My statistics teacher in high school once told me, "No one remembers their best game of poker, but everyone has a bad beat story." I suspect something similar is true for the author and their friends. Most people make many, many compounding mistakes over the course of their life. If the author's circle of acquaintances are in a place where one or two different choices are all it would take for them to live their best lives, then it's fair to assume that they're already near the upper end of the bell curve.