I think the fundamental source of your confusion is related to the following idea from statistics:
Imagine I have a coin that I flip 10 times. Intuitively, a series of flips that came out as $HHTHTTHTTH$ would be "expected", while the series $HHHHHHTHHH$ would be "unexpected". If we think about the problem carefully, however, we can see that the exact state $HHTHTTHTTH$ is precisely as unlikely as the state $HHHHHHTHHH$; they both have probability $0.5^{10}$.
The reason for the confusion is that our human brains love seeking patterns, so instead of looking at exact microstates, we tend to think about the "big picture", even when it leads us astray. So for instance, $HHTHTTHTTH$ seems more likely because there are many more states with 5 heads than there are with 9 heads. Our brain is so used to only dealing with the end results of probability that we forget that individual outcomes are not the same as the aggregate events that we care about-- mainly because there are so many outcomes of most systems that it's basically impossible to look at them individually. 783
Time for a relevant <PERSON> quote:
"You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!"
Similarly with your example, in real life we're normally not actually concerned with exact micro states, given that each one by itself is so unlikely. So, many people intuitively consider a state where all particles have very small fluctuations away from 10 J to be the same as one where they all have exactly 10 J, even though they don't consciously acknowledge this assumption. But a state where one particle has almost all the energy is less stable with respect to small fluctuations, since the fluctuations of the many particles with little energy can add up to take a significant amount away from the particle with lots of energy.
TLDR: I think your problem is that you're unconsciously conflating individual outcomes with aggregate events. 28