Self Control and Style

Self control is one of the most basic tools we should learn to master, when it comes to our outward appearance. I'm not talking about our appearance as in what we wear, or how we style our hair, but how we behave.

We can behave in a wide number of ways, but to prove our value, we must have the self control to live a good life, free of poor decisions, free of outrageous stunts, free of drama. You have the power to control how you behave, in response to everything. Situations don't control our actions, but we can act out when we don't know how to act or react to a given situation.

I read a quote from author Ann Voss Peterson who said, 'Remember Barry Sanders, RB of the Detroit Lions? I believe it was his father who advised him that when he scored his first NFL touchdown, instead of doing a end zone dance, he should act like he'd been there before.'

It's great to celebrate life and the victories we achieve from our hard work and enterprising activities, but it is another to celebrate with a lack of self control. If we take ownership of our lives, and resolve our selves to act on our own thoughts and dreams, we will easily overcome the naysayers and traditions that have blocked our prior success.

Stand tall, and act with dignity in all things you do. Make it a habit for life and you will gain and keep the respect of others for life.

Ourstage.com

Ok, For those of you who want a chance to break into show business, here is your chance. If you didn't make it on American Idol, you can take a crack at showing off your talent at OurStage.com

OurStage is the only democratic competition where the fans decide who's best in emerging entertainment. That means fans have the real voice - because our patent-pending judging system eliminates cheaters. Artists get a fair shot. The bottom line is, if you're really the best, the fans will drive you to the top.

How does it work?
As an artist, your first step is to upload your music or video and decide which channel competition to enter. Then, fans judge the work side by side with the work of others. Our unique judging capability (called Peer Relative Ranking, but don't worry about that) makes sure that each piece is judged fairly by the real audience no rigging, no cheating, no celebrity judges. At the end of each month, the top 20 and the top 10 in each channel go head-to-head in a special judging channels to determine the winner of that channel, and then a site-wide judging contest to determine our Grand Prize winner. For more information about that, see the Judging section below! As a fan, all you have to do is listen to some great music and give feedback about just how great you think it is. You can win prizes too for doing this - Check out http://www.ourstage.com/go/september

OurStage is a brand new and exciting way for you to succeed as an artist. Our site is designed to leverage the power of the Internet to connect fans to emerging artists. You get exposure to new fans through our ranking and judging system. You can track fans with a fan club and comments. There is a monthly cash prize of $100 for the top entry in each channel and two $5,000 grand prizes; one for music and one for video. You may also get additional exposure and prizes through our partners, such as NEMO, CMJ, Noisepop, Paste, the DV Show and many others.

Make sure you upload your video or music files to the right channel so that it can be judged fairly against others of the same genre.

Judging and competing are just part of the fun, you can also create promotional materials such as banners and other images that can link to your material, so you can promote them on your Facebook,MySpace or other content pages!

Promote yourself and your talent to the max. Competing at OurStage can really get your career moving!

Alexis - already famous

Alexis Says - "Hello i am famous and i don't think it is that great you never get any privacy and to much pressure"

I'm glad to know you are famous, but I think you should only be concerned with the pressure from within; especially as it concerns your performance, skill or expression of talent. Your greatest challenger should always be yourself, not the outside world.

Feeling the pressure of others (ie the press, etc) should be tolerated to some degree, but I hold that what is your private life should remain yours alone. Keep your private life private, live a good and honorable life, and let people talk. Good press and bad press is still press in some peoples minds, and both keep your name in the spot light.

If you no longer crave fame, then you should find a way to move on with your life and chose to do something different, or at least do things in a different way.

Privacy will come with time and patience, just don't let anyone control your feelings about things. Own your life, make good things happen for you and your loved ones and enjoy your good fortune.

Carla - Aspiring actress

One reader 'Carla' wrote "Hello i am in year 8 but i want to be a famous actress like Ashley Tisdale and Hilary Duff etc etc so how do i accomplish this dream of mine because i want to start my acting career right now so how can accomplish that."


It is refreshing to see someone so young have such ambitious goals! What you need to do is get out and audition. Talent can be recognized by chance appearances by agents at a local play, show, or even local TV, but you can also attend casting calls and get in front of the hiring agents directly.

Take a look at http://www.castingsociety.com/actors for some professional casting director information and resources.

Also, go to your local TV studios and check out when they have casting calls for local shows. While you are waiting for the next call, make sure you work on your presence, talent, confidence and self control (especially when speaking.)

Keep your goals in front of you and you can continue to advance your career.

Warmest Regards,

Robert

Self Promotion

If you are starting out in your goal to become famous, you might want to assemble a few tools to help you get your name out to the world.

I would highly recommend some sort of rich internet site or blog, that you can post information about you, your talent, quality photos and video clips, build up a fan base via email lists, and maybe provide a way to sell promotional items with your name, image or logo. A web presence is not the only way to get information out about yourself, but it is a fantastic reference for all of your other promotional activities to lead your fans to.

Once you have a site, hopefully you would have an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed associated with it, you will want to promote your feed address to sites like FeedBurner and get Download RSS Submit - submit your RSS feeds to over 65 sites with one click!. Using a RSS Syndication tool such as Blogrush.com can also improve your readership and public awareness too. Be creative and promote yourself like crazy. Doing one thing per day, will increase your name recognition and in no time, you will have the break you need to exponentially grow your brand.

Even if you don't have a website, you will definitely want to create periodic press releases designed to promote your presence somewhere, or some achievement you have received. If you don't know where to start, you can get a custom press release for $97 from Custom Press Release.com. Custom Press Release also has several options for local and national distribution or sign up at PR.com for a quick and convenient Press Release mechanism.

Likewise, you can write articles or other items of news about yourself, your company or your products and submit them to places like Ezine Articles, GoArticles, Yahoo's Article Announce, Article Central

If you want to start out with an email campaign, you can buy lists, or build your own using free tools like ListJoe for free or Aweber which is a better albeit paid service.

You can also take advantage of some Web 2.0 properties (sites), by capitalizing on social bookmarking sites like socialmarker.com, or other free social media such as Facebook, MySpace.com, LiveSpaces, or Yahoo 360, that all contain great information about you, your talent or product, plus a link back to your main website.

You can also use tools like SUExchange (StumbleUpon Exchange) as a social bookmarking link exchange to encourage others to bookmark your website. This will build a series of back links to your website which improves your search rankings and increase your visibility.

OK, you have a lot of homework to do, but you will certainly be able to get it all done if you just set each task up as a step in your ladder to success.

Helping Someone Else

I know that generalizations are typically not wise, but I firmly believe that everyone is capable of helping someone else. We can help someone else by sharing food, time, or money. We can someone else help by protecting, teaching, coaching and mentoring. We can someone else help by making contacts, introductions, and giving credit where it is due.

Helping someone else, be it a child, a sibling, a friend, coworker or stranger has intrinsic value. It's good for it's own sake. It is also good for you. By helping someone else, it puts you in a leadership or expert role; one that you should cultivate. You might find that your talent is stronger with coaching, teaching, or in philanthropy, especially when it helps to build your own skill level and subject understanding.

6 things you can do to help someone else:

1. Encourage {someone else} to study or practice with you, as a partnership
2. Help {someone else} establish their goals and steps to achieve them
   
3. Hold {someone else} accountable to their goals
4. Share a professional contact and phone number/email address with {someone else}
5. Spend quality time with {someone else}; especially with children
6. Be a good example. Demonstrate to everyone else your pride and discipline without fail

* replace {someone else} with a real name

Your career and personal life will become much more rewarding when you begin helping someone else. Make it a priority in your daily routine, at home, at work, on stage, on the field, etc to help someone for a few weeks and se what a difference it will make.

Accepting and Taking Risk

Depending on your definition of famous, I think I would now, in a most humble way, say that I am on my way to become famous.

I use StatCounter for tracking site statistics for this and several other blogs that I write. I also use Google Analytics, but StatCounter really made me see something interesting. My articles, for this and my other blogs have been read by someone on every continent. I am aiming to be read by someone in every country, and of course the English speaking countries have the highest read rate, but I'm just stoked that my articles are being picked up by interested readers around the world. How cool is that?

If I didn't get over my fear of letting others read my writings, I would never have been able to claim anything from that last paragraph. I took a risk and so far, I am becoming known around the world. Its a very small population that has read my works, but that's okay for now. I expect that it will spread after you forward this article or any of the others to your friends using the email link at the bottom of the page.

If I can make a small dent using only a minimal amount of time and effort, what can I do with an hour a day? Or better yet, what can you do?