Meet Tyler Crosby

We recently connected with Tyler Crosby and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tyler, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

That’s a helluva question for an artist – because for most of us, that’s an ever-evolving thing. It’s a lot easier to have confidence when you have the juice – when you just came off a killer leading role and it feels like you’re in demand. External validation can be addicting, and there’s nothing wrong with letting it motivate you to put in the work to perform. However, if you set your expectations too high for the outside world to give you the response you want, you’ll end up riding an emotional roller coaster. I spent a lot of years afraid of failure, and afraid of success. I’d self-sabotage in an effort to keep myself from public judgement. Which is human, and understandable…and also a load of crap. NOBODY CARES.. Things changed when I stopped trying to be cool, and embraced my inner nerd. I took improv classes, I made silly instagram reels, I created art that I liked. I said no to events I didn’t want to go to. I developed discipline in the gym. I did things that made me uncomfortable over and over and over again until I proved to myself that fear is an inch deep and a mile wide.
It took intention, practice, and consistency to learn how to stop giving the audience control of the juice. Seeking out ways to be embarrassed and stepping outside of my comfort zone is how I developed my self-esteem in recent years. Now I create my own juice. And man, it’s sweet.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

At the very center of my spirit, I’m an actor. I freakin’ love it. Ever since I played the bad guy in my elementary school’s production of Robin Hood, I was hooked. I loved theater; the rehearsal process, scoring the big laughs, opening night rituals, the final bow, and the people….I love actors. When it came time to set up in Los Angeles and start auditioning for the screen, it became clear that there were hundreds of guys that led the school plays in their hometown – and they were all here. Nowadays, I’m realizing that there’s enough pie for everyone to have a piece, and I’m gaining the traction and bookings right now that let me know that my dream might actually be coming true.
But I can’t just sit around waiting to be cast. I need another creative outlet.
At Princeton University, I found a loophole. I majored in Visual Arts. It was in that New Jersey sculpture shop that I found my love of construction. Now I have a studio a few blocks from my home where I make large-scale moss walls. Turns out, I have a full blown business on my hands – Moss by Croz. I take a lot of pride in creating the highest quality frames, and filling them with natural, preserved moss to bring the green inside the home. It’s a relatively new industry, and I intend to be one of the best to do it in Los Angeles.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Curiosity has been a quality that has laid a foundation for all my pursuits. Curiosity makes you ask, “what if?” Curiosity leads to vision, which leads to excitement, and that tingly feeling right below your belly button that makes you stand up and take action towards a goal or project. It helps us overcome the inevitable hurdles that will appear, because we still want to see what’s on the other side of this roadblock. Daydreaming is a powerful tool. A lot of us lose sight of that after childhood. What if you actually accomplished that dream? Who would you have to become to achieve it? Start there.
The second quality that has been impactful for me is my sense of independence. By that, I mean I want to figure out how to do it myself. Youtube university, trial and error, losing money on practicing a new skill – all for the sake of my DIY mentality. At a certain point, this quality can turn on you. Its’ certainly smarter to pay a professional tradesperson to handle a complex job, but I have learned so much through my DIY failures.
Finally, the ability to suffer. This one is tough, because it requires suffering. I went through a rough year where I experienced panic attacks regularly. The kind where you can’t breathe and you feel like you’re looking death in the face. This darkness allowed me to be patient through the bad, and trust that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It sounds strange, but I’m the most grateful for that year of spiritual suffering, because it gave me the ability to be anxious and afraid and do the thing anyway. There’s no courage without fear. Every time you show yourself that you can do it, you build that quiet confidence.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

I still struggle with perfectionism. After all the pep talks I’ve given to my peers, and all the introspection I’ve done, perfectionism will still rear its head. I was cutting out a wooden logo with a jigsaw recently for a large moss wall project. For all intents and purposes, of the piece, it looked great – but I lost multiple nights of sleep; tossing and turning thinking about the symmetry. Obviously that does not serve me. Or the logo for my moss business. I held off for two years on acquiring a logo because I completely over-thought it. All I needed was a cool shape on my website, business card, and letterhead, but I created an impossible expectation that it had to represent myself and the business perfectly.
Well, I finally pulled the trigger on the logo! It’s not some kind of perfect representation, but it’s DONE. It feels much better to be done with that so that I can actually print business cards and publish my website.
I continue be mindful of the way I want to be and the three things I need to always keep in mind. Anti-Perfectionism: “it looks great, just post it”, Anti-Resentment: “have the hard talk now, because it will only get harder”, and Anti-Inflammatory: “That pizza is going to mess you up for two days.”
I’m a work in progress, but I’m glad to be aware of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: mossbycroz.com and Tyler Crosby on IMDB
• Instagram: @tylercrozzz & @mossbycroz

Image Credits

David Muller, Sarah Krasniaski, Travis Long, Victor Lord