“The most successful people have failed more times than you have tried”
Also the most sure path to finish in the 1% wealthiest is to start in its network.
When the game is set to make 99% of players considered as losers in its own terms, the best strategy to have fun at scale is to not care about the highlighted goal. Keep awareness of how rules actually apply, take shortcuts if it feels safe and preferable, always respect human dignity even when nasty players try to make a dirty move agaisnt you, don't let the lowering bare of hate infect one more player.
This is dangerously not true, if you never try, then you are guaranteed to fail to live up to your potential, which is one of the greatest failures of all.
That said living up to our potential is not very much better per se. Or at least it seems far too vague to be aptly considered. What forces are going to define what it is to tap relevantly in our potential?
With that said, I think you make some good points about the perspective people should have about competitive goals. Most contests are not strict meritocracies, and you are in for a lot of frustration if you assume that only effort matters when other slide by on their structural advantages. I would prefer to reframe the goal as 'work hard on what you have control over, as long as it provides some amount of benefit, and as long as you still care about the outcome.'
For the second paragraph, we seem really aligned on the developed points.
What a gem of a quote. A great way to avoid becoming a bitter person.
Edit to add: Still, the styles matter a lot! For one thing, they greatly influence which problems each person is interested in. Also, the style you solve problems with colors what your final output looks like, which is perhaps more obvious in engineering than in mathematics.