> At the individual level, focussing on elements one has control over is a sensible strategy. At the society-wide level, the discussion must be more complex.
It's a recipe for beating-oneself-up misery for most people, though.
It's all a bit zero-sum, right? Anything "exceptional" stops being exceptional when everyone thinks the secret to doing better than others is to do those things.
You'll never have a world where any individual can simply "go make themselves exceptional" because exceptional is by definition the exception.
This works out ok for the people who happen to have the right conjunction of exceptional ability and market demand for that sort of skill.
But the people preaching this stuff are much more commonly the ones sitting where they are by fortuitousness or historical accident, who greatly benefit if the "other people" believe it's their own fault they're stuck in a constantly-intensifying rat-race (over the last 5 decades or so).
As for the anecdotes and success stories, I also agree they are not convincing. In business they can be very useful though, since starting a new venture requires a lot of leaps of faith and uneducated decisions, something paralyzing to most people. Having a model for how others proceeded is very valuable.
Blaming society and sitting back is counterproductive. Blaming society and taking agency with respect to that injustice is a productive, performing response. (As is trying to “tough through” the adversity, as unlikely as that is to succeed.)
At the individual level, focussing on elements one has control over is a sensible strategy. At the society-wide level, the discussion must be more complex.