What's Your Magic Feather?
What’s Your Magic Feather?
Whenever someone asks me about my favorite movie, my answer is usually met with a blank stare—a mixture of disbelief and bewilderment.
They probably expect me to say Braveheart, Gladiator, or maybe Fight Club. And to be fair, all three are in my top five. But my favorite movie of all time is Dumbo.
Yes, Dumbo.
If you haven’t seen it in a while, Dumbo is an elephant who is treated like an outcast because he has these enormous ears. The other elephants make fun of him, and he becomes part of the circus sideshow. The thing that makes him different is also the thing he believes is wrong with him.
One night, Dumbo and his friend Timothy Mouse accidentally get drunk. The next morning, they wake up in a tree with no idea how they got there. A group of crows tells them that Dumbo must have flown up there.
Timothy looks at Dumbo’s ears and suddenly puts it together. Those ears aren’t just big. They allow Dumbo to fly.
The problem is that Dumbo doesn’t believe him. He is afraid to let go of the branch, so one of the crows pulls out a feather and tells Dumbo that it is magic. As long as he holds on to the feather, he will be able to fly.
Dumbo takes the feather, holds it tightly in his trunk, and jumps.
And he flies.
The Feather Gets the Credit
Dumbo becomes the star of the circus. Everyone wants to see the flying elephant. The elephant who had been rejected and laughed at is now famous. He gets the best of everything, and everyone loves him.
But Dumbo believes it is all because of the feather.
Then one day, Dumbo is about to perform his biggest stunt. He is supposed to jump from the top of a gigantic tower and fall toward a small bucket of water. At the last second, he will open his ears, fly around the circus tent, and thrill the audience.
But after Dumbo jumps, the feather slips out of his trunk.
He immediately panics.
As they are falling toward the bucket, Timothy starts yelling in Dumbo’s ear, “You can fly! You’ve always been able to fly! You don’t need the feather!”
At the last possible moment, Dumbo believes him. He opens his ears and flies.
The feather was never magic. It only helped Dumbo believe in something he had been capable of doing all along.
We All Have a Magic Feather
I think we all have a magic feather. We all have something we hold on to because we believe it is keeping us safe. The problem is that sometimes the thing we believe is helping us is actually keeping us from trusting ourselves.
Maybe your magic feather is the grind. You believe that if you stop working so hard, even for a moment, everything will fall apart.
Maybe your feather is being the agreeable guy. You believe that if you keep everyone happy, avoid conflict, and never say what you really want, your relationships will remain safe.
Maybe it is a relationship you know isn’t good for you, but you are terrified of being alone. Maybe it is alcohol, porn, food, your phone, or some other way of escaping what you don’t want to feel. Maybe it is the belief that you have to be spiritual enough, good enough, or obedient enough or God will punish you.
Your magic feather could even be the belief that you will never be successful. As strange as that sounds, believing you will fail can keep you safe. If you already know it won’t work, you don’t have to take the risk of trying.
This is a form of magical thinking. We give something outside of us more power than it actually has. We convince ourselves that a belief, habit, role, or relationship is the only thing holding our lives together.
And so we keep holding on, even when it is no longer helping us.
What Once Helped You May Now Be Keeping You Stuck
Here’s the thing: most of our magic feathers helped us at some point.
Working hard may have helped you build a successful life. Being agreeable may have helped you survive in a family where anger wasn’t safe. Checking out may have been the only way you knew how to deal with pain. A rigid belief may have given you certainty when your life felt frightening and unpredictable.
These things aren’t stupid, and they aren’t signs that you are weak. They probably helped you get through something.
But what helps us survive one season of life can keep us stuck in the next.
At some point, Dumbo had to discover that the power wasn’t in the feather. The feather simply gave him enough confidence to try. He had to stop giving the feather credit for something that had been inside him the entire time.
The same may be true for you.
What belief, habit, role, or relationship are you holding on to because you believe you can’t be okay without it? What once helped you but is no longer serving you? What are you giving credit for a strength that has actually been yours all along?
You may not be ready to let go of your feather today. That’s okay. The first step may simply be recognizing it for what it is.
Then you can begin loosening your grip.
Because the feather may have helped you believe you could fly.
But it was never the thing holding you up.
