I am the opposite of you. I was born to an undiagnosed, untreated mentally ill mother, have had my own mental illness issues all my life, and I was recently diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome, and I have struggled with everything all my life without ever understanding why I could never seem to get anything right. I am 62 now. I have worked as hard as I knew how to at trying to make life work, and it never did. I have probably put in as much effort at things as you have, but I did not have the ability to make my efforts pay off. How hard a person works is not what determines success. Like you say, there is a lot that you were born with that I was not, and it seems like those things are what makes hard work pay off. I am not really sure why I am writing this, either, it is just the comparison between your life and mine. So many people blame those who are not successful for being the cause of their own failure, that they didn't try hard enough, made bad choices, are lazy, etc. This is just simply not true.