Survivorship bias is kind of bullshit, I mean luck does play a role in success, but the longer you work at something, as long as you have a good idea/plan of attack/all the other traits needed to succeed in a field, the less luck will play a role in determining your success. Luck matters less and less over longer timescales, as long as you keep doing the right things.
Absolutely. What is more critical than luck is the effort one puts in to figure out the right things to do.
Sometimes it takes a small amount of time to figure out, sometimes a while. What matters is that one keeps at it.
Possessing those positive traits you speak of is also a matter of luck: the upbringing of an individual has been proven to affect one's ability to make correct decisions. Effort counts, and it counts a lot, but let's not pretend that we can override causality with it. That's why we have things like welfare and social nets.
TL;DR: "I can't hear you, I can't hear you, LA LA LA LA! Therefore, things I dislike do not exist, QED."