Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy - Hardcover

An Amazon Best Book of April 2017: After the unexpected passing of her beloved husband, Facebook COO and bestselling author of Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg, feared that she and her children would never find joy again. Fortunately this fear was unfounded. Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy--co-authored with psychologist and friend Adam Grant--shows you how Sandberg, and many others who have overcome a wide range of profound hardships, triumphed over tragedy. The book posits that it’s helpful to think of resilience like a muscle, one that atrophies in the calm between the storms of our lives. But there are things we can do to develop it, so we’re better prepared when adversity strikes. In America, culture can put a kink in this plan. Processing a painful event can be hindered when you’re wired not to talk about it. We all know that when someone asks how we’re doing, the expected response is “fine,” no matter if we’ve just lost a limb, or had a cancer scare. We will grin, and we will bear it, and we will go back to work too soon and burst into tears in the copy room when confronted by a malevolent stapler (or maybe that’s just me). Recently, Sandberg helped to enact a new employee benefit at Facebook: 20 days of paid bereavement leave, twice the amount that was offered previously. As she explains in Option B, it’s the humane thing to do, and it also makes good business sense; compassionate companies engender more loyal employees. In this way, Option B is more than a little revolutionary. It challenges us to change systems that don’t always take our humanness into account. And that’s something we need to do on a personal level as well. None of us are immune to misfortune and heartbreak. We need to cut ourselves some slack when times get tough, and, as Sandberg discovered, flip the golden rule: When a loved one is in distress, instead of treating them how you would want to be treated, consider how they want to be treated, which may be quite different. Option B starts an (oftentimes) uncomfortable but important conversation. If we lean in to the numerous lessons it has on offer, there’s a lot more joy to be found. --Erin Kodicek, The Amazon Book Review

Sheryl Sandberg (Author) SHERYL SANDBERG is chief operating officer at Facebook and international best-selling author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Prior to 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. She received B.A. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University. Sandberg serves on the boards of Facebook, The Walt Disney Company, Survey Monkey, ONE, and Women for Women International, and chairs the board of LeanIn.Org.Adam Grant (Author) ADAM GRANT is a psychologist and Wharton's top-rated professor. As theNew York Timesbest-selling author ofOriginals and Give and Take, he 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. He serves as a contributing op-ed writer for The New York Times. Grant earned his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.