Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy
Written by Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg
Narrated by Elisa Donovan
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, read by Elisa Donovan.
From Facebook's COO and Wharton's top-rated professor, the #1 New York Times best-selling authors of Lean In and Originals: a powerful, inspiring, and practical book about building resilience and moving forward after life's inevitable setbacks.
After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. "I was in 'the void,'" she writes, "a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe." Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. We are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle that everyone can build.
Option B combines Sheryl's personal insights with Adam's eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity. Beginning with the gut-wrenching moment when she finds her husband, Dave Goldberg, collapsed on a gym floor, Sheryl opens up her heart-and her journal-to describe the acute grief and isolation she felt in the wake of his death. But Option B goes beyond Sheryl's loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere . . . and to rediscover joy.
Resilience comes from deep within us and from support outside us. Even after the most devastating events, it is possible to grow by finding deeper meaning and gaining greater appreciation in our lives. Option B illuminates how to help others in crisis, develop compassion for ourselves, raise strong children, and create resilient families, communities, and workplaces. Many of these lessons can be applied to everyday struggles, allowing us to brave whatever lies ahead. Two weeks after losing her husband, Sheryl was preparing for a father-child activity. "I want Dave," she cried. Her friend replied, "Option A is not available," and then promised to help her make the most of Option B.
We all live some form of Option B. This book will help us all make the most of it.
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Reviews for Option B
84 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5It's more an autobiography than a how to be resilient book. Not what I was hoping for
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the same Sheryl Sandberg who wrote Lean In but Option B is about how she and her young children dealt with her husband’s unexpected death. Last year I listened to her on Katie Couric’s podcast while walking the dogs. I remember walking through a busy park with tears streaming down my face as she and Katie talked.The book also is emotional at times. She wrote it with a psychologist so there’s a lot of anecdotal stories that point to studies about resilience, overcoming grief, friendship etc.I appreciated that Sheryl is honest about how she has a very different experience than most women in the same situation who don’t have financial stability or a network of people to help. Sometimes her stories got distracting, ie Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan took me on vacation for a break and all I could think about was what it must be like to vacation with MZ. Or when she said “Anne Quinlan told me...” and I thought “huh, I wonder how many authors she knows well.” She also did admit that she learned how so much of her lessons in Lean In become close to impossible when in a situation like this.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Couldn't get past the COO of Facebook spitting out statistics of the difficulties single mothers have in the United States. Yes, I feel bad about what happened to her and her children but I almost felt insulted that she used her trials to make (even more) money. Poor me. This is what I did to get through it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very good book combining a memoir of recovering from the death of a loved one with strong social science research and solid advice for building resilience, not just in the face of grief, but more broadly. I work with college students, and this is one of the biggest issues we face, this fear that if something goes wrong, the world will end. Using failure or tragedy as a springboard to accomplish other things in your life is so important. Sandberg's and Grant's take on this is so wise and well-suited for a broad audience. I read some of the reviews, and think the digs about privilege are utterly undeserved here. Sandberg acknowledges that she had advantages due to income and professional stature and the unique bubble in which she works at Facebook, and argues persuasively that we need a serous shift in public policy when it comes to humans in the workplace facing catastrophic loss. And though she did have some advantages, her advice is sound for those who do not enjoy the same advantages as her. Is it okay for most people to cry in the workplace? No. Do I know a single manager who would penalize someone for crying in the workplace after losing a loved one? No. And I have been managing people in very conservative workplaces, and working with others who do, for a long time. I am grateful to Sandberg for tuning me onto research that will be helpful in creating programming and policy for students at the institution for which I work, and for helping me to think more broadly about resilience, friendship, family, and love of self and others.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well, gosh. I feel guilty for the 2.5 I gave this book because it's such a personal account of the author's wrestling to develop resilience in the face of grief and loss. It is well-written and it was - for me - way more relatable than Lean In (which I didn't like, but that's another review for another time).There is some good to be gleaned from Sandberg's account of her personal experience. It is helpful to understand through her eyes how to connect with and what to say (or what not to avoid and not to say) to someone who is grieving and/or kids who are grieving, how to support a widow who's dating again as they come to love someone else. It's hard to come away from this book without a little more general empathy for people and that's good.Where this book fell short for me, was its similar sensibility to what I disliked intensely about Lean In. The data tie-ins from Grant are supposed to counter this as are asides from Sandberg herself about how if she's having this much trouble X (where X is usually some version of holding it together at work or with her kids) how much more are those without her resources. Of course, I realize that who she is is exactly why she got a book contract. She seems to have nothing but good intentions - there's no motive to patronize. And she's been through a terrible and tragic blow--no minimizing of her pain.But, ugh.One Amazon reviewer shared her own story--her husband died, it cost $12K to bury him which she'll be paying off for a decade, she has no celebrity friends and colleagues to turn to, and she can't afford to lose her job by crying at work. What advice does Sandberg have for her?I can tell you: with the best of intentions, it's crickets. Some reviews gush about how this book "changes the national conversation about grief." I'm sorry, but that's hogwash and giving this book and Sandberg/Grant way too much credit. I hope it was cathartic for her to write this book, but although it provides some datapoints that could be used to tee up some very important national conversations. People dealing with grief and loss with less access to resources, still don't have them and don't have anyone with anything near Sandberg's platform to advocate for them. Sandberg sees Facebook as part of the solution and therein lies the problem - lots of well-intentioned talk, precious little making-a-difference-in-the-trenches action.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The first two-thirds were a really engaging listen. The last third was forgettable. Sandberg's mix of story telling, psychology and self-help were really captivating.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a quick read, and actually feels like two different books. There is the personal story of the sudden death of Sandberg's husband, and there are factual sections - statistics, policy suggestions, and information from social science. My guess is that this is because Sandberg wrote the personal story and Grant wrote the factual parts. (Not to imply that the personal story is fiction.)The story is engrossing, and the information given is helpful. I recommend it as a good starting point for information about resilience.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We all have our 'Option A' plan for life. For some of us it might be 2 kids, a dog, a house that is paid off, and in our twilight years, sitting together on the front porch in rocking chairs (after a 6 mile run) watching the grandchildren play. But life rarely deals us an 'Option A' path. And that's why we need Option B. This is the option you choose when you don't get to grow old together, or your husband dies, or your spouse has cancer. Sheryl Sandberg was living an Option A life. COO of Facebook, 2 children, and a husband who was not only the CEO of Survey Monkey, but also an equal partner at home allowing her to Lean In to her career. But 2 years ago, that all changed with the sudden death of her husband. With psychologist and professor Adam Grant, she has written this book that gives practical advice on overcoming adversity, combined with a very touching retelling of her own personal story.This book completely resonated with me. Maybe it's because I share some experiences with Sheryl. Many years ago I also lost my husband to a heart attack and went through the experience of being a single parent while struggling to overcome grief. No one expects to be a widow at the age of 32. And although my children are grown and that hardship is past, I've found that there are many bumps in the road that are definitely NOT part of the Option A path we all expect. Over the years when I've shared my losses with people I've realized that no one gets the Option A life. We all have setbacks, losses, or hardship that we need to face. Reading this book was an eye opener that we can build resilience - not sit passively and try to ride out the storm, but proactively do things to heal us and help us find joy in life again.Highly recommend this book!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was recommended to me by several people and it came up quite quickly in my library holds. I listened to the audio version which was read by Elisa Donovan and very well done. She has an easy voice to listen to and surprisingly, didn't get caught up in the emotions of the book. Sandberg is an author and Facebook COO and while on vacation with friends, her husband dies suddenly. She is faced with returning home without her husband and telling her young children about his death. She is faced with starting over and learning to live as a single parent. But, I want to tell you that this book is about more than her grieving process. It's about how she chooses to live again. Her advice is good for anyone that is recovering from a traumatic event (death, loss of job, move, health crisis) as well as those of us who know someone recovering. She helps us understand the process, tells us what to say, and not say. What to do, and not do. She offers research and most definitely, hope. I took away many tips from Sandberg (3 joys from each day, do one turn, then another, then another) and am very glad I listened to it. I plan to keep it in my "back pocket" for recommendations and future gifts. At the very least, you will have a new resolve for living each day to its fullest as we never know how much longer we have on this Earth.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a wonderful book, easy to read and well-written. It should be widely read as the material and advise is valuable to everyone regardless of their present state. The subtitle is "Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy" and that says it all.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While the frame of the book is set up as a resilience guide post-death of a loved one, nearly all the advice and anecdotes are universal for any type of loss--a job, a friendship, self-confidence, etc. If you are an easy crier, don't read in public. I made that mistake when I began the book, and before I hit page 20, I was misty. Some really great practical advice as well for how to support those who are dealing with any kind of loss. 4 stars only because a couple of sections lagged, but that could've been because they didn't immediately resonate with me. I bought this book, marked it up, and will likely reference it in the future when needed.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Though I heard of it right after publication, I got to pick up this book recently after a close friend left us.It's such a difficult time, and we've been exhausted even after 3 weeks. Meanwhile we got some advice from friends and the community, while when searching online I find this book again.It tries to deal with more than any single person's advice, covering almost all (it's likely more than one's expectation) aspects of life as one can imagine: How to consume the grief by oneself (The 5 stages of grief), take care of ppl around one especially the kids, going back to work, no big decisions within one year, etc.THANK YOU for such a comprehensive book.