LeV, I'll start by saying that on this subject (how to get out of poverty) I have a soft spot for what you say, because it is indeed true for some people and because so many people complain endlessly but than make poor, poor choice.
Yet I cannot really agree with you for the same reason why I cannot agree with those saying that each poor person is a victim of society: because they are both PARTIAL descriptions of reality.
I think this sentence from Blind_Io is revealing
you succeeded in spite of it
On the same lines, I remember a fantastic joke from "The IT Crowd", where the multimillionnaire said "when I started this, I had only two things: a dream and six million pounds". It was irresistible, and it was because we all know it is true.
Most of the success we have, where we end up, what we can achieve and, in the end, the amount of money we can make, does not depend on us. If we are born rich or poor, that makes A LOT of difference and does not depend on us; if we are born healthy or sickly, that does not depend on us; if we are born in the right geographical place, that does not depend on us; if we are dumb or smart, that does not depend on us; if we get the right choices or the right education during childhood, that does almost entirely not depend on us; if we GET TO HAVE the right choices at the right moment during our life, that does not really depend on us.
What depends on us is to be ready, to be aware, to build up to be in places where the opportunities are more likely to pass by, to take them and to not let them go.
But then again, opportunities are far more likely to pass by if you are already in a good position, in a snowball effect manner. And not all opportunities end up well, DESPITE what you do. More than one people who succeeded in life told me that they bet on themselves. They could have succeeded or they could have stayed where they were or they could have failed. They had faith in themselves, and they were right. But success is not automatic even if you have all the right cards.
Yet more chances means more possibilities (as Trump's insuccess rate shows perfctly). Someone has just one opportunity, someone has many. It's easier to have many... At some point, someone who is already in a good position will achieve even more and someone who is in a lower position will not, the first one will end up with more money, more gratifications, even further opportunities, while the other will end up with less of each one of these things, and will have to put 10 times the effort of the first person to get just a bit of what the other gets easily.
This is a big problem, and mostly because it is common practice to consider the first person "better" than the other, when in fact it might just be an effect of the conditions upon which neither of them could do anything.
In that sense life itself is a better judge and a kinder rewarder, because it may give you depression if you have no goal or objective, even if you are rich, and may see you happy because you managed to improve from "oh sh*t!" level to "just tolerable". But then again, this depends often more on what cards we were dealt at start than on other things.
This is why we should try to give people one thing, just one: opportunities.
Give people opportunities to improve, to become better people, to develop and to express themselves, and they will be happy and thriving. Take them away and they will be sad and depressed and ultimately improductive and damaging.
To give people opportunities means to have them healthy, decently educated, able to move through the social ladder -at any time-, always able to give themselves time to develop, improve, and the chance to start over or change completely. And, of course, able to cope and go on in spite of whatever misfortune they may encounter.
Give them this, and you'll have happy, industrious, free people.
I have personally seen people who could be in jail become great, dedicated workers, because they KNEW it was worth the pain.
This is why I have a soft spot for your "make yourself" vision while retaining strong the knowledge that wealth must be distributed wayyyyyy better than it is now and that now things are getting worse rather than better, and the "countless opportunities for people with the right willpower" propaganda that we hear each day is just that: propaganda. Sometime you cannot get out of the dump you are in, no matter how hard you try. Once people realize this, they stop trying. This is why the "improvement through willpower" should work, but today is just propaganda.