You Are the Key by Caitlin Crosby

Author:Caitlin Crosby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2020-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

I know that letting go of what other people think of you is a learned skill, and like many, I had to learn it the hard way.

Since my dad was managing Charlize during my most formative years as a teenager, that shaped who I am today. It was always a mixture of excitement—to be able to go to all of her premieres and parties, to see behind the scenes of her day-to-day life and rise to stardom—and deep insecurity. I felt I was always in her shadow, never measuring up to her greatness.

Everyone was so enamored by her. She was like the ultimate cool, perfect big sister. But it was challenging for me to see her larger-than-life on billboards and magazine covers, not to mention winning an Oscar for best actress, because I constantly compared myself to her. She was killing it, and I was still going to auditions for Taco Bell commercials. (Although all the fast food commercials I did paid my rent for a decade, so I’m grateful. And yes, I took hundreds of bites of hundreds of chalupas and spit into a bucket after each take. Glamorous.)

Though I was booking more jobs than most of my friends and peers who were also pursuing acting, it paled in comparison to Charlize’s success. So I never really felt proud of myself. Everything I did felt lame compared to her accomplishments. The entire world raved about her. See how insidious comparison can be? It not only steals our joy, it steals our purpose. As long as I was looking at Charlize, I couldn’t see the clear signs right in front of me, showing the way to who I was all along.

Each time I’d see Charlize on another billboard, getting bigger and bigger, I felt smaller and smaller. Even years later, after we’ve lost touch, I still sometimes get a twinge of PTSD when I see her face on billboards. This says nothing about Charlize, by the way, as she is truly a wonderful person. This is just what happens when we let comparison take control. It takes over our minds and hearts, and no matter what we do, we won’t feel like we are good enough. It wouldn’t have mattered if I thought I was better than Charlize; I would have found someone else to compare myself to. As long as comparison rules in your heart, you’ll have to constantly fight feeling less-than. Comparison is a slow-working poison.

Theodore Roosevelt is credited with having said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” This quote is one of my all-time favorites. It reminds me that comparing your work, your life, or whatever else you have with what someone else has will only serve to make you unhappy. You’re setting yourself up for loss. There will always be someone who is more this or that. This rings so true for me. The more I compare myself to others, the more uneasy I become. I realize some of this is natural and how we are

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