As the Stoics did. Look into your basis for this feeling. What are the assumptions behind it? I'd say one assumption of it is, "I don't actually have any power to determine my X". X in whatever you choose, in this case "spot in the hierarchy." That assumption right there, which if accepted as fact, may well lead to this feeling. I'd say it works to consider whether this assumption is fact or not fact. I'd say it is not fact, because you can choose. In other words, one reason you can determine your spot in the hierarchy is you can make choices, and create improvements for yourself.

What about luck?

If we accept that luck is something wholly out of our control, then there is no point thinking about luck. If we accept luck is somewhat within our control, in terms of creating causes which create possibilities for certain conditions to arise, then it works to consider, "How can I do things which create possibilities?" So whatever the nature of "luck", the power to determine is up to you.

What about "structural inhibitors of success", such as, genes that don't work, physical or mental disability, structural oppression like sexism or racism, or being born in a poor country or family, or anything else?

Again, it works to rationally consider each of these compelling excuses for a lack of achievement. There are people who have possessed these, and at the same time succeeded.

Perhaps anything people sometimes cite as an excuse or obstacle to "explain" a lack of achievement, are simply opportunities to create improvements, again?

One way of looking at difficulties is that they are treasures leading you to the success that perhaps you have chosen for yourself. If it's the "difficulties" that you feel are preventing you from achievement, doesn't that also make them the very opportunities for things to improve to create your achievement?

Another way is thinking about athletes: how many great swimmers started life as kids with asthma? It was the very difficulty that was in fact an opportunity for them to create this improvement. And they succeeded.

It's perhaps incorrect to say Zuck was having trouble meeting people at Harvard, but isn't there something to the idea that it was the very difficulty with easily knowing about other people in college, that was an opportunity for him to create Facebook?

From the point of view of startups, anything which is a difficulty for some people, is the perfect business opportunity, and people will pay you to solve it for them. So if you are born without difficulties, perhaps you are very unlucky indeed, tho if you are rich in difficulties perhaps you have many opportunities to create success :)

Yes, there are plenty of people with difficulties you can cite as being unsuccessful, however, it works to consider the question: does that say something about the life-determining power of difficulties or does it say something about how those people have thought about their difficulties?

The idea that we are not responsible for the path our lives take is an extremely compelling delusion, and because so much of people's self-explanation of why they haven't been successful hinges on blaming external factors, they will defend the truth they ascribe to these factors with all their will, because their entire satisfied relationship with an unsatisfying life rests on that fallacy. The alternate choice, to take responsibility, and see they also had power to choose to do things differently that may have produced different results, means surrendering the fake pay-off of blaming something else.

Fake pay-offs are addictive feelings that let people feel like they have achieved something without actually having done so. They're what people substitute for actually choosing to take responsibility. If you can feel okay about your lack of achievement, if you can deal with seeing other people's success by explaining it as being because you are a victim of circumstance, or they are privileged, or their success is not real success, then you can say, "It's not my responsibility I didn't achieve like them." This is like a tonic you apply to your challenging feeling of witnessing another's success. Except it's fake. Because you didn't achieve something. And it doesn't work for you, because saying "it's not my responsibility", actually disempowers you, and trains you out of thinking of ways you can actually choose to create improvements, that may lead to success.

Sadly, it seems fake pay-offs like in the narrative above are almost as compelling as actually achieving something for real. If people really do achieve below their potential, I'd say repeating incorrect, disempowering narratives is one contributing reason.

What’s the antidote to these kind of narratives?
Realizing you can create narratives that empower you based on taking responsibility. This doesn’t require disempowering anyone else (which is really just a kind of weakness), rather, by realizing that you have choice, you will see that there is no one to blame, and that in any situation, you are responsible for how it is going for you.

What else is required?

I’d say that having a workable relationship to other people’s success works. When you see someone else successful, be inspired by that success and ask, “Wow, that’s cool, how can I get that for myself?” If you choose to be jealous, it’s just going to more readily lead to narratives where: you’re not responsible for your own lack of success, and their success is not real because they’re privileged or because it was fake.

That is one way of addressing the fake idea that it is the difficulties, instead of our choices, which limit our lives.

From another perspective, yes, "everyone is average." By definition this is true. Yet what is the nature of that truth? Is it a powerful all-encompassing truth? Or just a weak truism? If you unpack it it's "everyone except for a few outliers are within a few standard deviations of the mean". That’s not the kind of life-determining truth that’s going to rock your world. That’s just talking about some unmentioned metric, by which everyone’s measure is being taken. Maybe your standards are different. Maybe the measure by which you are average is unimportant for you.

And maybe even if you are average today, you may not be in 5 or 10 years time. Maybe you will be the next Jony Ive. If you get there, it won’t be because it was given to you, it will be because you kept making choices that worked to get you there.

In terms of how weak the impact of ostensibly “big” difficulties can be, consider this: Steve Jobs is dead. And he’s still having an impact. I’d say there’s plenty of things you can do with the life you have.

All of the above works if your choice is to try to do something extraordinary.

Being Average

If you just want a normal, average life, then you really do not have to worry about such highfalutin notions of taking responsibility, or empowerment. Because the average delusions adopted by many will work just fine, and may even keep things smoother, because in the masses people expect to blame each other and be blamed for things that aren't their responsibility. Complaining is the great refuge of the average person, and there's nothing wrong with that.

So if you would prefer an average life, then a more "average looking" philosophy will work, and that's totally okay too. Even if you want to just take a break from being an entrepreneur this can work! The Buddhist notion of detachment from worldly forms, which are all just like lights and magic in a stage play, and empty of inherent reality because they're just the result of a whole bunch of other causes, works as somewhere to start. The Daoist notion of "achieve by not achieving, act by not acting" also works.

Just let go, and be content with average. Stop grasping after worldly forms, and you'll be happy. There's plenty of people who will show you the way to be content with an average life. Society (and your biology) already has a prescription prepared for you: entertainment, eating, drinking, love and sex, partying. These are the great distractions which can make you feel better about your lack of achievement. Which is not to say they are not good in themselves, nor that there is anything wrong with maintaining social harmony, only to talk about how we've constructed them as aspirational myths, which also work as great distractions from actually achieving. And if you have a highfalutin notion that you want to be a somebody, watch a hero movie, and play out your fantasies on the big screen, through the entertaining catharsis of being someone who never existed.

Which is not to say that if you do want to be a "serious entrepreneur" you got to feel guilty enjoying such entertainment. Enjoy it. And do your work. If you just enjoy it, and believe it's the pinnacle of aspiration, and then do nothing, you'll be average.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, and maybe average is what you already chose, and you're looking for a way to accept it. Combine the great distractions for the more biological and adrenal urges, with the Buddhist and Daoist philosophies for the more cerebral ones, and you're set. Averageness Nirvana. Or choose to take responsibility and choose to be extraordinary. Rich in Difficulties. Blue Bill, Red Pill. :)

I don't think there's anything wrong with being average, nor with everybody choosing an average life at all. Cows in the field are happy, and they're not doing anything special at all. In India, cows do even less, and there they're gods.

If the people are happy, all is well. In fact, that's a really important measure of how well things are -- how happy are the average people? All of your technologies mean nothing if they don't contribute to people being happy and free. Just because someone is average doesn't mean they're not special.

And then there's biology. Darwinism explains why extraordinary success is not really a positive selective pressure, because even if you're a 1000x success over average, you don't have 1000x offspring over average. We're not selected to be extraordinary, which is not an excuse, and is another way to think about how being extraordinary is really a choice people make.

Average people benefit from extraordinary people. When they do, extraordinary people's work becomes meaningful.

I also think it's important that there are people who are choosing to create technologies to advance the human race. One reason is because then everyone choosing to be average can have a better quality of average, and that's awesome. Like what if all disease was cured? And aging could be reversed with periodic maintenance? And we had an energy source which let us build and feed everyone to a minimum standard level? That would be so awesome, and that's just some of the things that are possible with technology. So long as a there are people choosing to be extraordinary, and make things that are meaningful for average people, that will happen. If you create a technology that nobody uses, it's not a technology. It's an experiment, it's research.

The ideas above are just one way which works to be extraordinary. If being extraordinary is what you choose, there's a whole bunch of other ways to do it, and there's more things in this way that work too. Taking responsibility for your own path works as a place to start tho. Also, being positive, constructive, creative and figuring things out for yourself work too.

Footnote: If you want to be extraordinary do it in tech, not research

And if you're capable of making something people use, I'd say you have a responsibility to capture value from that so that you can fund yourself to create the possibility of your making more things in future. That's why science is more broken than tech, because the people with capacity to do useful things are not the ones ensured to keep doing useful things in future. It's a apprentice system, not a free market, and that doesn't work because it doesn't most incent the people who can create the most value.