Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

“Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried,” therapist Megan

Self-compassion often coexists with remorse.

Blaming our actions rather than our character allows us to feel guilt instead of shame.

guilt keeps us striving to improve. People become motivated to repair the wrongs of their past and make better choices in the future.

Shame has the opposite effect: it makes people feel small and worthless, leading them to attack in anger or shrink away in self-pity.

our effort, but counting our contributions can. Adam and Jane believe that this is because gratitude is passive: it makes us feel thankful for what we receive. Contributions are active: they build our confidence by reminding us that we can make a difference.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation,” psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “we are challenged to change ourselves.”

meaningful work buffers against burnout.

And on days when people think they’ve had a meaningful impact on others at work, they feel more energized at home and more capable of dealing with difficult situations.

“It’s like you’ve been through a portal,” Jeff told me. “You can’t go back. You’re going to change. The only question is how.”

Although it can be extremely difficult to grasp, the disappearance of one possible self can free us to imagine a new possible self.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Having fun is a form of self-compassion; just as we need to be kind to ourselves when we make mistakes, we also need to be kind to ourselves by enjoying life when we can.

But happiness is the frequency of positive experiences, not the intensity.

“How we spend our days,” author Annie Dillard writes, is “how we spend our lives.”

Now nearly every night before I go to sleep, I jot down three happy moments in my notebook. Doing this makes me notice and appreciate these flashes of joy; when something positive happens, I think, This will make the notebook. It’s a habit that brightens the whole day.

“A day of joy is fifteen minutes. A day of pain is fifteen years,” he said. “No one pretends this is easy, but the job of life is to make those fifteen minutes into fifteen years and those fifteen years into fifteen minutes.”

Playing music at the edge of our capabilities is what psychologists call a “just manageable difficulty.” This level requires all of our attention, giving us no room to think about anything else.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who pioneered this research, found that people don’t report being happy while they are in flow. They are so engaged that they only describe it as joyful afterward.

We can start by helping children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; and (4) they have real strengths to rely on and share.

These resilient children shared something: they felt a strong sense of control over their lives. They

The second belief that shapes children’s resilience is that they can learn from failure.

that children respond better to adversity when they have a growth mindset instead of a fixed one.

“normalizing struggle.”

The third belief that affects children’s resilience is mattering: knowing that other people

In Denmark, mattering is part of the school curriculum. During a weekly hour called Klassen Time, students come together to discuss problems and help one another. Danish

children do this every week from age six until they graduate from high school. To sweeten the deal, each week a different student brings cake. When children present their own problems, they feel listened to, and when their classmates seek guidance, they feel they can make a difference. The children learn empathy by hearing others’ perspectives and reflecting on how their behavior affects those around them. They are taught to think, “How do others feel? And how do my actions make them feel?”

fourth belief held by resilient kids is that they have strengths they can rely o...

Nostalgia is literally the suffering that we feel when we yearn for the past to come back to us, yet psychologists find that it is mostly a pleasant state. After people

In a landmark fifteen-year study of changes in marital status among more than 24,000 people, getting married increased average happiness only a little bit; on a scale of 0 to 10, single people who were at a 6.7 in happiness might increase to a 6.8 after getting married. That tiny boost occurred around the time of the wedding and typically faded within a year. If one of the participants lost a spouse and did not remarry, eight years later on average their happiness would be a 6.55.

Love is the third rail of grief—

Of middle-aged adults who lost a spouse, 54 percent of men were in a romantic relationship a year later compared with only 7 percent of women.

These differences reflect a double standard rooted in a range of issues, from women feeling more guilt and anxiety about new romances to a greater cultural acceptance of men marrying younger women to the demographic reality of women living longer than men.

Widows continue to face cruel treatment around the world. In some parts of India, widows are cast away by their own families, left to beg to survive. In some Nigerian villages, widows are stripped naked and forced to drink water that has been used to bathe their dead husbands. Discrimination against widows has been observed by 54 percent of people in China, 70 percent in Turkey, and 81 percent in South Korea. In many countries, widows have difficulty obtaining property rights.

Humor can make us more resilient.

Jokes are common at funerals because gallows humor helps us triumph over sadness.

To build resilience in a loving, long-term relationship, we need to pay attention to the everyday interactions we have with our partners.