Some life alpha:
If you are determined, ambitious and hardworking, life will give you a lot of opportunities to succeed by allowing you to find spots in which you can press for an advantage.
You can think of your day to day as mostly being uneventful as you press yourself up against the wall of opportunity. Months go by and often nothing happens.
One fine day, without warning, a crack on the wall will appear and you will be able to reap what you have been sowing for the past couple of months/years. The time from pushing to reaping is indeterminate, random and extremely frustrating.
Most people will give up long before it happens - for 2 reasons:
1) their patience is finite, fragile and thin and
2) they are easily distracted by the things that don't actually matter. (hint: MOST things in life don't actually matter ex-post)
When you are chasing an outcome, you will find a hundred distractions in your path and conjure a million reasons on why you should give up.
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But if you are earnest about your goals and have the patience of a monk and the drive and tenacity of a warrior - the wall will break. Reality will crack under your will.
Everything else is a distraction.