There are deliberate carrot problems, where the successful person deliberately misleads their audience as to the source of their success, and non-deliberate ones, where the successful people themselves doesn't understand why they are successful so tell people the narratives that make them feel the best about themselves. You see this often when someone with prodigious genetic ability doesn't want to admit to others or themselves that their success was determined before they were born, and not due to hard work or some immeasurable character trait.