Do you deserve to win?

Rick Pitino opens his book Success is a Choice with the following: "Winston Churchill's rallying cry for the British people during WWII was simple and succinct: hoping and praying for victory was fine, but deserving it was what really mattered.

What does it mean to 'deserve victory'?

According to Churchill, victory comes only to those who work long and hard, who are willing to pay the price in blood, sweat and tears. Hard work is also the basic building block of every king of achievement: Without it, everything else is pointless. You can start with a dream or an idea or a goal, but before any of your hopes can be realized, you truly must deserve your success. This may sound old-fashioned in this age of instant gratification, but from the Sistine Chapel to the first transcontinental railroad to today's space shuttle, there's no mystery as to how these things of wonder were created. They were created by people who worked incredibly hard over a long period of time."