That advice — given in many forms by many people — to me almost seems immoral to at this point. It manages to pack so much into a brief assertion, that people who don't achieve something just don't want it badly enough. It's meaningless and insulting to everyone who finds themselves in circumstances beyond their control, in whatever ways that might be obvious or subtle to other people not in the situation. It blames victims, it enshrines survivorship bias, and it relies on a sort of nondisprovable assertion, which in itself speaks volumes about its validity.

Of course, the author adds the end bit, about "do you want to be happy or do you want to achieve what you want", which ameliorates it a bit and makes it more accurate. But by the same token it makes it softer and murkier and less useful.

Then again, the whole essay is predicated by "these are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith". I can understand where that statement is coming from, but then what use is it?

I appreciate the desire to put advice into the world, but too often I find it completely useless out of context. Or maybe even actively harmful. They're like Barnum statements that can be interpreted in all sorts of ways in any given situation.

I guess I just feel like we as a society need to stop taking advice from people based on their own personal philosophies, which have all sorts of self-justifying biases (regardless of how their life goes).