Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy

by Sheryl Sandberg

For each hopeful story we tell here, there are others where circumstances were too much to overcome. Recovery does not start from the same place for everyone. Wars, violence, and systemic sexism and racism decimate lives and communities. Discrimination, disease, and poverty cause and worsen tragedy. The sad truth is that adversity is not evenly distributed among us; marginalized and disenfranchised groups have more to battle and more to grieve.

Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B. This book is to help us all kick the shit out of it.

three P’s can stunt recovery:2 (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.”

“Part of every misery,”18 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. And while life includes some joyful moments, despite our attempts to make them last, they too will dissolve.

It occurred to me that dealing with grief was like building physical stamina: the more you exercise, the faster your heart rate recovers after it is elevated. And sometimes during especially vigorous physical activity, you discover strength you didn’t know you had.

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. It comes from gratitude for what’s good in our lives and from leaning in to the suck. It comes from analyzing how we process grief and from simply accepting that grief. Sometimes we have less control than we think. Other times we have more. I learned that when life pulls you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface, and breathe again.

The two things we want to know when we’re in pain are that we’re not crazy to feel the way we do and that we have support. Acting like nothing significant is happening to people who look like us denies us all of that.”

Even under ordinary circumstances, being alone with your thoughts can be uncomfortable.

even some very close friends, didn’t know what to say to me or my kids. Their discomfort being around us was palpable, especially in contrast to our previous ease. As the elephant in the room went unacknowledged, it started acting up, trampling over my relationships. If friends didn’t ask how I was doing, did that mean they didn’t care? Did they not see the giant muddy footprints and piles of manure?

All over the world, there is cultural pressure to conceal negative emotions.

Anna Quindlen puts it more poetically. “Grief,” she writes, is “a whisper in the world and a clamor within.12 More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly.”

With the best of intentions, if friends were in pain, I had tried to offer optimism and reassurance to minimize their fears. Yep, I see a gray animal in the room, but that’s no elephant—looks more like a mouse. I now realize that it was just wishful thinking on my part that could make people feel even less understood.

While it seems obvious that friends want to support friends going through a crisis, there are barriers that block us. There are two different emotional responses to the pain of others:3 empathy, which motivates us to help, and distress, which motivates us to avoid.

We put off calling or offering help until we feel guilty that we didn’t do it sooner … and then it feels too late.

the friend stopped talking to Alycia, choosing escape over empathy.

For friends who turn away in times of difficulty, putting distance between themselves and emotional pain feels like self-preservation. These are the people who see someone drowning in sorrow and then worry, perhaps subconsciously, that they will be dragged under too. Others get overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness; they feel there’s nothing they can say or do to make things better, so they choose to say and do nothing.

someone is suffering, instead of following the Golden Rule, we need to follow the Platinum Rule:6 treat others as they want to be treated. Take a cue from the person in distress and respond with understanding—or better yet, action.

as everyone I know who has been through tragedy acknowledges with sadness, there are friends who don’t come through as you might hope. A common experience is having friends who decide it’s their job to inform grieving pals what they should be doing—and worse, what they should be feeling.

Anger is one of the five stages of grief famously defined by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.11 In the face of loss, we’re supposed to start in denial and move to anger, then to bargaining and depression. Only after we pass through these four stages can we find acceptance. But now experts realize that these are not five stages.12 They are five states that don’t progress in a linear fashion but rise and fall.

Lots of people nicely tried to assure me, “You will get through this,” but it was hard to believe them. What helped me more was when people said that they were in it with me.

“Footprints in the Sand.”15 It was originally a religious parable, but to me it also expressed something profound about friendship. The poem relates a dream of walking on the beach with God. The storyteller observes that in the sand there are two sets of footprints except during those periods of life filled with “anguish, sorrow or defeat.” Then there is only one set of footprints. Feeling forsaken, the storyteller challenges God: “Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?” The Lord replies, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, are when I carried you.” I

Self-compassion isn’t talked about as much as it should be, maybe because it’s often confused with its troublesome cousins, self-pity and self-indulgence.

Self-compassion comes from recognizing that our imperfections are part of being human.4 Those who can tap into it recover from hardship faster.

As psychologist Mark Leary observes, self-compassion “can be an antidote to the cruelty we sometimes inflict on ourselves.”9 Self-compassion often coexists with remorse. It does not mean shirking responsibility for our past. It’s about making sure that we don’t beat ourselves up so badly that we damage our future.

Instead of thinking “if only I weren’t,”10 we can think “if only I hadn’t.” This is why confession in the Catholic religion begins with “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” not “Forgive me, Father, for I am a sinner.” Blaming our actions rather than our character allows us to feel guilt instead of shame.

guilt keeps us striving to improve.13 People become motivated to repair the wrongs of their past and make better choices in the future.

“Journaling isn’t exactly meditating,” she told us. “But it helped me quiet myself and reflect. I was able to put words to my feelings and unpack them.”

Writing about traumatic events can decrease anxiety and anger, boost grades, reduce absences from work, and lessen the emotional impact of job loss. Health benefits include higher T-cell counts, better liver function, and stronger antibody responses. Even journaling for a few minutes a few times can make a difference.

Like many, I’ve struggled with self-doubt throughout my life. In college, every time I took an exam, I feared that I’d failed. And every time I didn’t embarrass myself or even did well, I believed that I’d fooled my professors. I later learned that this phenomenon is called the impostor syndrome,26 and while both women and men feel it, women tend to experience it more intensely. Nearly two decades later, after seeing this same self-doubt hold back so many women at work, I gave a TED talk that encouraged women to “sit at the table.”27 This talk became the basis for my book Lean In. Researching and being open about how I’d grappled with insecurity helped me understand ways to build my self-confidence. As I urged other women to believe in themselves and act on what they would do if they weren’t afraid, I learned these lessons myself.

life can only be understood backward but it must be lived forward.29 Journaling helped me make sense of the past and rebuild my self-confidence to navigate the present and future.

counting our blessings doesn’t boost our confidence or our effort,33 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.

Empathy was nice but encouragement was better. Self-doubt sneaks up even on those who see it coming.

Self-confidence at work is important and often discussed, but self-confidence at home is just as crucial and often over-looked.

In the depths of winter,1 I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation,”3 psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observed, “we are challenged to change ourselves.”

instead of post-traumatic stress, some of the parents experienced post-traumatic growth.

Some people struggled: they developed PTSD, faced debilitating depression and anxiety, or had difficulty functioning. Others were resilient: they bounced back to their state before the trauma. Now there was a third possibility: people who suffered could bounce forward.

If you don’t see that growth is possible, you’re not going to find it.”

post-traumatic growth could take five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities.

“what does not kill me makes me stronger.

“I am more vulnerable than I thought,13 but much stronger than I ever imagined.”

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”

gaining appreciation.

‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’

It is the irony of all ironies to experience tragedy and come out of it feeling more grateful.

Malala then shared her own gratitude story. She told us that after she was shot by the Taliban, her mother started giving her birthday cards dated from the beginning of her recovery. When Malala turned nineteen, the card said, “Happy 4th birthday.” Her mother was reminding her daughter—and herself—that Malala was lucky to be alive.

Many survivors of sexual abuse and assault report that their beliefs about the goodness of others remain shattered and they have difficulty trusting people.

When people endure tragedies together or endure the same tragedy, it can fortify the bonds between them. They learn to trust each other, be vulnerable with each other, depend on each other. As the saying goes: “In prosperity our friends know us. In adversity we know our friends.”