Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

Poetry, philosophy, and physics all teach us that we don’t experience time in equal increments. Time slowed way, way down.

I was in “the void”: a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe.

“Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.” Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B.

We plant the seeds of resilience in the ways we process negative events. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P’s can stunt recovery: (1) personalization—the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence—the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever. The three P’s play like the flip side of the pop song “Everything Is Awesome”—“everything is awful.” The loop in your head repeats, “It’s my fault this is awful. My whole life is awful. And it’s always going to be awful.”