Apparently not hard enough.

>"land better in the distribution like me..."

This line of thinking you are describing there is classic loser mentality. The successes of others are always because of "luck".

It couldn't possibly be that they put in the hard work when you weren't looking. Of course not.

Entertaining such ideas would lead to looking inwards, and there's only darkness to be found inwards.

This is a problem that outsiders cannot fix. They have to realize the problem themselves, and only then will they be able to move forward.