Since there’s some time before I start my MBA, my school sent over an optional reading list. And although the list is optional, you all know that I like to read so I was eagerly scanned through the list and decided to start by reading Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant.

Option B is a book born out of grief. When her husband, Dave, dies unexpectedly, Sheryl doesn’t think that she can ever recover from her pain. But Adam steps in to tell her that people aren’t born with a finite amount of resilience – instead, resilience is a muscle that can be strengthened. In Option B, Sheryl and Adam share their takeaways, which include:

• Avoid the 3 P’s – Personalisation (believing that you are at fault), Pervasiveness (that this event is going to ruin your whole life), and Permanence (believing that this is going to last forever). If you let these three P’s affect you, your resilience will be damaged.
• Learn to acknowledge the elephant in the room – don’t tiptoe around your friend’s pain
• Learn to depend on your friends – and be there for them too.
• Be kind to yourself, and learn to be confident in yourself
• “Tragedy does more than rip away our present; it also tears apart our hopes for the future. […] Although it can be extremely difficult to grasp, the disappearance of one possible self can free us to imagine a new possible self.”
• “Even when we are in great distress, joy can still be found in moments we seize and moments we create” (and you might feel guilty about these moments of joy – don’t be, remember to be kind to yourself)
• “We find our humanity – our will to live and our ability to love – in our connections to one another.”
• At work, it pays to build a culture where failure is discussed openly and without judgement because we can learn the most from failures
• To build long-term resilience in a relationship, learn to turn towards each other by paying attention to the everyday interactions we have.

As you can tell, this book is not really about building resilience in the workplace (only one chapter covers the workplace, although Sheryl does talk a lot about what she went through at work while grieving). Instead, it’s a book about building resilience and being able to bounce back from any tragedy, making this a book that is applicable to most, if not all, people.

I think one thing to note about this book is that although Sheryl and Adam are co-authors, the book is told through Sheryl’s POV because she is the one who went through the tragedy. If you’re expecting something a little less personal and more rigorous/academic (in the style of, Grit, for example), then this is probably the wrong book for you. Personally, I liked the book because it felt like Sheryl’s story, but I can also see why this book would fall short when it comes to giving helpful suggestions for people who are not as privileged as her.

Overall, I found this to be an inspirational and encouraging book.