People remember the winner and forget how many identical attempts disappeared.

Memory keeps the winner and discards the field. The person who succeeded becomes the visible example, and the many others who did precisely the same things and got nothing simply leave no record. So the method looks reliable when what you are actually seeing is one survivor standing where a crowd used to be.

Before you copy a path because someone you admire took it, try to estimate how many started out that way. If you cannot even find them, that absence should change how much the example is worth.