Deserve it

Munger said this to a room of new law graduates who wanted the trick, and that was the trick: there is not one.

The world is not fair. But over long enough stretches it is roughly fair to people who are actually good at something and actually decent to the people around them. Reputation leaks. So does the opposite.

So stop optimising for getting. Optimise for deserving, and let the getting lag a few years behind. It usually catches up. And on the days it does not, you are still left as someone worth being.