Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 32 - Beyond Option A
Hello and welcome to my weekly email newsletter, Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five, where I share five things I’m enjoying, thinking about, and find interesting. I hope you enjoy issue 32 and feel free to share your own reflections.
Here’s my Friday Five this week.
1. What I’m Reading
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. By Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant.
Sheryl Sandberg lost her husband, Dave, to sudden death. He was 47 years old. The despair that followed was total. Happiness, she felt, was something she nor her children could ever feel again. Yet, in Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, co-authored with organisational psychologist Adam Grant, Sandberg chronicles her personal journey towards rediscovering joy. Over ten chapters, the book combines her raw experiences with psychological research and insights into overcoming adversity.
The cover of the book has an endorsement from The Guardian: “The single wisest book about grief I have ever found.” Indeed, as human beings, we all have to face grief, sadness, loss, and disappointment in our lives. They hit us hard. And we ask ourselves: am I resilient enough to handle it? But resilience isn’t static. We can grow it. Nature evolutionarily wired us for grief, naturally equipping us with the tools to recover from loss and trauma. Understanding and harnessing these tools then is crucial, and Option B is our guide.
A standout concept I took from the book came from psychologist Martin Seligman’s ‘3Ps’—the three major barriers to healing. They represent the debilitating loops of self-talk:
Personalisation: “This is my fault.”
Pervasiveness: “My entire life is terrible.”
Permanence: “It will never get better.”
Overcoming these mental barriers is foundational to resilience. Simple shifts in language, like transitioning from words like never and always to sometimes and lately, can be transformative. Resilience isn’t just an individual trait; it’s built among individuals—within our neighbourhoods, schools, and towns. By building resilience together, we inherently strengthen our own resolve. True collective resilience needs more than just shared hope; it’s also fuelled by shared experiences, stories, and power.
Sheryl Sandberg’s story is tragic. But through the book and her journey, we see the capacity of the human spirit to persevere. In losing her ‘Option A’, she found a way to embrace an ‘Option B’. In our own ways, we too navigate our versions of Option B, and Sandberg and Grant help us make sense of it.
2. What I’m Watching
Alive (1993). Directed by Frank Marshall.
Alive tells the true 1972 story of a young Uruguayan rugby team traveling to Chile with their friends and family to play a match. While flying through the Andes mountains, the plane crashes and claims many lives (the crash scene is still one of the most terrifying ever shown in a film.) Stranded and left for dead, the survivors eventually have to make a terrible choice: die of starvation or resort to cannibalism using the bodies of their dead friends.
Alive is a film I’ve watched several times. It’s well-made and acted, and confronts the viewer with an existential dilemma: “What would I do in such a situation?” As John Malkovich’s character stresses at the start of the film—reflecting on the traumatic event many years later—it's a question we can’t answer unless faced with such a grim reality.
There is a scene about halfway through the film, when the team’s captain learns that the rescue operation has been called off. He falls into despair. However, Nando, another survivor, reacts differently. He calls the group together and tells them there is good news: that the search party has been called off, so now it’s all up to them to find a way out. This is one of the film’s major themes: the ability to overcome an impossible situation through self-reliance and hope.
Their collective hope becomes an antidote to Martin Seligman’s ‘Permanence’ from his ‘3Ps’—instead of believing ‘it will never get better,’ they see new possibilities. This leads two of the survivors to climb their way out of the mountains to the green fields of Chile, eventually leading to the rescue of 16 from the initial 45.
Decades later, when a cave-in at the San Jose copper-gold mine trapped 33 miners in 2010, several Andes crash survivors journeyed to Chile, offering hope by drawing on how they eventually overcame their terrible ordeal. After 69 days, authorities rescued all 33 miners, a testament to the Andes’ survivors’ conviction that by finding resilience together, we can prevail.
3. What I’m Contemplating
In our lives, we all have blind spots—parts of ourselves hidden from our own view, yet visible to others. Sometimes, these are vulnerabilities we are in denial about, and at other times, they’re strengths and talents we've unintentionally overshadowed. While Option A may represent our familiar, well-trodden path, life has a way of nudging, or even pushing, us towards Option B, C, or D. These aren't just alternative routes; they're opportunities for growth, new perspectives, and untapped strengths.
In my journey, I've recently stepped off the beaten path of Option A, venturing into the transformative world of coaching. During the last few weeks, as part of my coursework and practical training, I’ve had the privilege of working with people to find their alternative paths, shining a light on blind spots, and co-creating routes to self-discovery. In this process, I've watched individuals realise their resilience and strengths, often surprising themselves.
Transitioning beyond Option A doesn’t have to be a regression. Rather, it can be an invitation—a call to the person you were meant to be.
4. A Quote to note
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
5. A Question for you
In what ways have you contributed to the resilience of those around you when they’ve had to move beyond Option A?
A note on this week’s cover photo: I captured this scene during my visit to Chernobyl in May 2021. Amid an environment still affected with radioactivity, these blooming flowers stood as a testament to nature’s enduring resilience. Just as we find ways to push through adversity, so too does the world around us. You can read more about my Chernobyl visit in my blog below.
https://www.deeplifejourney.com/photo-stories-1/blog-post-chernobyl-thirty-five-years-later
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Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.
James