The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (4 page)

Think ahead, two weeks, two months, two years, any time frame, and say to yourself a sentence that characterizes what is happening in your life right now, and how you feel about it. Mine would be something like this: “Those were good times! Writing that book, editing
Self
magazine, running triathlons, enjoying my happy marriage, raising two bright teenaged kids, all of it!” The day-to-day stresses, like the bills, the squabbles over homework to be done, my own deadlines at the office, the few pounds that come and go, and all the rest, would just fade to the background and not matter. So why can’t we feel that way
right now
, when the stresses are front and center in our minds?

Like editing images for the family album, your job is to try to realize that despite the snapshots that need omitting you are living a happy life. If you find a way to understand that everything that isn’t bad is good, you can understand this: You are in fact happier than you think you are
this moment
.

So if your memory wants you to remember the
now
as a happy moment, why fight it? The more relevant question is: How do we help it along?

No One Can Make You Happy.
Well,
Almost
No One…

In Bhutan, the king proclaimed that he wanted the people of his country to think not about the Gross Domestic Product but about the “Gross National Happiness” in a measurable way. He made it an official mandate to produce happiness.

By this measure, one reason we westerners have gone awry is that we’ve made the number one pursuit the GDP, prioritizing all things material. The GNH is an emotional measure of success, and by the Bhutanese way of thinking, if you pursue happiness, you’ll be more productive too. We applaud this as a concept, but the trouble is no one agrees on how to measure this type of success, or even if we’re using the right term for it.

Happiness
is a tricky word because it is not a destination you arrive at or a sustainable state of being. It’s a feeling that you experience, just like any other, and it comes and goes. You can generate it, but you can’t keep it; you can make it, but not necessarily hold on to it.

Catherine and I don’t even think
happiness
is necessarily the right word for what we’re pursuing. We joke that it’s “the H word” because it can be a negative if women think it’s the Holy Grail. Instead of pursuing “happiness” as some permanent state, we want you to appreciate the moments when it eludes you, as well as those when you experience it.

My word for
happiness
is
gratitude
, as in
I am grateful for all of the gifts, tangible and intangible, bestowed upon me.
When I’m not feeling grateful for all that I have, I realize that I’m being childish or spoiled. For Catherine the word is
contentment
. She tries to appreciate and be present in the flow of life, in everyday moments. When she’s able to do that, not being
un
happy is enough. Being okay with how things are is the real gift, the mind-set that brings us to a higher place and purpose.

Feeling appreciative of the good things you have is what leads to experiencing more of
whatever
you want to call it: contentment, gratitude or—okay—happiness. It’s the general feeling of a positive emotion we are going for here, not the label you use to describe it. The goal isn’t necessarily to be happy, but to feel happier no matter what else may be going wrong.

Any author who writes a book claiming to be able to make the reader
happy
,
happier
, or able to find
happiness
is setting herself up for failure. We are not actually going to make you happy, since the only person who can
make
you do anything is you. Catherine tells her favorite shrink joke here: How many shrinks does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.

So we want to come clean right now: We are not going to make you happy. Only you can do that.

If the unexamined life isn’t worth living, and the examined life is full of foibles, the most evolved woman examines her life, sees the flaws, and can put them into perspective. I love this bit of wisdom: “The fool thinks he’s a genius and the genius thinks he’s a fool.”

Our corollary: The unhappy woman believes she should be happy all the time. The happy woman believes that there will be times when she is unhappy.

Which woman are you?

T
he first step in figuring out your inner architecture is to draw
your emotional house. You can do this in your head, or with a pen and paper. We’ve always loved markers and sketch pads, so we encourage you to commit to a piece of paper for this project. (We promise it’ll be fun.) One note: Over time, you may need to redraw the walls, since as you evolve so will your house.

The most useful model may be a cross section where all the rooms are exposed at once, like a dollhouse. We like to draw a three-story house with nine rooms. In our house, the basement and attic lie below and above the other rooms, and on the first floor you’ll find the family room, living room, kitchen, and office, since those are the most public spaces. Upstairs lie the master bedroom, the bathroom, and the child’s room, since those are more intimately connected.

Neither Catherine nor I live in houses with many stories and nine rooms. We live in New York City apartments, and you know how cramped those are! But trust us, you need a room for every area of your emotional life, and this drawing doesn’t necessarily reflect your actual abode.

Now make a list of all the rooms that will be in your house—include the basics (bathroom, kitchen, etc.) and your specifics (kid’s room or office), each corresponding to an area of your life. You may add or subtract a room, depending on your stage right now. So if you know you don’t want kids, the second bedroom could be a guest room or a place you sew, paint, or write. Once you decide you are including a room, the relevant question is, how big should it be? And that is directly correlated to how much time
and emotional energy you invest there and how important that topic is to your overall happiness.

For me, the bathroom was always large because I was preoccupied with weight, fitness, and health in a way that took my attention from other thoughts, and even when I wasn’t in the bathroom these distractions followed me into every other room. I would walk into a party and think,
Do I look fat?
instead of,
Oh, there is so-and-so I want to talk to!

Many women’s bathrooms are the largest in their house, since it’s where we scrutinize the number on the scale, the bags under our eyes, and all nature of self-criticism. It’s also where we need to love ourselves and take care of ourselves (doing a mole check, indulging in a bubble bath, or remembering to floss). The bathroom connects to the bedroom, since feeling fat can torpedo libido faster than you can say
Not tonight, honey!
It connects to the kitchen if you are dieting, and your child’s room if you don’t like the way your tummy sags after popping out a couple of babies.

Meanwhile, you may think that my kitchen is tiny because I don’t cook much. (No domestic goddess here!) But most women’s kitchens are fairly large, whether they cook or not, because the kitchen isn’t just about meal prep or eating or dishes; it’s about all the household chores, responsibilities, and upkeep. We all have to divide up who does what, and if we are married and have families, there is usually a conversation about who will pick up the child at soccer, or take her to the dentist afterward, or any number of other little details that you deal with in the course of a normal day. This is why the kitchen is a multipurpose room, a place where you cook and clean, yes, but also discuss all the household matters at the kitchen table. It is literally the hub of the house.

For each room, think about the big issues you struggle with there, as well as the little ones. If you are constantly aggravated in one room, it has to be larger than the others, because you will spend more time cleaning it up. A room can also be oversize if it brings you an enormous amount of joy, like that newborn in your child’s room. If you can’t stop thinking about your dwindling cash reserves, for example, that makes your office bigger than most.

Your Emotional House Will Harken Back to Your Childhood

My emotional house always has a strong nostalgic element—and to this day my family room is huge because I have a close relationship with my brother and his kids. In fact, because he and I played together for long hours growing up (zinging each other with balled-up socks before video games made it possible to “kill” your sibling without actually inflicting pain), we still compete, now in triathlons and skiing and each other’s children’s accomplishments. This sibling rivalry is both a pleasure and a pain, but mostly a joy, since no one can “zing” at me like my brother, but he is also my first call on all matters family-related. Ever since our parents split up, we’ve been in it together, through thick and thin, and always will be. So my family room and basement are connected, and both are relatively large.

Catherine explains that the memories we carry through life become an important, even essential, part of the happiness picture as we consider our adult relationships and our patterns of behavior. The basement turns out to be the largest room, since it is the foundation of our house, and those memories (both painful and joy-filled) serve as the blueprint for our emotional architecture.

The Tenth Room Isn’t Always a Space,
but You Can Disappear There

An important place for me when I was a child was my personal space—a little bedroom eight feet wide, rarely used, at the back of our prewar apartment, where I would go to disappear. Everyone needs such a place. I would sometimes slip away to that forgotten little room behind the laundry area, near the back door. My parents called it “the dog’s room,” because that was where the family mutt would curl up to find quiet.

It was a place where I could pat the dog and read and write and avoid scrutiny. Not every house has one and not everyone has the luxury of slipping away in the middle of the day, but the idea is to create some kind of a sanctuary. It’s wherever you go to think and contemplate your day, your
life, your authentic self. You can do it on a walk, while swimming laps, or wherever you can be alone with your thoughts. For some women it’s the solitude of folding laundry; for others it’s a long shower or just lying in bed with a book.

It’s critical that you go there daily, if only for twenty minutes, especially now that so many of us live on top of one another in our busy, stressed-out lives. I think of it as a “mouse hole,” since you can basically disappear into this space and no one can find you or bother you there.

Kids are great at finding mouse holes, since they are better at closing out the world when they need to get away from the noise and the demands of school and family. It’s why Harry Potter’s little nook under the stairs appeals to children of all ages; it may be small, but it’s
his
and he can get away from the dreaded Dursleys when he goes there. We all have our version of the Dursleys, and we all need a space under the stairs, a mouse hole, even if it’s only a room in our minds.

Now You’re Done and Can Take a Breath, or Even a Walk

Once you’ve drawn your house and have learned to move from room to room, you will have more control over yourself and your emotions in every room. Then you’ll be able to leave your house and see the bigger world—and your role in it—without having your thoughts and feelings about it distorted because you are constantly worrying about those messy rooms. Just by changing the dynamic within your emotional house, you can finally get to the point where you can go out and experience the world from a new perspective: a happier, more confident, and meaningful place.

And You Get to Furnish It!

You have a floor plan, so now it’s time to place the big defining pieces for each room—a bed in the bedroom, TV in the family room, table in the kitchen, mirror in the bathroom, etc. The goal here is to take notice of
the ways you spend time in each room. For some women, a beautiful bed and luxurious sheets are the key to their bedroom. Perhaps for someone else a futon on the floor is fine, or they have a gorgeous view or tons of sunlight streaming in every morning, or a comfy chair to read in. (Or great, carefree sex, no matter what their bedding preferences.)

As much as I wish everyone in my family sat in the family room playing Scrabble every night, that just isn’t the case. I’ve had to come to terms with the reality of my family room: my husband, James, is on his laptop, writing his blog about photography; my son is using his computer to look up musical chords and teaching himself to play guitar, strumming and singing and entertaining everyone with silly songs; and my daughter is “i-chatting” with pals. It may not be the perfect Norman Rockwell family portrait, but at least we all congregate there, and that makes all of us calm, relaxed, and content. Sometimes, I’ve decided, sharing the same air is enough.

That’s it. Now you’re done sketching. You have your emotional house. Next you need to decide which rooms are neat enough and which ones you want to work on.

Where do you want to spend your emotional energy cleaning up a mess? That’s where to head first.

E
ach time you are in a messy situation, you have a choice to make:
Either shut the door behind you (promise yourself you will clean it up later…when you have time, energy, or the right head space), or dive right in. Ready to go? We’re providing you with an array of problem solvers here, to break the old negative patterns and replace them with positive thinking (not happy thoughts but productive ones). We call these
key processes
, since you use them to work through the problem and get to a new understanding. You’ll then gain a little sound bite of wisdom, called a “pearl,” to take away with you and use the next time the issue comes up.

By learning to think differently and reframe the problem, you’ll be able to break the patterns that make you (and those around you) unhappy in each room. First you have to recognize the pattern, then decide to change it. The key processes are like arrows in your quiver, and you get to use whichever one works best in that situation.

A Key Process Is Useful; a Pearl Is Forever

A pearl is a tiny little takeaway reward that you can keep in your pocket and think about any time a similar issue comes up. It’s like a worry bead because it helps you by reminding you of previous conflicts and how you solved them. It’s a shortcut or token that you can pull out whenever needed, and it’s easy to remember. The idea of calling these insights pearls originated with Catherine, who recalls being on rounds in med school and trying to diagnose cases.

She and her fellow students held in their heads copious amounts of information about rare diseases, uncommon symptoms, and all nature of medical conditions with names that you could hardly pronounce. But the best doctors also kept in mind the simple truths about unusual or complex cases, and these they called pearls. A pearl was a little bit of wisdom that helped them treat patients who usually had straightforward problems. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” This will remind you that you can overcomplicate things and not see obvious problems staring you in the face.

Or you can blame your state of unhappiness on all the wrong things, and miss the obvious one—you. It’s up to
you
to make the changes that will bring you more happiness (or at least less discontent) in every room of your house.

Cleaning Up Your Messy Room

Catherine explains that the first step is learning to identify the patterns of behavior that are causing you trouble and creating the messes in your rooms. These patterns are often defense mechanisms, which we use to protect ourselves from emotional pain. They include things like regression (you revert to childish behavior), displacement (you shift your emotions about one person onto another), reaction formation (you act the opposite of how you feel), etc. These self-defeating, self-destructive patterns often repeat for years before some precipitating event causes you to want to change them once and for all.

You may not even realize why you’re unhappy, since these defense mechanisms can work for you until they start to work against you. Your stubborn and persistent nature can take you up the corporate ladder pretty far, until one day you find yourself stalled and realize you have to learn to be more cooperative to make the next step. You’ve been resisting the suggestions of others, and now it’s costing you the next big promotion; it’s time to do something about it.

Or in your personal life, your mom may drive you nuts every time you’re on the phone with her (wanting to know when you’re next getting
together) and so you simply stop calling her back. That just makes her more determined to reach you and tell you some annoying detail or how to live your life. The pattern devolves into a lack of communication and your connection suffers until the two of you are basically dysfunctional. Now what? Believe it or not, you have the power to change this dynamic and make it work for you.

But how? Catherine says it takes desire, work, and a true commitment. Plus you need a couple of handy tools. Sometimes you may need to try more than one. Luckily we have a full lineup, and on the following two pages is a simple chart to refer back to any time you’re having a problem.

These are just nine of our favorite key processes to use in any given situation where they can help you think differently. Some are what we call kitchen science and others spring from the annals of psychology and psychiatry but with a friendly, layman’s spin. You will find them in every chapter, explained more fully.

The chart also includes pearls, which relate to each key process. There are nine listed here, but you can add others, from anywhere and any source that speaks to you—a song, a play, a poem, or your grandmother’s favorite expression: “There’s no time like the present.” Pearls are so precious you’ll want to collect and keep them for the rest of your life.

This Chart Is Your “Cheat Sheet.” Refer Back to It

KEY PROCESSES
:
1. Screening
. Replaying childhood memories like a movie. Freud wrote that we see today’s events through the “screen” of this past memory, so it’s a significant experience, or scene, relevant today. You bring this filter or perspective to every room, but it originates in the basement, with all your other memories.

PEARLS
!
:
You can’t live in the past. Now is it.

KEY PROCESSES
:
2. Pinging
. Also called mirroring, as defined by Heinz Kohut, an influential psychoanalyst. It’s the feedback from loved ones you trust. You use these little sonarlike signals to “ping” your way like a dolphin through the shoals to open water and finally reach a point where you can follow your inner compass. You ping most in the family room.

PEARLS
!
:
Be authentic, be true to you.

KEY PROCESSES
:
3. A + B = C
. This relationship equation applies to every close tie you have, but it is especially relevant wherever you have conflict with someone you love—in the bedroom, family room, and kid’s room. If you want to change the outcome, it’s simple—change A, yourself.

PEARLS
!
:
You can’t change them. You can change yourself.

KEY PROCESSES
:
4. Venn diagramming
. Overlapping circles show two people coming together in a healthy relationship. The diagram is useful to illustrate how much you and your partner are connected: too much, too little, or just right. (Note: These were shown on page 15.) It is used more in the bedroom, and you want overlap, but not a total merging of the circles. Sorry, all you
Jerry Maguire
fans, but “You complete me” isn’t the goal. No one can complete you, they complement you. You’re each a whole circle.

PEARLS
!
:
We don’t complete each other. We overlap.

KEY PROCESSES
:
5. Self-involvement
. Also called narcissism. You can be overly involved in yourself, positively or negatively, but either way it affects relationships in every room of the
house. Self-involvement originates in the bathroom, where the mirror is found, but you may not like what you see. We say walk away from the reflection to have a fuller, happier, more meaningful life.

PEARLS
!
:
It’s not all about you.

KEY PROCESSES
:
6. It’s not either/or…it’s both/and
. The idea is to give up the all-or-nothing mentality and realize you can have two contrasting ideas be true at once. You can be both furious at someone and love that person. Disagree but be respectful. Most useful at the kitchen table or in the child’s room. The key is not letting these personal battles get the best of you. Learn to tolerate emotional discomfort.

PEARLS
!
:
Conflict can be okay.

KEY PROCESSES
:
7. Acting out
. When you can’t express yourself you act it out instead (such as being late when you’re angry at someone). It happens in every room of the house, especially with people you have trouble expressing yourself with, like a respected elder or your boss at work. You act badly rather than tell someone how you really feel, since it could be damaging to your current relationships or even to your future. It won’t make up for an imbalance of power.

PEARLS
!
:
Actions speak louder than words.

KEY PROCESSES
:
8. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing
. Being too nice or too giving allows others’ needs to suck the life out of you. This occurs so often in the living room that we call it “the giving room.” You also commonly see it in the kid’s room and the family room. The airlines have it right when they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first. Take care of yourself. It’s not selfish; it’s self-preservation.

PEARLS
!
:
Know your limits. Be strong to help others.

KEY PROCESSES
:
9. Not to decide is to decide
. If you are putting off a major decision and you think it will wait, the delaying is a form of action in itself. To delay is to act, even if it’s passive. By missing the boat, you may experience regret about not moving ahead in your life. It’s like the old saying: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But it’s also something lost.

PEARLS
!
:
Go (along with the status quo) or grow.

How a Typical Scenario Works (from the Family Room)

Your older sister, who knows you have already booked your vacation, says: “I don’t think you should blow off Mom’s birthday and go on your vacation!” Normally this would lead to guilt and conflict with your controlling older sister, as it has for decades. But here is a new way of thinking about this situation:

•
First, identify the problem.
In this case it’s the conflict between you and your sister over what should be done for your mother on her birthday. Consider her message (she may be right), then the messenger (she may be jealous of your fun plans), and then your own feelings (you’ve thought long and hard about this trip and it was the only time you could go).

•
Next step? Figure out the source of the mess.
Catherine calls this recognizing the “unconscious process”—a pattern of behavior that may once have worked but is now tripping you up. Catherine calls what the two of you are doing “repetition compulsion,” since you have been in this pattern for so long, it’s like an old familiar dance and each of you knows your part. It’s how you two sisters relate.

•
Third step: Decide if you are in the right room.
If these problems started elsewhere, you may be in the wrong room. For you and your sister, the family room is closely connected to the basement, since your father died young and you both feel compelled to be your mother’s surrogate spouse and take care of her, especially on her birthday, and all other holidays.

•
Fourth step: Break the pattern
. Find the key process to clean up the room. Here, the key is learning to live with conflict. Catherine often tells patients, “It’s not either/or, but both/and,” which basically means you can have two opposing emotions at the same time. Going back to our example, you, the sister who’s going to miss her mother’s birthday,
would tell yourself: “I know Mom will be disappointed and Sis is annoyed, but my vacation is important to me and it’s the only time I can take it.” The conflicting emotions are something you can live with. It’s not guilt versus pleasure, it’s guilt and pleasure. Catherine says your thought process doesn’t have to be “Submit and feel angry,” or “Go and feel guilty.” Rather, you should find a compromise you can live with. Perhaps an early birthday dinner before you leave? There will always be conflict, but that is something you can live with, once you know how to handle it. Then you should enjoy the vacation and not let big sis strip your buzz.

•
Finally, see that you’ve earned a pearl of wisdom.
You can keep this pearl in your pocket to help you sidestep these patterns in the future. In this case the insight is that conflict is part of every relationship, and it’s okay. It doesn’t have to make you unhappy. Think: “We may not always agree, but I can live with that. We still love each other!” It may even strengthen your bond, since you’ve related authentically instead of repeating the old pattern. One way to think about this is that you can tolerate the discomfort of your sister’s attempt to heap guilt on you, and you may even want to tell her off for doing so. Then tell yourself
I can live with this conflict and enjoy my vacation
. It’s not an either/or situation. You can be
both
annoyed at your sister
and
have a great time on the beach. As you toast with your umbrella drink, repeat after us: Conflict can be okay.

Now Add
Your
Own Pearls to the List

If you have a favorite pearl, feel free to use it, share it, add it to the “string of pearls” in this book. It can be a song lyric or a motto or a mantra. I have theme songs. A recent favorite of mine: “Miss Independent” by Ne-Yo, about a woman who has her own thing (that’s why her man loves her). I also love Beyoncé’s “If I
Were
a Boy,” since it’s about a woman’s desire to live in a way that is true to herself, and not one that conforms to social norms. Another empowering anthem is “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus, with that great line about there always being another mountain to move. (I relate,
since I never seem to take the easy path.) Many positive messages speak to me in music, I listen to my headphones while I run, and it helps to remind me that even when I feel down, I need to try to use the little things to pick myself up and help others, too. So for me, music provides pearls on a regular basis.