The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (16 page)

Abby is a married mother of three (one’s ten, and the twins are seven) who began her professional life in an arts-related nonprofit organization in Boston and is now finishing medical school and applying for residency in pediatrics. “I always wanted three kids, believe it or not. I had a peripatetic childhood, and it was very important for me to provide my kids with a stable life and a steady paycheck. I always thought about medical school but worried that the long hours would interfere with that goal. So I built up a career in something else that I liked but never found that fulfilling.”

Abby’s epiphany came when she put her first child in day care for ten hours a day so that she could do a job she wasn’t crazy about. “I was leaving my kids at day care, commuting to work, and had time to think about what I was doing. All of a sudden, it hit me: Why was it better to stay in my current job as a fund-raiser, when I could get just a little more day care and be doing something, like medicine, that I felt passionate about? I knew early on that I was a better mother when all my energies weren’t focused on my child.”

She moved from the office where she was dissatisfied to the kid’s room, where she knew they would be happy as long as she was happy. She got it right, figured out what she really wanted to do in her heart, and then set up her life to fulfill her dreams. Back to the emotional office,
where she applied to med school, and four years later she is now being called Dr. Abby by her young patients, and it makes her so happy she wants to cry.

But it was a long journey and one that entailed plenty of sacrifices along the way. “I began by doing volunteer work in a hospital in the evenings. I would wait until my son was asleep, then go off to the ER to get whatever exposure I could to my next career, to prepare for being a doctor—holding children’s hands while they got spinal taps, translating for Spanish-speaking patients, transporting patients to the X-ray department. My husband thought I was crazy and would get tired of it. Instead, I loved it and was more convinced than ever that medicine was the path for me.” She was using a building block to construct her future emotional office, and it worked for her, because she was willing to do it one little block at a time.

Her parents, who were artists and hated science, thought that her dreams were just that, never a reality. But she realized that her form of creativity was this vision of practicing medicine and helping people, and she had to see it through. “They make art for a living, and I thought:
What do I make? I want to make a difference.
I remember the first time I held my baby and I looked at that perfect little being and thought:
I never want to hold you back. I never want you to hold me back.
This was the realization for me, that to be the best mother I could be I had to do what was right for me. Be the best person I could be. I hope my kids appreciate that someday.” It would be years before she saw it to fruition, but eventually she did.

But first Abby wanted more kids, and she didn’t think she was quite ready to make the big transition until they got old enough for day care. Until her twins were two years old, she freelanced during the day and went to school in the evenings. When the twins were three, she applied to a top medical school and was accepted. “Money was tight, but the university was generous, and I was able to get a full-tuition scholarship.

“So now I have no money, less time than ever with my family, but I am truly happy and feel zero guilt about my decisions. Should I? I mean, the kids are fine. But does this make me selfish? Because I am doing exactly
what I want with my life now.”

Catherine hears this and says, “Abby is hardly being selfish. She is expressing a healthy form of self-determination, and she is doing it in a purposeful and thoughtful way. If anything, her delaying her own medical career and then finally choosing to give up her own free time for her passion is something the rest of us can learn from.” Catherine regularly sees patients who say they wish they had more meaning, more purpose, and a life that held challenge and reward. The best way to achieve all these things is to sit down and contemplate what it is your own personal passion leads to, and when you do that, it can lead you to a career or avocation that is fulfilling and makes you happier, even if you give up things like a big salary or free time.

Adds Abby: “This was absolutely the right decision for me. My kids sometimes complain when I’m on call overnight at the hospital, but they clearly derive much satisfaction from having their mother visit their first grade class as the health expert.” She isn’t actually away from her kids any more than a mother who has to travel occasionally for her job, but somehow the grueling reputation of a medical internship and residency leaves her open to sniping from mothers who say things like, “I don’t know how you do it.” And Abby just says, “Actually I love what I do, I’m willing to make the sacrifice. And then they mumble something about how their husbands want them around more, implying either that mine is a wimp or we have a terrible marriage. I can’t let them bother me. We are doing great. I truly believe that my entire family is better off because of my major life change.”

Confucius said, “If you enjoy what you do, you will never work another day in your life.” It’s rare and special when you find something you love, but you need to seek it out. For some lucky women (I count myself among them), work feels so rewarding that at times it’s like a vacation from the stresses of family life. Getting to the office, having to do something creative, and helping other women is so much easier than solving a fight over homework or whose turn it is to walk the dog.

Abby is to be commended—she figured out how to get to the right
room. When she was in the child’s room, her desire to be a stable parent led her to work at a boring job. But she found a way to leave that room for her passion, a career in medicine.

Catherine says such realizations about an enormous life change don’t happen overnight. There were clues along the way for Abby, who wanted to go to medical school as a young girl but didn’t because her parents, both artists, dismissed it. But when she finally had a moment to step back she was able to follow her inner compass.

You need some space and time to think in order to reconnect to your authentic self, find your own passion, and arrive at your purpose. Here’s the good news for the rest of us: If you give yourself a little time and space, and reconnect to what you really love, you can find meaning in your emotional office. Like Abby, you may not be able to get everything done all at once, but you can do it, over time, if you really want. You are never too old to begin.

The final thought in the office is: Whatever you’re doing, understand your purpose. If it’s to make money, bring home that paycheck, fine. If it’s to run your household and raise your kids, great. And if it’s to reach that elusive upper echelon in your field (partner, professor, judge, chair, or chief), then that is something to shoot for, but know why you’re doing it, and be authentic to you. Not every day will be bliss. And that’s a good thing, because knowing your purpose will help you put up with the down days, the menial tasks, the politics of working your way up the ladder (or if you’re not on the right track for you, these bad days will help you discover that). Purpose is key, and if you can identify yours, then every day will feel more meaningful, even when there are boring meetings to sit through or long flights to endure, or laundry that needs folding.

Understanding the “why” of the work matters, and remembering what made you
want
to do it in the first place, even if it’s only for the paycheck. Remember that you can seek purpose elsewhere and find meaning in other parts of your life.

You’re So Vain…and That’s Not All Bad

W
elcome to the bathroom, the center of all your emotions relating
to health, weight, vanity, aging, and body image. The scale, mirror, bathtub, and medicine cabinet can keep many women occupied for hours, and whether you’re feeling fat or slim, young or old, pretty or plain, healthy or not-so-much, the bathroom is where you start your day, and it’s the last stop before bed. So you’re confronted by your image in the mirror—and in your mind—at least twice a day. At the end of the day, as you brush your teeth and wash your face before bed, you think:
How did I do today?
Meaning: How healthy was I and how much did I veer off course in my goal to eat right, get regular exercise, and take care of my body? Often the answer isn’t pretty. A mental recount of brownies eaten and laps not swum can make a trip to the mirror or the scale an unpleasant stop. Okay, that’s me. But from what I have learned editing
Self
, where we poll women and interact with them on e-mail, blogs, and Twitter, that’s millions of other women as well.

Body image is a complicated emotional area, since it involves the bathroom (where the scale sits), the kitchen (where the food you eat contributes to both your weight and your health), the bedroom (where feeling attractive is one component of your sexual self), the family room (Did your mother age beautifully? How does your father’s health affect your own attitude about doctors and check-ups?), and the living room (where you compare yourself to other women—your close friends and your faux “friends,” such as Jen and Angelina, and all the other professionally beautiful women who come into our lives through TV, magazines, movies, and ads).
And whether you think Beyoncé or Gisele has the perfect shape, you are likely not a doppelgänger for either, which leads to two important questions you need to ask yourself: What is my standard for “healthy and happy”? And, What is the right weight and shape and level of “just right” for me?

When I got to
Self
I realized women generally were unhappy body-image-wise. So I commissioned a poll and we found that to be overwhelmingly true: Only 18 percent of women, fewer than one in five, said they’re “just right,” weight-wise, while 5 percent said they were too thin and the rest placed themselves in the “I’m too fat!” category. They called themselves either “chunky” (46 percent), “overweight” (22 percent), or “obese” (9 percent), so a whopping 82 percent of women were unhappy with their bodies. It was clear to me that women needed guidance, both in getting healthy and thinking healthy.

Along with giving them the tools to eat right, exercise regularly, and be healthier physically, we needed to arm them with new thought processes to feel better inside about the outside. Instead of punishing themselves for dietary infractions, they needed to think positively about their bodies and do the right thing, to treat their bodies well by treating them right. The message is: Love your body and cherish it and it will love you back and become the body you want. (Hate your body and go to war with it and you are in for a lifetime of hang-ups, health issues, and unnecessary weight swings.) For most women, especially in their twenties and thirties, before gaining the perspective of having friends or loved ones with health issues, it’s easy to allow the number on the scale to dictate whether it’s a good day or a bad one. That attitude then follows them from room to room, distracting from the events that could be more enjoyable. It’s as if instead of “hello,” these unhappy-with-their-weight women greet everyone they meet with the thought bubble
Do I look fat
? I am living proof that this attitude can and must be shaken off, and that once it is, your body gets better, and so does your life. Removing the obsession with the last ten or fifteen or twenty pounds frees up space on the mental and emotional hard drive. The most important thing to think about in the bathroom isn’t your scale, or even your mirror, but the value you place on your health.

Easier said than done. But I would also defend vanity, at least in moderation. Caring about your looks can be a healthy motivator for many women—it pushes us not to let ourselves go, but to stay healthy for as long as possible. It can even be a lifesaver. But only if it leads to positive behavior.

Feeling fat? I go for a run or curtail the late-night sweet treat. Not wanting to get wrinkles? I slather on the SPF and spray on the self-tanner. I know vanity pushes me to want to bike and not to eat a pint of ice cream before bed, but I never realized that vanity is recognized in the medical community as an important aspect of recovery from life-threatening disease until I met a very special and courageous woman who had battled cancer and was winning. Here is her story:

Jennifer Linn was diagnosed in her thirties with a rare form of cancer, called sarcoma, which is hard to diagnose and harder to treat. She had just had surgery to remove the tumor in her abdomen and was about to face chemo. The doctor asked her what she needed most, and she said: “I need to exercise. You can make me bald, but you can’t make me bald and fat. Then I won’t recognize myself and I will feel as sick as I am. I really need a stationary bike in my room.” So she got a spinning bike next to her bed, and started to bike, even if only a few minutes a day, while recovering. She got stronger and later would start a charity called Cycle for Survival to raise money to research cures for cancers. One day she had a heart-to-heart with her doctor. “Do you think it’s bad that I am vain when I have cancer?” And he said to her, “No…Vanity is a healthy thing. The patients I worry about are the ones who’ve given up on how they look. When they no longer care what they look like, I know I should worry.”

Jen’s story shows that a little vanity is one way of being healthy and self-preserving, so long as it’s not an obsession.

The pearl that reminds me to appreciate my well-being, even when I’m scrutinizing my hips and dimply rear end in the mirror, is a single word. It’s
squander
. As in, don’t squander your health, or do anything self-destructive that could imperil your future, with quick fixes. I won’t take supplements or even (unless I’m truly suffering) a painkiller. I don’t believe in fad diets
or starvation (I rarely skip a meal), and the idea of doing anything to lose weight other than eating right and exercising is anathema to me. The idea of doing something that could harm my health, in the hopes of improving my appearance, is just crazy to me now.

I wasn’t always this wise.

“You have great health,” a doctor friend told me one night when I reached for what was to be one of my last-ever cigarettes. “Why would you smoke? Why would you squander your good health?” I was in my late twenties, sitting at a bar, trying not to eat or drink (or gain weight!), so I smoked back then, because I was young and dumb. His words hit me like a bus. That word,
squander
, just clicked for me. I don’t waste milk, or leftovers, or money. Why would I squander something as precious as my health?

It took several tries, but finally I quit smoking. The word
squander
has since helped me reframe my thinking about my body, my health, and all the God-given gifts I have received. Now the range of emotions in my bathroom is less about self-criticism, and more about self-care, and gratitude for the healthy body I can try to be good to.

Jenny has grappled with body image issues for many years, even though she has always been fit and healthy and never truly overweight, though every now and then she says, “I feel a little flabby, especially around the middle.” She never felt so fat that she had to diet, since she considered eating a form of self-love and she enjoyed her treats. She thought this was a
good attitude, mainly because she was active. “After I’d go running, I’d think,
I deserve my chocolate cake for dessert!
” But the pounds crept up on her over the years. “Sitting at a desk all day, I didn’t burn enough calories to justify what I was eating. I got heavier and more unhappy about my growing waistline.”

Then she had a health scare—at the age of forty-two she felt her heart racing and thumping in her chest, and thought she was having a heart attack. Her doctor explained that the racing heart had nothing to do with an impending heart attack, but did indicate that she was under too much stress. She also told Jenny that she had high cholesterol, and unless she changed her diet she’d have to go on a medication to lower it.

“I gave up ice cream and cheese and cut way down on meat, ate more fish, and guess what? I lost ten pounds in about six weeks, and now I think totally differently about food. It’s about being healthy, and my cholesterol dropped from 275 to 205, and it’s still going down, so now I know that what I eat really matters.” Jenny now wants to eat well for the
right
reasons, not because she feels fat, but because she values her healthy body.

The problem was that Jenny liked herself enough to indulge in the post-run chocolate cake, which was sabotaging her health. The unconscious process at work here is a form of “undoing, where she does a good thing (running), and undoes it with another (eating cake).” Not only was she undoing all her hard work, but she was also threatening her good health long term. Once she realized that, she could learn to stop eating like a teenager and think of herself as an adult who had to take care of herself.

Most people don’t understand that in a few quick minutes of noshing you can eat more calories than you could burn in two hours of working out at the gym. For Jenny, the fact remains that her body image is making her unhappy, but it may not be because of the extra pounds she’s carrying—though those are her focus—but because of the self-destructive patterns she’s engaged in. She’s sabotaging herself by undoing her own hard work. After trying to be disciplined and healthy, something or someone upsets her and she rebels against her own better instincts, acting out, in Catherine’s words, by emotionally eating and soothing herself with food.

For many women, it’s easier to think of food as an either/or situation. You
either
diet or you enjoy food, but actually one can do both, by shifting the paradigm to see that healthy food can be delicious, and that “treating” yourself means treating yourself right.

Instead of automatically reaching for a brownie or other reward for being good at the gym or surviving a tense day at work, Jenny realized that she simply had to take a moment to think about what was stressing her out. Once she realized she could take a breath and either start to constructively solve the problem or think about a “next step” to take, it no longer became a matter of eating her way through the stress, but a decision to push it away, and the unhealthy food with it.

It took a scare for her to begin to enjoy eating better for her heart health, but she finally made the decision to choose the healthiest foods, consistently, and soon she loved how it made her feel and look.

This is another case of “go or grow,” meaning go along with the status quo and be unhealthy and emotionally tied to food, or grow and evolve and become a healthier eater by understanding what was driving you to the cupboard. The pearl for Jenny became: Treating yourself means treating yourself right.

Marissa is a social, active, and fit housewife who was loving her life until she looked at her friends recently over lunch and realized: “Wow, none of us is young anymore, and that makes me upset, because our par
ents are aging and our kids are now out of the house and this should be the happiest time of our lives. But instead, I’m thinking,
I don’t want to grow old!
I feel young, and I still can work out and sail and do all the things I’ve loved all my life. But for how much longer? I look at my hands and think they look like my mother’s hands and I want to cry.”

You could say Marissa is spending too much time in her bathroom, and that is bad, but in fact Marissa is right to want to stay healthy, and for her it’s as much about vitality as it is about vanity, and the two can intersect in a healthy way.

Marissa’s active life brings her pleasure, and appearing older than her friends distresses her. She wants to stay looking young without being overly fixated on youth and the exterior image she presents to the world. For some women, having plastic surgery can be a way of matching the outside with the inside, but it can also become an unhealthy obsession if done for the wrong reasons. Erasing every wrinkle isn’t necessarily going to make you feel better, so you have to understand why you’re getting “something done” and what your goal is—and if it’s only to appear younger, and you think that will make you happier, think again.

Catherine says healthy narcissism is a way of being self-aware or self-preserving, and Marissa is doing that. Unhealthy narcissism is an
over
involvement with the self, either positively or negatively, which is what some women get caught up in when they start aging and don’t like what they see in the mirror. It may take a decision to change how you think about yourself in the world, but it’s possible to turn off the light and leave the bathroom behind and stop thinking about the image in the mirror as the one the world sees. You have the power to create another image of yourself, an image of you being involved in other areas of your life—whether it’s community service or work or family or a hobby you’re passionate about.