“Option B” is a book written by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, and Adam Grant. The book explores the topic of resilience and how people can recover from adversity, particularly in the face of trauma and grief. Sandberg and Grant share stories of people who have faced difficult life events, and examine how they were able to overcome their challenges and find new purpose in their lives. Sandberg also shares her own personal journey of dealing with the sudden loss of her husband and the impact it had on her family.
The book emphasizes the importance of building resilience and outlines strategies for doing so, such as developing a strong support system and practicing self-compassion. It also explores how we can help others who are going through difficult times, and how we can create a more compassionate and resilient society.
“Option B” offers a hopeful message about the power of resilience and the ability of people to overcome adversity and find meaning and purpose in their lives.
Sheryl Sandberg’s Perspective
Sheryl Sandberg is the chief operating officer at Facebook and international best-selling author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
Before Facebook, she was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. She previously served as chief of staff for the United States Treasury Department and began her career as an economist with The World Bank.
Sheryl received a BA summa cum laude from Harvard University and an MBA with highest distinction from Harvard Business School.
Each one of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.
The Three Ps
The 3 Ps that most of us are not able to avoid:
- Personalization – Don’t blame yourself for what happened.
- Pervasiveness – Don’t assume that the tragedy will affect all areas of your life.
- Permanence – Don’t believe that the bad situation will never get better. Time heals all wounds.
Adam Grant’s Perspective
Adam Grant is a psychologist and Wharton’s top-rated professor. As the New York Times best-selling author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World and Give and Take.
As Wharton’s top-rated professor for five straight years, Adam is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, and live more generous and creative lives.
He has been recognized as one of the world’s twenty-five most influential management thinkers and received distinguished scholarly achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation.
Death in the family
Sandberg and her husband, Dave Goldberg, were on vacation, celebrating a friend’s birthday in Mexico, when he died. They had been married for 11 years and had two young children.
At the time of his death, the kids were staying back with Sandberg’s parents in California. After Dave was missing for a few hours, Sandberg and two other people found him unresponsive. He couldn’t be resuscitated, and it was a 30-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital. Dave died, as it turns out, instantly from a massive cardiac event, but Sandberg wouldn’t learn that until later.
Sandberg traveled back to California to give her kids the bad news, which was intensely upsetting for everyone. The funeral was incredibly hard too. Sandberg’s grief was almost unbearable, but still, she was intrigued when Adam Grant, a family friend and a psychologist, told her that resilience wasn’t an innate fixed trait but something that people can cultivate in themselves.
