Pre-School Winner!!!!

Colin Smith

(from mom Janine ) Here is Colin Smith's submission.  I've typed it up but these are his words:

What I Have Learned From the Edge 2 Learning For Life Series, by Colin Smith (5 years old):

Story 1:

I learned from Orrin Woodward's 1st story during candy bar sales, people didn't have any money.  Orrin Woodward went to the bank because people at the bank had money and he sold all his candy bars.

Respond positively or negatively - only let positive soak into my head.

I am going to learn from my mistakes.

Story 2:

He was running laps.  He's gonna take it easy, doing good.  He was going for a sprint.  Show me the money!  Don't let others believe what you can do.  Refuse to fail.

Story 3:

There were kids playing basketball, one wasn't good.  They were down and then iceman was back.  Just keep getting it to iceman.  Orrin Woodward was the tv announcer and calling him iceman.

Everyone was speaking positive.

If you believe it, you can achieve it.

Elementary Winner!!

Isaac Ashworth

Be Real Contest

Becoming a Professional

Chris Brady & Dario Brose

The Cd I chose was Becoming a Professional. I learned that you have to have your dreams be bigger than your obstacles if you are going to achieve your goals and dreams. 

I also learned that never listen to critics or dream stealers. Dream stealers can only take your dream if you let them. Dario never allowed his critics or dream stealers to keep him from achieving his goals and dreams.

The last lesson I learned was you have to put your time in through practice to earn your success. 

I recently started playing soccer I know I have to practice hard to be the best soccer player I can be.  I want to be a professional soccer player like Dario Brose.  I need to keep my dreams big so then the obstacles won’t get in my way.

Isaac Ashworth

Middle School Winners!

Miranda Millington

 SEE IT AND BELIEVE IT 

By: Miranda Millington 

I can still hear my dad saying to me “Visualize getting a home run hit!” as I was on deck during our second game of the softball tournament this season. As I stood there taking a few practice swings, I closed my eyes and visualized getting a solid hit into the outfield, hearing the smack of the ball against the bat, and my coach telling me to” go home” as I touched third base! I looked up and it was time for me to bat. I went up to the plate and waited for the pitch. I could hear my teammates cheering me on in the background. First pitch, low but was called a strike. Second pitch, swing and a miss. Third pitch, SMACK, I got a solid hit right in-between first and second! It landed in the outfield and rolled all the way to the fence! As I touched third my coach told me to “go home” and I ran as fast as I could to home plate! THUMP! I had touched home plate and had gotten my second home run of the whole season! I don’t think I could have gotten that hit if I hadn’t visualized it before I was up to bat! The power of visualization is so amazing! 

Have you ever imagined yourself doing something you’ve always wanted to do? Have you ever played through a whole event in which you do something great and amazing and it’s exactly how you want to do it in real life? Then when you go to do it, it happens exactly how you imagined it! That’s the power of visualization! 

To me, visualization is not only picturing something how you want it to be, but also including all of the senses. For example, in the above situation I heard my teammates cheering me on in the background, I saw the ball soaring in the air to the outfield, I smelled the dust in the air as I was running the bases, I could taste the ice cream awaiting my victory, and I could feel the solid hit when the bat connected with the ball. 

Learning about visualization has made a huge difference not just in my softball games, but for future experiences when I want to accomplish something! It showed me that if you visualize something over and over that you really want to do, you can do it! I’m lucky to have had this experience with visualization because as I get older there will be more times when I will use this technique and will accomplish what I want to do. I hope after reading this you realize visualizing something you want to do isn’t silly. It could make the difference on whether you achieve or not. I know that I’ve learned the power of visualization is truly AMAZING! 

Anna Smith

Edge Series

The Edge Series is a wonderful and powerful series of CD’s. Each and every CD has helped me, but three specific stories out of all stories have made the biggest impact on my life.

The first story was told by Orrin Woodward and it was about him taking all of the rejection he took from his neighbors when he was selling candy bars. Everyone said that they had no money so he solved that problem and went to the bank where people had money. His sister was constantly saying she was going to sell the most candy bars. That gave Orrin energy to try his best to sell more candy bars than his sister. 

This story actually helped me during a test in school.  There are two people who always get an A+ on all of their tests so that made me study hard for the test.  This story constantly helped me study for this test every day for hours.  The day of the test I took the longest to take the test.  After each question I looked over it, and when the teacher passed back the test, all of the studying paid off that day.  I could not stop smiling, I felt so good because I got an A++ on that test.

The second story is told also by Orrin Woodward, this story is about him running a lap-a-thon, and each person he told, he was going to run 30 laps in an hour said he couldn’t do it.  The first time I listened to this story, I was surprised he didn’t let anyone change what he thought he was capable of.  Anyway each lap he ran he dedicated to a person who thought he couldn’t do it which gave him energy and a reason to run all of those laps.  At the end he felt so good collecting that money because he proved to every person that he could run those 30 laps.

This story helped me during a soccer game when it was the last quarter of the fame and my team was down by two goals.  Everyone on the sidelines through we were going to lose this game there was only 12 minutes left of the quarter and everyone who said we couldn’t win that game gave me more and more energy at the end of that game my team won by two points.  All of that rejection gave me more energy and it did not make me rethink about how the game would end, the entire game I thought my team would win and we did.

The third story was told by of course Orrin Woodward, it is about Ice Adidas and how Orrin gave ice Adidas confidence and a positive attitude which made him play better.  This story taught me that if you believe it you can achieve it.  He gave Ice Adidas a good self talk.  During this story I thought that even if they lost that game they probably would have won on the inside because they did their personal best.

This story is actually helping me right now when my mom said that there was going to be a contest coming up and asked me if I wanted to do it I said no way.  Before I started I was already thinking in my head “I’m going to lose I’m not doing that.”  Then I thought of Ice Adidas, and now I know that if I have a positive self talk I could win this.  Even if I don’t win I will still be a winner on the inside because I did my personal best writing this.

Anna Smith – 5^th grade going into 6^th grade (11 years old)

High School Winner!

Joshua Smith

EDGE

Listening to these Edge CD’s have impacted my life a lot. This has changed my way of thinking, and actions toward things. These CD have taught me to not be afraid but to try things out, and that if I didn’t succeed and I tried my very best I would know that I didn’t fail, but that I have only succeeded. It also taught me to keep positive thinking that has made a very big difference in my life. 

In seventh and eighth grade I never had lost a race for hurdling, I always won my races, and I beat all of the other Junior high schools. I went into this year thinking I was going to win, but it all changed when I got put on high school varsity. So I had to keep the mindset that I had to do my very best, and that’s what I did.

I’m a ninth grade freshman, and I love track and field. I was a freshman on the varsity team and did the 110 meter hurdles, and the 300 meter hurdles. I never thought that I was that good to be on the varsity team, but I trained and worked hard and tried my best. I always had stayed positive when I was about to run even though I might lose. Even though I never won one race that whole season, I always had that mindset that I’m next year going to beat my hurdling teammates. I’m grateful that I’m able to learn these things now so I will be able to keep this information from the Edge CD’s for the rest of my life. 

Joshua Smith – 9^th grade going into 10^th grade  (15 yrs. old)

GRAND CHAMPION

BeReal Writing Event

A few months ago I started running again. I hadn't run since I did track and cross country three years ago, and assumed I would be able to do a six minute mile like I could back in the old days. I started out with a 5k, raising money for our local nature center. Going in I was completely confident, and thought I would be able to finish with a time of about twenty minutes, but realized after the first quarter mile that I hadn't prepared enough for this kind of run. I had to deal with the humiliation of being beaten by my mom, and promised myself that from then on I would never let that happen again. 

I started to run again, but would get tired, and end up stopping to walk. Since I wasn't doing my best I wasn't improving, and with out improvement I saw no need to run, and therefore quit after the first few weeks. 

Just that day, when I woke up, knowing I should get out of bed and at least take a short jog, the second Edge CD was delivered. My sister and I popped it in and listened to the stories of Orrin selling his candy bars, running laps on the track, and encouraging "Ice Adidas" as he played basketball. He talked about how when he couldn't sell any candy, he realized why he couldn't, and instead of giving up, he problem solved and achieved his goal. I knew the reason I wasn't improving on my runs was because I wasn't running my hardest. Whenever I would get tired, or get a cramp I would stop and walk. I made the decision to start again, and to not to quit, even when my entire body was aching in pain. For a week I would go out in the mornings or evenings and do my best, and eventually it got easier and easier. The CD encouraged me not to give up, but to figure out what was making me quit and run until I hit my goal. I would tell myself I could do it just like Orrin did to the young basketball player. 

June 2nd came up. It was the annual church race they held every year. Last 5k I made a promise not to be beaten by my mother. It would have been easy to give up on my goal, and have humiliated myself further, but instead I trained, and came up with a far better time than last (while beating my mom). I'm glad I heard the positive information that kept me going. I look forward to the CDs every month, and appreciate the time that the leaders of Life have put aside to create them for us.

Be REAL Writing Contest!

Be REAL Writing Contest 

The Results Are In!!!

As many of you know, teaching kids is one of my passions in life.  And with the LIFE Edge cd series, I now get the opportunity to connect my passion for kids with my purpose in life!  I think that's pretty cool. 

Kristine and I love the Edge cd series and what we see it doing in our own children's lives, so we wanted to expand that to include all the kids in our Revolution family.  That's when we launched Be REAL.  That stands for Revolution EDGE Academy of Leadership.  Which is just a really cool way of   reminding ourselves, and the young people in our lives to Be REAL:  The REAL you inside. We accomplish this through listening to our awesome series of cds specifically designed to present leadership principles packaged just right for those in the younger years of life. 

In the spirit of Being REAL, we launched a writing contest to all the kids on the Revolution.  We asked them to write about any of the Edge cds and show how they were using the principles in their own lives.  WOW!  We received a lot of awesome entries.  It was a blessing to read how this series of cds is affecting kids' lives. 

We broke the entries into 4 categories:  Preschool, elementary, middle school and high school.  We chose a winner for each category and an overall grand champion!  It was very difficult to choose the winners and a lot of time was spent by the judges as they went back and forth on several entries!  We'd like to thank our celebrity judges Richard Kroll and Tim and Peggi Kern for taking the time to read each entry.  The voting we so close we had to call in the big gun to help us choose the final Grand Champion!  A big huge thank you to Laurie Woodward for casting the final vote for our GRAND CHAMPION!!!!

Each of the category winners will be featured on my blog this week.  I know you will be impressed and inspired as you see the next generation learning and leading right where they are.  There's so much hope, and the Edge series of cds is leading the charge in giving these kids the information they need to be world changers!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE PARTICIPANTS!

And great job to those who best expressed how the EDGE cds are impacting your life!

Grand Champion

Tom Wright,

High School 

Joshua Smith 


Middle School
it's a tie!
Anna Smith
Miranda Millington


Elementary 
Isaac Ashworth


Pre-School
Colin Smith