A friend of mine is a philosopher and seminary professor—a deep guy. When he’s at his best, he distills profound ideas into simple takeaways, and I’ve never forgotten what he told me several years ago. He recounted how he had interviewed older people about their secrets to living great lives. Their responses fell into four groups: they said they had never stopped learning, initiating, serving, and—most interesting to me—starting again.

“Never stopping starting again” assumes that a previous effort has finished, whether due to successful completion or failure. I am certain that those mentors had experienced both success and failure but, in retrospect, they agreed that the most important thing was to start back up.

I recently read an article by Malcolm Gladwell comparing the art careers of Picasso and Cezanne. Picasso was that rarest of people, a “genius from the get-go.” Cezanne, on the other hand, plugged away through constant failure until he finally achieved success late in his career. The author concluded, “Sometimes genius is…just the thing that emerges after 20 years of working at your kitchen table.” Not brilliance, not intellect, not wealth...but just starting again.