The first step to becoming the star of your own life is to pick your objective.
If you're an actor working on a role in a play or film, the first thing you must understand about your character is his objective. What does he or she want? Richard III wants to become king. The Joker wants to create chaos in Gotham City. Ferris Bueller wants to show his best friend a good time so he will realize his potential.
The character's objective is behind every choice the actor makes. Richard III ends up murdering his nephews and both his brothers. The Joker kills massive numbers of people. And Ferris runs all over Chicago one step ahead of his parents and truant officers.
Notice that in order to achieve their objectives, the characters do things. Of course, if they didn't, you wouldn't watch. But what makes compelling drama can also make for compelling lives.
What's your objective? Write down something specific, but don't use any form of the verb "to be". For example, don't write down "I want to be rich," because that objective won't lead to action. Think about how you want to be rich (if that's your objective) and write that down -- for example, "I want to work at a Hedge fund" or "I want to study medicine" are both ways a person can become rich. Both of them lead to an action -- to work at a Hedge Fund, you have to apply for a job. To study medicine, you have to apply to medical school.
Picking an active objective leads to action on your part. So pick an objective for your life, and start your path to stardom. Next week I will post the next step.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Presence
Have you ever been in a room when a star walked in? It could have been a movie star, a stage star, or just one of the star salesmen where you work. Even if you weren't looking at the door, did you know they were in the room? Of course you did.
Stars have presence. They have have a special energy that draws our attention to them. That's why news channels report on their exploits, web sites chronicle their every move, and magazines trumpet their every romantic entanglement. People want to know.
Stars didn't always start out that way, though. At one time, Tom Cruise was just another young actor trying to break into movies. Tom Hanks was thrilled to get a job as a cross-dressing actor in a sitcom, Bosom Buddies. And every Nobel Prize winning economist was once a struggling graduate student.
So if you're not a star in your own life yet, that doesn't mean you can't become one in the future. It doesn't matter what you've done in the past -- what matters is what you're doing to do with your life going forward. Today is the youngest that you'll ever be -- Make up your mind that you want to change your life, and you can.
In my next post I'll talk more about HOW you can do this.
Stars have presence. They have have a special energy that draws our attention to them. That's why news channels report on their exploits, web sites chronicle their every move, and magazines trumpet their every romantic entanglement. People want to know.
Stars didn't always start out that way, though. At one time, Tom Cruise was just another young actor trying to break into movies. Tom Hanks was thrilled to get a job as a cross-dressing actor in a sitcom, Bosom Buddies. And every Nobel Prize winning economist was once a struggling graduate student.
So if you're not a star in your own life yet, that doesn't mean you can't become one in the future. It doesn't matter what you've done in the past -- what matters is what you're doing to do with your life going forward. Today is the youngest that you'll ever be -- Make up your mind that you want to change your life, and you can.
In my next post I'll talk more about HOW you can do this.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Do You Want to Be a Star?
Of course you do, or you wouldn't be reading this blog. I can help you achieve your goal of becoming a star in your own life -- at work, at home, and at play. You can get the credit you deserve for the work you do.
I received my Masters in Fine Arts in Directing from Carnegie-Mellon and worked with professional actors for many years. After I went into television I found that the same techniques stars used to achieve their goals and create believable characters worked just as well in business and community settings. I set out to study those techniques in even greater detail, and in this blog I will provide the fruits of that research to you.
I received my Masters in Fine Arts in Directing from Carnegie-Mellon and worked with professional actors for many years. After I went into television I found that the same techniques stars used to achieve their goals and create believable characters worked just as well in business and community settings. I set out to study those techniques in even greater detail, and in this blog I will provide the fruits of that research to you.
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