The Book “Option B” is written by Sheryl Sandberg,COO of Facebook and Adam Grant, Professor at Wharton.
In 2015, Sheryl’s husband Dave Goldberg died suddenly of a heart attack.He was only 48 years old.He left behind a grieving family including two young children.
The book is born out of this grief where the authors write on how to face adversity and overcome trauma.
Trauma comes in many forms-death of close one, diagnosing of a critical illness like cancer etc,accidents,sexual assaults etc.
Sometimes the trauma can even be financial in nature-loss of a job, loss of savings due to fraud (NSEL etc),failure in business or even a stock market collapse (2008 etc)
The Book , through examples and anecdotes, offers very good advise on how to cope with these situations.
The most important advise is how 3Ps can stunt recovery:
Personalisation- The belief we are at fault
Pervasiveness- The belief that an event will affect all areas of our life
Permanence- The belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever
Another important takeaway is the super importance of a loving family,close friends and financial security. If you have these three in place, you can recover faster and better .
There is a chapter on building resilience in kids so that they can overcome obstacles big and small.
One can do so by helping children develop 4 core beliefs:
1. They have some control over their lifes
2.They can learn from failure
3.They matter as human beings
4.They have real strengths to rely on and share
Another important takeaway is the importance of hope/desire
In India, we have a saying “Jaan Hai Toh Jahan Hai”
Was surprised to know that in Chile, they have two sayings
“If there’s life, there’s hope” and the reverse “If there’s hope, there’s life”
Do buy this book to learn about overcoming obstacles and building resilience
