success is not always easy to replicate

I tried baking a cake once - I followed the recipe exactly - it DID NOT work out.

That is the problem with recipes - they do not account for everything; they often miss nuance and small details; details that make all the difference. Then there are other factors, ambient air temperature maybe (if your baking bread); how warm your hands are when you kneed the dough (making shit up here); but all these things and more, go toward creating variation in outcomes.

Once out of the kitchen and onto the larger landscape of life, there are an infinite number of variables in play. Where you were born, what your parents were like, timing (that’s a big one), etc - no matter how much effort and planning goes toward the seeking of an outcome - LUCK plays a very large role.

This is one of the reasons why so-called ‘success’ is sometimes difficult to replicate. Try replicating Tiger Woods’ golf swing - in theory, it might appear that he is only doing a few simple things but obviously there is a lot more going on. Even simple things can be very challenging to replicate. 

Ultimately, each of us carves our own singularly unique path in an effort to shape the world to our specs. Even small accidents, and miss-turns may have wonderful consequences. 

Here’s a pic of my son Felix staring at the night sky - we both look at it, but I doubt whether we see the same thing.