The pillars describe a life at rest. They are always present, they never resolve, and the only question they ever answer is where attention is currently going. That makes them useless for a different and more immediate question, which is why a specific thing you tried did not work.

For that I keep a second and much smaller list. Any attempt at anything requires three inputs: competence, capital, and connections. Competence is skill and the willingness to act on it. Capital is anything that can be spent to buy an outcome, which includes money but also time, reputation, and goodwill. Connections are the people who make a thing possible that would otherwise not be. The three multiply rather than add, so a zero anywhere produces a zero overall. Two out of three is not two thirds of the way there.

The pillars are what you allocate. These three are what any particular attempt draws down. Failure is usually not a mystery of character. It is one of the three sitting at zero and having gone unnoticed.