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