Like a Julius Caesar who used to say "I came, I saw, I conquered". This means that even where I found only the victors, I did not know what was a failure, it was a great success. But on the other hand people like Mahatma Gandhi and Neeson Mandela, whose whole life was supreme and struggle, and then they found something. Today, between us neither Mahama Gandhi nor Julius Caesar. But today we remember both, learn from both, the history of both is important. So if you don't get success the first time, you may be telling yourself that history has not chosen you Julius Caesar, history has made you great. Gandhi may have been chosen, history has chosen you as a Nelson Mandala.
Don't get discouraged so soon, give yourself a chance, don't burden yourself with too many baseless and unrealistic expectations. This exam will come again in life, if not this, then some other opportunity will come in front of you, there is no dearth of opportunities nor new paths in life. Many times we do not get conquered on one path but we can find victory on the first step, feel free to move forward and turn the opportunity into results. There is also a time that when this topper was giving interviews, he deliberately spoke many such books which he would not have read in order to look different. Some also have this habit that in order to get equal or respect, show as much as possible that your life has been very struggling. In this way you may wander, you may feel that you will not be able to struggle so much.
If you look at the opinions of too many different people, there will come a time that you will get bored of hearing the same thing, and then that thing will not affect you. Then you too will find something different instead of following it.
I will give you the biggest recipe for success. All students read, but all are well read, unsuccessful and successful are just the same. Successful people do not read any different book, they read that book well, whose name you have heard thousands of times. Those who do not want to work hard, they hear again and again in the interiors of different people that they may find some other easy option from the mouth of a topper, but it never happens, there is no shortcut to success. Hard work is never exciting, It is not sensational, it is not fun, it has to calm down its mind, it also has to be overcome, it also has to go through unpredictable conditions. Yes it happens.