Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

“Part of every misery,” C. S. Lewis wrote, is “misery’s shadow…the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.”

The first noble truth of Buddhism is that all life involves suffering. Aging, sickness, and loss are inevitable.

Counting blessings can actually increase happiness and health by reminding us of the good things in life. Each night, no matter how sad I felt, I would find something or someone to be grateful for.

Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us.

Survivor guilt is a thief of joy—yet another secondary loss from death.

We want others to be happy. Allowing ourselves to be happy—accepting that it is okay to push through the guilt and seek joy—is a triumph over permanence. 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.

To escape takes effort and energy. Seeking joy after facing adversity is taking back what was stolen from you. As U2 lead singer Bono has said, “Joy is the ultimate act of defiance.”

“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.”

Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people’s moods and decrease their visits to health centers a full three months later.

“Peace is joy at rest, and joy is peace on its feet.” Sharing positive events with another person also increases our own pleasant emotions over the next few days.

He discovered that his own reaction to his disability influenced how others reacted, which meant he could control how he was perceived.

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.

“Nostalgia” comes from the Greek words nostos and algos, which mean “return” and “pain.”

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.

“Mom, they probably have things they cry about too, so you should just be yourself.”

It takes you past raw vengeance. Forgiveness clears your head to pursue justice.”

“After every low score you receive,” law professors Doug Stone and Sheila Heen advise, you should “give yourself a ‘second score’ based on how you handle the first score….Even when you get an F for the situation itself, you can still earn an A+ for how you deal with it.”

“You’d think sharing would slow you down, but it takes time and energy to hide things,”

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.

In some Nigerian villages, widows are stripped naked and forced to drink water that has been used to bathe their dead husbands.

We are making a bid whenever we say things like “Hey, look at that bird!” or “Are we out of butter?” When a partner makes a bid, the other partner has two choices: to turn away or turn toward. Turning away means dismissing or ignoring the bid. Stop talking about birds, I’m watching TV. Turning toward means engaging. Yep, I’ll go get some butter. And some popcorn to go with it. The newlyweds who stayed together over the next six years turned toward each other 86 percent of the time, while couples who got divorced turned toward each other only 33 percent. Most of the couples’ fights weren’t about money or sex but about “failed bids for connection.”

“you cannot outrun any addiction. You must heal, and that takes a kind of love that no one else can provide for you.”

Resilience in love means finding strength from within that you can share with others. Finding a way to make love last through the highs and lows. Finding your own way to love when life does not work out as planned. Finding the hope to love and laugh again when love is cruelly taken from you. And finding a way to hang on to love even when the person you love is gone.