On the topic of "the universe decided to make certain people successful" vs "some people work their ***'s off for success".
If someone's spent any time actually studying successful people they will notice a key defining trait, they all, without exception, operate under the belief they can effect and change their own situation. This thought process when married to willpower manifests itself as something called "drive" and is what is meant when we say "person X is driven".
The steps are as follows
Identify that something needs changing
"I don't like aspect X about my life"
Determine that you
can change that aspect
"I'm capable of changing aspect X about my life"
Determine the level of effort required
"In order to change aspect X I will need to put in amount Y of effort"
Decide to change that aspect
"I'm going to put in effort Y to change aspect X"
Formulate a plan, with milestones
"I will do actions A, B and C in order to change aspect X"
Execute that plan
"I'm now doing action A, this may take some time"
Evaluate that plan to determine if it's effective, change as needed
"Action A didn't have the intended effect, should I continue to action B or adapt the plan and do another action A".
And continue this cycle for the
rest of ones life. Yeah that ***is a lifestyle, it's not something that can be done only once and then discarded. Anyone who thinks "if only I could do A, then I'd be content / successful / ect" doesn't understand how life works. The biggest hangups are on the initial steps, people believe they are incapable of changing their lives, or believe the effort is simply too big (which is just another version of being incapable of changing). They don't actively manage their life and then complain when bad *** *** up their mismanaged life. They demand the government step in and "save" them from their own mismanaged life, the government decides that if it's going to be in the business of "saving people from bad decisions", then it needs to control those people's lives to ensure minimum amount of "saving from bad decisions" is needed.
In the past the only real excuse was information asymmetry, which is just a fancy way of saying ignorance due to information being unavailable. Now with the internet and search engines, virtually all information is available to anyone with an internet connection. Anyone can use this information to educate themselves and enable the pathways to growth. Personal growth is hard, it takes a lot of effort and is not comfortable. Adversity is what fuels growth, something today's soft entitled society doesn't' seem to understand.