Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy
Sheryl Sandberg, Adam Grant, 2017
What do you do when the life you planned is no longer possible? Sheryl Sandberg lost her husband without warning, and together with the psychologist Adam Grant she set out to understand how people get back up after a blow. You'll learn about three traps of thinking, how to talk to someone who is grieving, and how to let yourself feel joy again.
Who it is for
For anyone whose life has gone off plan: after a loss, a breakup, a move or any change after which the old life no longer brings joy. And for anyone who wants to stand by someone in trouble but doesn't know what to say.
Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity, and we can build it. It isn't about having a backbone. It's about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.
A holiday that ended in a gym
In the spring of 2015, Sheryl Sandberg and her husband, Dave Goldberg, were on holiday in Mexico. Sheryl dozed off, and Dave went to the gym. The last thing she said to him was “I'm falling asleep.” When he still hadn't come back after a long while, Sheryl went looking for him and found him on the floor next to an exercise machine. His heart had stopped because of a condition that neither he nor his doctors knew about. Their two children were left without a father.
At the time, Sandberg was the chief operating officer of Facebook, and Dave ran SurveyMonkey. Their friend Adam Grant flew in for the funeral. He is a psychologist who teaches at the Wharton School and studies how people cope with hardship. Sheryl told him what she feared most: that her children would never be happy again. This book grew out of their conversations. Sheryl's own story runs through it, woven together with the research Adam gathered.
Grant gave her the book's main idea right at the start. Nobody is born with a fixed amount of strength for hard times. So the better question is not “Do I have enough strength?” but “How do I build more?” Resilience, the authors say, is the strength and speed of our response to adversity. It comes from what is inside us and from the support we get from the people around us.
The book opens with a death, but the authors also write about illness, losing a job, violence and war, about any life that suddenly goes off plan. You'll learn about three traps of thinking that keep people down after a blow, and how to talk to someone who is grieving. You'll also see why it helps to write about pain, how to help children through it, and how to let yourself feel joy again. If your life is starting over right now and the old things no longer bring you joy, this book is about you too.
“Option A is not available”
Two weeks after the funeral, the children's school was holding a father and child activity. Sheryl and a friend, Phil Deutsch, were working out who could stand in for Dave. In the middle of it she burst into tears: “But I want Dave.” Phil put his arm around her and told her that Option A was not available, so they had to make the very most of Option B.
That line gave the book its title. Option A is the life you planned: with this person, in this town, in this job. Option B is what is left after the blow. Nobody chooses it, but it is the life you have to live.
Sandberg admits that for a long time she didn't want to accept it. She felt that making peace with Option B would mean betraying the life she had before. But while all your strength goes into longing for what you can't have, there is none left for the present. Resilience, the authors write, also means being grateful for the good that is still there, and being willing to lean into the worst instead of running from it.
Phil's line has a second half: make the most of Option B. He didn't comfort Sheryl by promising that everything would be fine. He offered a concrete plan for a concrete day and made himself part of it. Everything else in the book starts from that small step. Option B never becomes the life you wanted, but it fills up with people, plans and things to do that make it worth getting out of bed in the morning.
About the author
Sheryl Sandberg was Facebook's chief operating officer for many years and wrote a bestseller about women and work. Adam Grant is a psychologist and a professor at the Wharton School, and the author of books about work and motivation.
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