What Do Moses and Sheryl Sandberg have in common?

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook s Chief Operating Officer, has recently launched a book and a community site named Option B which help people build resilience. Sheryl found her husband collapsed on the floor by the elliptical machine while on vacation in Mexico in 2015. All a the sudden, she was a widow in her 40s with two young children. She believes that no one life is perfect- so we are all living Option B - and she has decided to help others build resilience so we they all get the most out of Option B it.

Sheryl continues a long tradition of helping humans build resilience, which started with Mosess giving of the Torah. During the second year after the exit of Egypt, Moses and the People of Israel sent spies to explore the best way to conquer the Land. They came back with a negative report suggesting that the Hebrews wouldnt be able to overcome the Canaan habitants. Following the report, the people refused to enter the land and this led to a tragedy: forty years of wandering in the desert until the passing of the entire generation which had escaped Egypt.

Thirty-eight years later, Moses unveiled to the second generation the root cause of this tragedy: You murmured in your tents: because God hates us, He took us out of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us (Deuteronomy 1, 27). Not the objective obstacle led to hopelessness and despair but the subjective feeling that God hates us. When life goes wrong, we feel abandoned and we think that God hates us. This feeling is a thinking distortion which limits us more than the actual obstacle and it prevents us from growing and building our Option B.

In his last speech before his passing, Moses continues his resilience coaching to his People But God had not given you a heart to know and eyes to see and ears to hear until this day (Deuteronomy 29, 3). The expression a heart to know seems confusing: is Moses referring to emotional capabilities coming from the heart? or about knowledge coming from the brain? or is Moses be already referring to emotional intelligence? Rashi , the famous medieval Torah commentator explains that Moses refers to the ability to acknowledge Gods goodness and to unite with him. Moses tells the People of Israel, who have already spent forty years in the wilderness, have experienced the exodus from Egypt and suffered two hundred and ten years of cruel slavery: all the pain that you have experienced, all the obstacles you have surmounted were a gift from God. They are the foundation on which so you can build a knowledgeable heart, which empowers you to acknowledge Gods goodness. This is Moses last day teaching- you build resilience by developing your ability to recognize and accept goodness.

To get the most out of Option B, we need to practice this skill every day: We need to practice using our eyes and our heart to identify all the attention and love we receive from others; we must not take it for granted, and we must thank the ones giving this goodness. Thats not an easy task. When we give attention and love, we feel good because we are the driving force of the relationship, we are in control. While when we are on the receiving end, we unveil our needs and feel vulnerable. However, this ability to acknowledge goodness is the reflecting light which is even higher that the giving light itself. This reflecting light stimulates the source of goodness and becomes the foundation of a genuine and healthy relationship.

When we face disruptive events in business, we need to look for the positive elements of the new situation, transform the difficulty into an opportunity for renewal. Thats why we need first to acknowledge goodness, the new situations hidden positive. We need to realize how our business assets and our weaknesses can be used to take advantage of this new opportunity and by doing so we start building our Option B: our new business plan with a refined objective. Thats how we continuously adapt our vision to the ever-evolving business reality: this is how our ability to acknowledge goodness transforms disruption into opportunity.