks and put out their best work. In every organization, there's, you know, a sense of doing your best and providing your best work, but also taking creative risks and not being afraid of failure. So I feel like it is the leader's role to create that environment and do so in the best way they can for their team. Also, I think it's really important for the company to have aligning team goals and making sure that those can connect to leadership. So there are key components to that, and I take my team through exercises every quarter and every year and try to connect to our leadership team on a regular basis and ask, okay, what are those long-term organizational goals? Why do we have them? What are the core principles we want to articulate as a company internally and externally, and how are we going to reach those? And then how do we create tangible goals based on that?

Erin McMahon: [00:03:54] Setting and achieving goals is really important for moving the business forward. So it's important even though we're talking about intangible sometimes company mission is, you know, inspiring and isn't necessarily tangible. You talk about, you know, changing the world or transforming XYZ industry. Those things are very important. And I think those are inspiring for teams. And that's how you can also connect with your customers and advocates to get them on board with what your vision is, but it's also very important to have SMART goals: so those are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. In the marketing organization, it's important to have those. It's also important to have goals that are within that realm also related to content, creativity, branding, etc. so there are ways to measure those, but then also connect with quote/unquote soft goals as well. And it's very important for leaders to set those goals, encourage teammates to come up with and contribute to those goals so they figure out how they can individually connect with them and then feel ownership over them. And if everybody contributes and agrees to the goals, then it is more likely that they are bought into and will help achieve those goals.

Erin McMahon: [00:05:20] So talked a little bit about the intangible nature and this really, I think, is driven at the company mission level, and it's the leadership's responsibility to set the tone. It, you know, can be among the founders of the organization, overall leaders, and I think part of the marketing team's job is to make sure that those are clearly articulated and that they are asking the right questions. So if those goals aren't clear, that the leadership is at least thinking about it and agreeing that it is articulated in a way that they feel comfortable with to both customers, potential customers, as well as employees. As I've talked about in other episodes of this podcast, I have a very spiritual foundation, and even though I don't necessarily infuse that in my work communication, it is a key driver in how I'm thinking about leading a team and how I think about communicating, and really just infuses a lot of my work, whether it gets communicated or not. So I'm talking about at the very base level, spiritual principles of compassion, integrity and unity. So compassion for not only team members, but then also when we're going to market with specific products, speaking with compassion and understanding our user and why they matter. And then integrity speaking, making promises that we can deliver on and that we really believe in. Unity to the extent that the team is all driving towards individual and team goals.

Erin McMahon: [00:07:06] So, you know, ...

Erin McMahon talks about hearing a ping of inspiration or guidance in your being that directs you to do something you haven’t done in a while. For her that ping directed her to listen to the soundtrack to ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’. The musical had been an important part of her childhood because she’d love it so the ping led her into memories and some spontaneous singing and dancing. Do we usually ignore those pings? What if instead we paid attention and let it open the door to magic? 

When Erin decided to follow that random moment in her mind that led to the singing and dancing, she realized it was a connection back to the joy from childhood and that following the instinct was a sign of her accessing her inner voice. These moments, these pings, happen differently for each of us but we all remember a moment like that and probably remember ignoring the impulse too. Erin explains that through the writings of Sonia Choquette she learned that one of the elements used in increasing connection to spirituality is singing and dancing. Erin explains how listening to our inner voices can unlock things we haven’t accessed in a while and guide us into a new spirituality. She encourages us to be more open to listening to the pings in our lives.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• “The God Design: Secrets of the Mind, Body and Soul” by Kelly-Marie Kerr
• Sonia Choquette

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Contact Erin McMahon: 

• Website
• Instagram

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Transcript

Erin McMahon: [00:00:03] Hello. Welcome to Seek the Magic. I had to record a session this morning because I had a magical morning. And of course, the magic of bringing my kids to school is, I love the process of engaging with them in the morning and getting excited. Sometimes drop off can be a little hard, but after I drop the kids off, I had an amazing ride back. So typically what I do on the way back from dropping kids off is listen to a podcast or an audiobook. In this case, I was listening to 'The God Design' by Kelly Marie Kerr, which is absolutely amazing. She talks about the biological processes with the body and how that relates to spirituality and different elements in the Bible, and as a religion major undergraduate and interested in spirituality and of course, now connecting with doing yoga and breathwork, it's just like the magical book that I feel like is just for me. So anyway, listening to that book all of a sudden in my mind I got this ping and it's like, listen to 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat', which was one of the first shows I ever saw when I was little. I lived in London and we went to the West End and saw Joseph with Phillip Schofield, who's now a famous TV host in England. And I was obsessed, obsessed with the musical. It was one of those I had on tape, played over and over and over again, and it brings me so much joy.

Erin McMahon: [00:01:45] But I don't listen to it a lot anymore. I probably haven't listened to it in a year. Sometimes when my best friend from England, who is also obsessed with it, will ping me, I'll turn it on for a minute. But I got the ping to listen to it, and I think it was because in this book, Kelly Marie refers to Bible quotes that align with different elements of biology and breathwork and things like that. And so one of them must have included Joseph, because then I thought in my mind, oh, I want to listen to Joseph. And I think normally I would ignore some of those sentiments or I'd be like, oh, I'll think about it later or something like that. But I immediately at that moment was like, I'm going to listen to it. I'm going to follow this random thing and stop listening to the Audible book, which I was absolutely enjoying, but switch instead to something musical and different and oh my goodness, I switched automatically. I was driving, so I asked Siri to start playing the soundtrack, and I came home and just started dancing to it. And luckily I had time before my call. So was, you know, just dancing around the room and singing my heart out. Nobody in the house.

Erin McMahon: [00:03:12] And I don't love my singing voice necessarily, but it didn't matter because I was just belting it out and had the most wonderful connection to the joy I used to feel as a child and the joy to the music, which is absolutely inspiring for me because it talks about dreams, it talks about a biblical story, it talks about going through struggles and finding your place in the world, as Joseph did. And it was the most amazing thing. And I think part of following that instinct is me getting in the mindset of listening to my inner voice and not trying to run on, you know, my mind and sort of like the I'm listening to an audiobook so that's what I'm listening to and I got to do that. And then when I get home, you know, I immediately need to prep for meetings and things like that, which, you know, it's definitely true and is definitely part of the overall day, but the amount of joy that that deviation and plan based on it, and it wasn't that long even maybe 20 minutes, half an hour,about that, the amount of joy that that deviation and plan put in my mind and in my day and now has sort of acted as a springboard is so significant. So I say that because it is hard for me and maybe hard for some minds to deviate from the norm.

Erin McMahon: [00:04:49] And if it's not, awesome, great for you, but I would encourage you to listen to those serendipitous pings or however you may think of it, and follow the path that maybe you weren't planning on for the day. You know, some days I think we can create the day and just say, you know, wander with what our mind is telling us to do based on, you know, whatever we have going on,. It's great if, you know, you're by yourself and can just go where your mind inspires you to go. If you are - not your mind, but your your being, your spirit - if you have kids and family or you know things already planned, obviously you need to work within the constraints of that and consider others when you are, you know, following these instinctual things. However, it's still quite possible to do. And then you're kind of bringing others into the magic of these pings or, you know, senses of inspiration you're getting and it can really make a difference. But for me, yes, you can designate a date to that or say, like, this is the day we're going to try it. And I think that can help you practice it and maybe get your organized mind in the sense of, okay, we're going to try this out. It's, the mind still feels like it's in control because it's, you know, agreed okay, we're going to try to be spontaneous on this day.

Erin McMahon: [00:06:13] But if you open to the possibility of listening to some of these things during your day and your daily routine, you might expose yourself to more moments of ordinary magic in your day, like I did today. So I think that's the first time that's happened in in a little while, because I'm pretty dedicated to listening to the audiobooks and listening to podcasts and getting things from them or, you know, getting sources of inspiration for them and sort of like then taking that into the day and saying, okay, this is what I need to do with my work. But music is an element that I have not incorporated as much into my daily schedule or my weekly schedule. And just connecting ...

Host Erin McMahon addresses the times when we are in between things in life, in that limbo space where we’re past one thing and not yet settled on another. It’s the gaps in between life in which we must wait that are often the hardest to deal with. Why can’t we just know the answers immediately? Why is there a waiting period? What good is waiting? Those are the questions at the heart of this episode that Erin examines from her own experience and a place of spiritual understanding.

When Erin decided to switch jobs from marketing at a small AI startup and followed the advice of a friend in looking into Web3, she found that she immediately knew Web3 was what she wanted to work in. Having decided the direction, she encountered that in-between space where she had made the decision to leave the first job and knew what job she wanted but hadn’t found it yet. Those periods are frustrating and make us impatient, we want to move, and we want things now. It was through reading a storybook to her toddler, a book on waiting, that she realized waiting was the right place for her to be until the best job could be found. Erin describes why waiting primes us for the best outcome and how valuable it is to understand that waiting is necessary for things to come together. She explains how to connect with the inner voice that can calm impatience and give more guidance while waiting. The lessons she learned are now ones she shares with us so we can discover that though waiting is hard, it’s worth it.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• The Lively Show podcast by Bella Lively

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Contact Erin McMahon: 

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Transcript

Erin McMahon: [00:00:03] Hello and welcome to Seek the Magic. This is Erin here. It is a lovely Friday afternoon in North Carolina in the summer, but it's not yet as humid as it usually is. We are enjoying the dehumidified air while we can. Today I wanted to talk about waiting and being in the period of limbo or in between when things are happening. In parts of our life we have, you know, a moment where we decide we want something or we find out there is an issue or a decision to be made or a decision to be made by us or others, and in between the period of deciding or finding out the problem or identifying something that we want and getting to the conclusion, there's usually a period of waiting. And I have faced this before and currently facing this in a few areas of my life. And, you know, I've certainly faced this before. And so I wanted to just talk about it a little bit and, you know, discuss what is the point of waiting? I have to tell you, my mind is always like, I need to know right now. I want to solve the problem. In human design I'm A51 and one of those elements of it is solve the problem right now. Get to a resolution. And in astrology, I'm a Leo and a Virgo rising. And so it's very much like let's put energy towards this. Let's come to a resolution.

Erin McMahon: [00:01:47] And throughout my spiritual journey and moving from the mind to the centered self, I've come to realize how important it is to wait and to appreciate the gap and time between what is and what we want to be. And you know, when we find out the result of something or the way something is going to go in our life. This is very frustrating for my mind. And since I've started meditating and doing breathwork, I've certainly taken these practices to help calm my mind about this. In my personal life a few years ago, I wanted to get into the Web3 space, so I had been marketing leader at a small AI startup that I still do consulting work for, but I fell into Web3. One of my friends said, oh, you're going to love this space. You should learn more about it. And I did, and I said, I want to work in Web3. I want to work in Web3 right now. And I think I determined that I wanted to make this shift in career direction in March or April of 2022. My son was about nine months old at the time, and I thought about it, and I started looking for jobs and I was like, I immediately want to switch. I've made this decision. I'm really enthusiastic. All this excitement in me is just bursting and let's make a change happen right away.

Erin McMahon: [00:03:21] Positive aspect of my personality is that when I get excited about something, I really get excited about it and I totally leaned into it. Which, you know, speaking of human design before is characteristic of a manifesting generator, which will link to human design basics if you're interested. But basically, this personality and blueprint means that if you get inspired by something, or if manifesting generators get inspired by something, then they really get into it and they get into it and they go, go, go. And that is just characteristic of the personality type. And usually they're going in interested in a few things or maybe other people would consider many things. So in this situation wanted to switch job, wanted to dive in immediately, and wanted to find the perfect company. In the Web3 space obviously there, well, maybe not so obviously, in the Web3 space there are a lot of small startup companies. It's very fragmented. There are lots of innovative types of technology happening in all different levels in hardware and DeFi and infrastructure, many different areas. And so there's a lot of different opportunities, and it's important to look and find the right one and really get a sense of the landscape. So, you know, I knew this, my mind knew this, but my mind also had this, you know, fiery sense of moving forward. And I had to wait and sort of both do my research and also feel from my sense of self what felt right and what felt like the right company to work for.

Erin McMahon: [00:05:08] As I was going through this process, we, of course, as one does with small kids, have a bunch of small kids books. And my toddler and I were reading a book by Mo Willems called 'Waiting Is Not Easy'. So as the title indicates, the lesson, the story goes that one of the main characters, Pinkie, brings a, has a gift or a surprise for his friend Gerald. And he goes, Gerald, I have a surprise for you. And Gerald goes, that's great. I'm so excited. What is this surprise? And Pinkie goes, the surprise isn't here yet. And the whole book goes through back and forth between Pinkie and Gerald, saying, you know, Gerald says, I really want to know the surprise. And Pinkie goes, it's not here yet. You're going to have to wait. And then he goes, can I guess, can I guess what it is? And it's a really adorable book. At the conclusion of the book, Gerald is completely frustrated and says, Pinkie, it's getting dark. We've been waiting all day for the surprise. I don't even want it anymore. What's the point? And then Pinkie goes, look! Look at the sky! And his surprise is the beautiful night sky that they can share and enjoy together. I love this book for the overall message it brings, certainly for young kids, because their sense of waiting is much different than adults, but also for adults and specifically for me.

Erin McMahon: [00:06:41] I need to be reminded that waiting is not easy. But you know what? It is and it can be beautiful. Because in that gap time you have a sense of wonder, a sense of mystery, sometimes getting that immediate surprise, in Gerald's case, he couldn't have gotten the surprise immediately because Pinkie first mentioned it during the day. So he cou...

Host Erin McMahon welcomes us to Seek the Magic, a podcast about finding joy every day by connecting to our inner guidance. Challenged by a friend who was naming fifty things that brought her joy, Erin decided to make her own list of fifty joyful things, and that experience led her to ponder why we don’t do more of what brings us joy every day. What have we lost that we should reclaim and introduce back into our daily lives?

Erin’s list of joyful things naturally included time with her children, working out, running, meditation, and making connections, but some of the things she listed weren’t also things she wanted to immediately do at any given moment. And other things crept in, things that are necessary to do but that aren’t joyful. Erin guides us on how she reflected back on what brought her joy in childhood and why she stopped doing those things. Reading, play, being on stage, writing, and all manner of things that got left in back in childhood. Her promise to herself is to reclaim some of those things and bring them back into her life. Her advice is to maintain two to-do lists: one purely for joy and one about the things that we won’t remember but are necessary to accomplish. Join Erin in learning how to reflect on daily magic and how to reclaim the magic we instinctively knew before.

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Contact Erin McMahon: 

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Transcript

Erin McMahon: [00:00:03] Hello, this is Erin from Seek the Magic. Excited to speak to you today. I am hoping this microphone is working because we've had a few issues. It's a journey. I wonder if it's a sign from the universe that I need to get a new microphone. I don't know, we'll see. I was inspired to speak today because I've heard a few messages from various things I've been reading, listening to, even conversations with friends that have reminded me to get back to things that bring me joy and things that I loved from childhood. So I thought I'd share that with you and think about my musings with that. To one conversation I had with a friend was that she went through the exercise of thinking about the 50 things that she loved doing. Of course, it was very easy for her to come up with maybe one, two and three, but as it got down the list, it really made her think about the things that bring her joy. So I decided to make a similar list. And, you know, top things that bring me joy are spending time with my kids, spending time with my family, reading good books, working out, running when I can. Now it's meditation, speaking to friends, really making connections. And I had to think about, you know, as I reflected on the list, I thought some of these things that really bring me joy also aren't things that I immediately want to do in the moment.

Erin McMahon: [00:01:50] Like, do I really want to work out today? Or do I wish I had a break from spending some time with my kids? Or do I wish I didn't have to have a scheduled Zoom session with friends? Yes, that's true. Sometimes I don't want to do those things. And my mind, some part of my mind says, oh my goodness, wouldn't it be just easier to get other things I need to done, get things off of my to do list, or surf the internet, look at what clothes I do or do not need for the upcoming season, catch up on the latest Taylor Swift costumes that have come out from her European tour, anything like that. And you know, that's part of my brain that's seeking immediate gratification, looking for small little hits of dopamine that would temporarily soothe my mind and some of the things that require more effort and take more attention aren't necessarily as motivating. Just like, you know, when I'm with my kids and we're out in the park, it's so much fun. But then there's, you know, part of the inertia or, you know, is getting them ready, going through the process, it takes effort. And, I don't know, part of my brain's like, yeah, I'd rather just hang out and just chill. And I think, yes, there's part of me that just wants to relax all the time, but obviously relaxing all the time and doing nothing really doesn't lead to ultimate fulfillment and great memories.

Erin McMahon: [00:03:37] So I think it's important to take those moments of, you know, what you want to do during the day, and you know what things may call part of your brain into question, saying, do we really have to do that, and just sort of, you know, saying, put that to the side. I know, I know, this will take effort, but in the long run, once you get into something, it'll be really exciting. It will create a memory, it'll create moments, and quite often it does. But man, sometimes that part of my brain, especially when I've had, you know, a very busy week, a very busy day, etc, my brain's just like, can we just chill? Let's just, you know, hang out and, you know, part of that is important and sometimes you have to listen to that part of the brain. But I think it's a balance. When do we listen to it? When do we not listen to it? I don't know, I'd love to know your thoughts or how you think about it. There's other - and sometimes this is the same voice, sometimes it's a different voice - that says, okay, if I'm taking this time to meet and talk to someone, I'm not doing the 20 things on my to-do list, whether it be, you know, something for work, whether it be something that I need to file administratively, whether it be, you know, just a myriad of things that are going on in that never-ending to-do list.

Erin McMahon: [00:05:06] And I think those things on that list, while they're important and while they need to get done, they're not the fulfilling things that I'm going to remember. And maybe that's an important point to note that I should make sure my to-do list is for, filled with fulfilling things that, you know, will make me happy and joyful. So maybe that's a note to self. Maybe I'll try to make two to-do lists. One is going to be the fulfilling and enjoyment to-do list, and then the other one is going to be like things that I really won't remember about in a week's time, but need to get done for XYZ reason. I write myself email note reminders all the time, mostly with those things that maybe need to get done but I won't, you know, remember about in 5 or 10 minutes or, you know, a day. Of course, if they don't get done, like for example, paying the electricity bill, although that's an automated, but, you know, for example, if they don't get done then I will notice that it hasn't gotten done when, you know, the lights go out or if the car runs out of gas or something like that. Yeah maybe it's important to have two to-do lists. One that's the important memories that we have or the things that truly will bring us joy and we'll remember. And then those other things that, you know, we'll have have some time that are important to get done, but we won't remember. Speaking of one of the things that brings me joy, butterfly, and a butterfly just floated past the window, which is an amazing and beautiful sight in the swarm of cicadas that have been flying around over the past few weeks. Okay, so that's a list of things that bring me joy in trying to focus on things that bring joy and are great to cherish in the moment and then future moments.

Erin McMahon: [00:07:02] The other part of this, or in the same realm, is things that brought me joy in childhood, and part of this is part of an exercise of, you know, a class I'm taking about spiritual development and self-development and coaching and things like that, is reflect...

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.

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Contact Erin McMahon: 

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