Success is rarely a straight line, and the people who say theirs was usually left parts out.

Accounts get tidied in the retelling. Anybody summarising their own path naturally drops the years that led nowhere, the wrong turning, and the help they were given, because a clean line is easier to tell and sounds better. The result is that everyone measures their messy present against somebody’s edited past. The mess was there; it just did not make the summary.

So when somebody describes a straight path, ask what else they were doing in those years. The answer usually loosens things considerably. And be honest in your own telling, because somebody younger is measuring against you.