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Sometimes You Need an Option B

  |   confidence, leadership, motivation, vision   |   No comment

 

You never know how strong you are until something horrible happens and you have to get over it.

 

As a young woman my own life was touched by tragedy and I know how demanding grief and a sense of loss can be as constant companions.

 

Perhaps that is why I find myself selecting Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (https://www.amazon.ca/Option-Adversity-Building-Resilience-Finding/dp/1524732680) by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant as my personal Book of the Year in 2017.

 

Option B, published by Knopf, came out April 24, 2017 and became a New York Times Bestseller and a Barnes & Noble and Amazon Best Book of 2017.

 

Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook and her tragedy was the sudden death of her husband. Grant is a psychologist and Wharton professor as well as a bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take.

 

The theme of the book summed up is that we are all a lot more resilient than we think we are. They describe resilience as the strength and speed of our response to adversity and present the theory that we can build our resilience; we are not limited to a finite amount.

 

At one point, Sandberg explains: It (resilience) isn’t about having a backbone – it’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone.”

 

Many books have been written and movies made about the resilience of the human spirit, and through them, we bolster our own courage to cope with those unexpected challenges and demands that life throws at us.

 

Life is never perfect. We cannot make a plan and assume that we will move swiftly from Step A to Step B. At our busiest time, we are often knocked off our schedule with the unplanned….the heart attack, the car accident, the illness of a child or parent, the basement flood, the loss of power from a storm, or the sudden arrival of our past into our present.

 

How we cope with the unexpected is the biggest challenge most of us will ever face. It is easy to throw up our hands and say we simply cannot cope. Or we may bottle up the stress inside ourselves and pretend that the terrible is just a passing guest and will be packed and gone in the morning.

 

Both are delusions. We may be building our business when we suddenly discover that our spouse has to go through a series of chemotherapy treatments. We might be launching our new product when our principal engineer has a complete breakdown and leaves us unexpectedly.

 

How we pull life back together again is the determinant of how capable we are. It is not our intelligence, our tenacity, or our charm that sees us through the adversity that pushed us to Plan B. It is our resilience, and the more we can learn about it and how to develop it, the better.

 

Sandberg and Grant’s book reminds us that sooner or later, we will all have to live with some form if Option B. Learning how to make the best of it is the true secret to success.

 

Paula Morand is a leadership building, revenue boosting, strategy expanding keynote speaker, author and visionary. This dreaming big and being bold leadership expert and brand strategist brings her vibrant energy, humor and wisdom to ignite individuals, organizations and communities to lead change, growth and impact in a more bold fashion.

24 years, 27,000 clients, 34 countries, 15 books, former radio personality, 11x award winning entrepreneur and humorous emcee.

Check out Paula’s bestselling books on Amazon: “Bold Courage: How Owning Your Awesome Changes Everything”, “Dreaming BIG and Being BOLD: Inspiring stories from Trailblazers, Visionaries and Change Makers” book series; and due to be released in March 2018 “Bold Vision: A Leader’s Playbook for Managing Growth”.

For speaking inquiries email bookings@paulamorand.com or call toll-free 1-888-502-6317.

 

 

 

 

 

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