Luck plays a large part. But being too much of a realist closes up your potential for success through a lack of visualizing yourself in that successful position.
Effort and intelligence as well as timing are key to any sort of enterprise including an appreciation of what the market wants and the legalities behind it.
As controversial as it sounds, and denying my bias to naturally hate you have to give it to Nathan Rothschild. He had wealth to start of with but what a cruel and evil genius.
I will check this out. Still sticking to my "luck" narrative though. I know many people that tried their best and failed while others did little and succeeded.
Fair enough, I wouldn't give up though! Found this on the net which talks about visualization
"Using visualization techniques to focus on your goals and desires accomplishes four very important things.
1.) It activates your creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve your goal.
2.) It programs your brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need to achieve your dreams.
3.) It activates the law of attraction, thereby drawing into your life the people, resources, and circumstances you will need to achieve your goals.
4.) It builds your internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your dreams."
It "can" work. doesn't make it a recipe though. more like wishful thinking. millions of books with these words have been published. so many though saw any results. that alone should make you think about the power of those sentences.
The idea behind positive thinking is that you create in yourself the ultimate person that you want to be. You present yourself to others as you want them to see you. It is basically the same idea as self confidence, but too many people pick up a "positive self-help" guide and expect it to help them the way that that 6 disc series on weight loss helped them.It doesn't work that way. You have to change your OWN WAY OF THINKING to help yourself. That's all that positive thinking is. People turned it into some stupid fad. "Know thyself" is more powerful, and you seem to have that down no problem ;)
I don't think is that easy to change one's way of thinking. This is why all attempts to do so ultimately fail.
No, you are right, changing one's way of thinking is very hard. It takes discipline and the desire to make a change in the first place.