That sounds nice, but is a little empty. There are plenty of people who we now consider incredibly important figures (artists etc) who died broke.
Everything is a choice. The people who refuse to not be smart about business refuse to take what they need - so they get what they get much like people who only work when a job is offered to them. Money is rarely made by accident. It is more likely to be made when you mix choice with opportunity.
Creativity is only the body of material you have to draw from. Your visual or intellectual library of things you have already made a part of yourself through direct exposure. No invention or creation is made independently, it's all made with a clear path from one to another. Anyone can invent or create great things. Anyone can be great. All it takes is choice.
Success favors perseverance. Failure is necessary to reach what works. Those who are unwilling to fail never succeed.
Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.
Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great. Though you could argue that we are already all "great" in comparison to the bacteria that we evolved from :)
Any kind of creative person who is great is not born that way. It is not innate ability. Watch and listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnflBERf2zM It is the same with anyone who has "intelligence" - like I said, there is no smart people, only people who are exposed to more and work harder to learn more. Yes, people can be brain damaged with real limits, but even they can be greater than lazy people who waste their potential. Even people with extremely limiting abilities can use what brain tissue they have, expand their mind, and blow away all we thought we knew as impossible.
>Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.
Yes, so, be exposed to as much as possible, and think. That's what I'm saying it takes.
>Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great.
Yeah, no. Wow. This is like saying not everyone can be happy, because we need some unhappy people for the rest of us to have some perspective. Or that we need ugly people to feel good about how good we look. Or that we need gold stars to gloat over how others don't have gold stars. No.
You suggest that willpower is important, which all things being equal innate ability is still important. If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.
Nope. It is not that others must suffer for you to have a good life much the same as it not be required for your neighbor to be ugly for you to be beautiful. Much of what you think as really true is not.
>If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.
This is the world you live in: I have a predisposition and I'm going to stick to it and within my natural limits.
This is the world I live in: fuck the rules.
> innate ability is still important
To be the very best that no one ever was? Sure it is, but it is largely inconsequential in the reality we live in! Like I said before: probably no one here can be a NFL quarterback as they are now... but they can still achieve nearly everything within their desires still! The reality is that the majority of people will think like you do are held back by their beliefs, while less innate people blow past them. Even if you think there are limits... they really do not matter. There will always be opportunity for you to have as much success as you choose to have. If you deny this then you will remain one of the many who choose to stay as you are.
As far as the brain goes, the differences in innate ability are so very unimportant compared to choice. A person who is born one way with a healthy brain is not any better or worse in permanence than someone with an equally healthy brain. They both can be great if they through their lives choose to be.
Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest misconceptions in modern discourse. There is a whole "underground" (mostly online) current of thought called HBD (Human BioDiversity) which means to address this misconception. Google it, but with your attitude you will probably discard it right away.