hard work means nothing if you are not fortunate enough to have the foundation with which to work upon. the person with 20% less brain capacity can do way more work than you, and not get anywhere, which proves that there is no linear relationship between hard work and success. something else has to be present for "hard work" to lead towards success. There are some people working much harder than you at their job at McDonalds, and they will not be as successful as you.
Your hard work did not create your success, your circumstances did most of the work in making the conditions right, just like human evolution would not have happened if there weren't a perfectly conditioned Earth present that took billions of years to create.
Your hard work was just one of many prerequisites for your success to occur (and of course, many people don't need to work very hard at all to be successful, due to their circumstances as well), and additionally, your capacity, desire, and stamina for such hard work are also things that you were lucky enough to have.
A person with 20% less brain capacity would be aiming at a different form of success, with different tools. Dragging his place down to lower situations doesn't change the life changing potential of properly applied hard work.
We aren't victims. But we are rather hemmed in by circumstances and budget with the exception of top 0.5%.
Feel like working 8h today? No? Too bad.
Need rest for mental reasons? Sorry you're out of holidays.
Want to work on rocket science? Unfortunately no positions are open and the longer you're out, the less likely you will get in. That if you even studied the right things.
Or maybe you feel like being a fireman but failing the physicals?
Perhaps a doctor? But you need those 6 years of education plus actual knowledge. And this have to weather those years. If you're not rich, you get to work some trash job in the meantime hoping it won't affect you or the studies.
Etc.
And do not even get me started on social network you cannot begin to choose unless you have copious free time.
everyone is hemmed in by their circumstances. Steve Jobs got pancreatic cancer, and all his billions could do nothing to prevent his death. We are all in the same boat, it's just some of us don't really see it.
He turned down treatment early on that he later regretted. It's true he would die eventually anyway. Life and death can be used to describe anything that lives including the individual.
he did! but did Steve Jobs singlehandedly invent that treatment? nope! So even then, his reliance on existing constructs that were not created by him-"self" is quite obvious.
And the person(s) who made those treatments sacrificed collective opportunities to do so. We are all individuals, talking to crowds is best done by talking to individuals in the crowd. Dare I go too far.... The collective can't exist until we give up portion of our mind to others that themselves are individuals. The link doesn't exist outside our individual imagination.
So when you're talking to someone who lost a beautiful person in their life because someone else decided they were fine driving after a night out of drinking, you can realize how arbitrary and random life really is.
Sure, I'm successful because I wasn't run over by car when I was 12.