Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy
Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant · 2017 · 10 ideas · 10 min
Resilience isn't a fixed trait some people have and others don't — it's a set of learnable practices in thought, community, and meaning-making that anyone can build after loss or hardship.
Why this book
Written after Sheryl Sandberg's husband Dave Goldberg died suddenly, this book argues that when life doesn't hand you the outcome you wanted — Option A — the real task isn't waiting to recover some imagined normal, but deliberately building resilience within the difficult reality you actually have, Option B. Drawing on psychologist Adam Grant's research, Sandberg examines the cognitive habits that either deepen suffering or help people move through it: the tendency to see hardship as permanent, pervasive, and personal, and the counter-practice of consciously challenging those three distortions.
This matters because most advice about grief and adversity focuses on comforting rituals or platitudes that can inadvertently isolate suffering people further, when what actually helps, the authors argue, is community that shows up concretely and consistently, honest conversation instead of avoidance, and small, structured practices — gratitude journaling, self-compassion, finding post-traumatic growth — that measurably shift how people process loss. The book extends beyond death to job loss, divorce, illness, and other setbacks, treating resilience as a skill relevant to nearly everyone eventually.
Who should read it
Anyone navigating grief, job loss, illness, or major life setbacks, along with friends and family unsure how to support someone who is struggling, will find concrete, research-backed guidance here rather than vague comfort.
About the author
Sheryl Sandberg is a former Facebook and Google executive and author of Lean In; Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and Wharton professor known for research on motivation, generosity, and resilience.