We Never Regret Brave

I’ve been called a bumper sticker factory – meaning I can say things in five words or less. A handy little talent. The title here – we never regret brave – is one of my bumper stickers and more importantly, something I believe.

We never regret brave means that in those moments in life when we are faced with a choice, a decision, we never regret taking the path that requires courage. This makes for an interesting life, though not necessarily an easy or comfortable one.

Easy is overrated (another bumper sticker). All of the focus on ease in our culture makes me sad (e.g., “How soon can I earn a bunch of money so I can retire and take it easy” comes to mind). Creating new things, charting new paths, taming new frontiers is not easy or comfortable work. Yet it is how things get created and how things change in our world.

What is the thing you are resisting? Go there.

When I am at one of these decision points, which is often, I invoke my Regret Prevention Filter. In my mind, I become 80-year-old Sara and play out my choices. I play out the safe, secure, well-known path (which is often seductive and easy to rationalize). And I play out the other path — the one that will take courage. Then I look back on this moment, this choice, and I see which direction I will not regret. It is not an easy process, but I can almost always see the decision that will have me sitting there at 80 years old, looking back on a life well-lived.

Wisegate’s founding members are charting a brave path. We are creating something together that will make the world a better place.

Last week, I was sitting with one of our early founding members, Denny Dean, who is a CISO of a major insurance company, and he said to me, “I was a skeptic (about Wisegate); now I am a believer. In a few years, we can be the Facebook for professionals.”

Denny’s right. We are innovating and doing something that makes people’s lives better by making their job better. Recently, one of our newest members, Linda Morrissey of Cigna, sent us an email telling us how much help she had gotten in her first two weeks as a Wisegate member because she was able tap into the wisdom and experience of her peers that have been down the road she is now on.

My sincere thanks to all of our early members. You will never regret brave.