Hard work and understanding are equally necessary for success

[Music]

and today i want to give you two things

a success story of mine and a lesson we

can all learn

sound interesting well let’s dive in

as i said before my name is herpeth

walia and my success story had to do

with me becoming

the district debate champion ambitious

i started off as a high school freshman

with zero experience in debate

i joined debate because it looked fun

and hit the ground running

practicing everything my teacher told me

to do with my new partner

kelton we made a great team

but as soon as we started going to our

first few rounds

we were getting destroyed we lost

round after round tournament after

tournament

and we had no idea what we were doing

wrong

these losses continued our entire

freshman year

so we made a pact next year this is not

going to happen again

so before the next season started i sat

down and asked myself

where did i go wrong and how i can get

to my goal

i started asking myself questions really

breaking down what debate is

and what my goal is i first asked myself

what is my goal i answered well-being

district debate champion

well then i asked myself how do i

achieve that goal

i answered well by being better at

debate

well then i asked how do i get better at

debate

what what are the debate terms i need to

know how do i make

an argument how do i counter an

opponent’s argument what are judges

looking for

who what when where why i ask this and

that and

everything having to do with debate

after asking myself

over seven billion questions

and finding each of their answers i

would back and forth with my partner

until we finally developed strategies on

how to make an argument

and how to counter an opponent’s

argument

using these strategies we started going

to tournaments and we started winning

rounds finally some wins underneath our

belt

this gave us both hope and confidence

don’t get me wrong we still lost some of

the rounds but at least this time we

knew what we were doing wrong

and could learn from our mistakes

now using these wins this confidence and

this hope

we went to the district debate

tournament

where kelton and i became the district

debate

champions and i actually was presented

with the best speaker award

i finally achieved that success

this zero-to-hero success story of mine

really

embodies with me but a critical part of

the story is how i did it

how i achieved that success you see back

in my freshman year

i did not know what i needed to do in

order to get to that success

i knew the idea of that success but i

had a muddled idea of how to get there

once i took a step back and really broke

down my goal

and what i needed to do to get there i

could take a step forward

into the correct direction and propel

myself into

towards that success and i believe

that’s how many people succeed nowadays

you see what sets people through the

bridge between

failure and success is that the

successful people

have that clear direction towards their

success

i’ve seen this time and time again with

classmates of mine

who fail at something and have no idea

what they did wrong

and a common thread between all of them

was that they did not have

a clear direction for this success if

they’d just taken a step back

and really broken down their success

they could have propelled themselves

forward

and really got into their success

this idea of making a clear direction

towards your success and understanding

that success

can work with any success big or small

and with uh with any person

either being 14 or 42

because this is just a mindset we can

establish through our daily lives

this is my story and these are my ideas

but if i were to leave you with one

thing it is this

hard work for your success will get you

far

but understanding your success and

finding that clear direction

will get you even further my name is

harpreethwalya

and i thank you for your time

you