I deserve all the success I can imagine!

Deserving is a strange frame for a world that distributes almost nothing on merit. Plenty of deserving people work forty years and receive very little. Plenty of others receive a great deal by accident of birth.

As a claim about fairness, this one will disappoint you.

As permission, it is useful. Many people quietly sabotage the ask — the raise, the pitch, the price — because some part of them finds it presumptuous to want.

You don't need to have earned the right to try. Name the thing at its actual value today and let someone else do the deciding.