Fortune favours the brave. Although, it would difficult to judge if you had 2 versions of your life laid out in front of you.

Possibly it may just come down to nature/nurture, right time, right place. I have a theory, one that not many will agree with, that there are those of us, I call them Changemakers, that have less control of their prefrontal cortex - our decision making brain (think ADHD). They are impulsive and are sent charging after one thing after another. Then there are those that are more stable and keep the general status quo alive, I call them Balancers. Maybe we need both, the safety of the balancers to maintain our general progress and the changemakers to instil meaning. This goes against the general consensus that society, and therefore nature, is ill and thereby making a significant portion of the population "broken", rather than by design.