"Bravery is the solution to regret."

I’m in a season of thinking bigger, being bolder, and taking more risks. Because of that I’ve been thinking a lot about the ideas of courage and bravery, and in my exploration I came across this quote from Robin Sharma:

"Bravery is the solution to regret."

Man, regret hurts.

Regret is when you wish you would have done something differently, or made a different choice. What ignites regret is an undesired result - That we didn’t pursue our passion, appreciate something while we had it, or capture the life experiences we want.

Regret is an acknowledgment that something else could have been, that you genuinely desired, and now the opportunity is lost. 

Sharma claims that “Bravery is the solution to regret.” 

That if we take courageous action then we eliminate regret. And I find that really interesting because the thought exists on two different planes - ‘Regret’ is a function of not getting the results or outputs we wanted, and bravery is a function of taking courageous actions and controlling the inputs.

And furthermore, it suggests that we wouldn't feel regret if we did the courageous thing and still didn’t get the result we wanted.

So ultimately, regret comes down to this: Being too afraid to take action.

It’s one thing to not be aware of the action you could have taken, it’s another to have known the action and not do it.

Here’s a personal example that explains this nuance. My grandma is one of the most important people in my life and she’ll be an inspiration for me forever. She’s still alive and well, but when she passes (as we all do) I wonder what I’ll regret about our time together. 

This brought to my awareness that there would be questions I wish I would have asked her, lessons I wish I had learned, and details of her life I wish I would have known. And my idea to account for all of that was to interview her and capture her life story. 

So I did! But if I didn’t and missed the chance, it’s something I certainly would have wished I did and would later regret. 

"Bravery is the solution to regret." So let’s be more brave and not let fear get in the way of us living the lives we aspire to.