The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections (2 page)
Authors: Lucy Danziger,Catherine Birndorf
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Self Help, #Psychology
No two women are alike, but we guarantee that you will relate to something in these pages. You’ll recognize the emotional quandaries and happiness pitfalls we have illuminated in these stories, each one drawn from hundreds of women across the country we interviewed over nearly two years. For obvious reasons (they talk about sex, money, in-laws, siblings, friendships, and their own body hang-ups) we have disguised some identifying (but insignificant) details of their lives. No one is properly named unless we say so specifically, and you shouldn’t try to figure out who these women are. They are generous women willing to share; they could be any of us, and we thank them for telling their stories. If you think you recognize yourself or a patient or pal of the authors’, understand that each of them could be anyone—yourself included.
Your Life Is Like a House Full of Rooms
Knowing how good she was at helping the readers of
Self
solve their problems each month, I asked Catherine to write a book with me about how it’s the little things that bring us down, and how we internalize conflict rather than deal with it in a healthy way. She got as excited as I was, and together we came up with a model that works.
The idea is to see your life through the metaphor of a house, in which every room corresponds to a different emotional area: The bedroom represents sex and love, the living room is for friendships and your social life, the office represents your career, money, and work life. Being happy in a room is often tricky, since you can physically be in one room and emotionally ruminating about another. One messy room can bring you down, even if the others are neat and tidy. Conversely, one neat room can help bring you up, if you know how to use it.
We are here to teach you how to clean messy rooms and shut doors on others so you can be happier in your entire house, every day. With this metaphor you’ll learn not only how to be happier in every emotional room, but also how to live in the moment and enjoy the room you’re in, no matter what messes exist elsewhere.
By evaluating the problems that came up in the interviews in the following chapters, we will show you how to solve your problems. The process we have developed works, and I am living proof of that. Now it’s your turn.
What’s Stressing You Out,
When Everything Should Be Great?
E
veryone is dealing with
something
, even when everything seems
right from the outside. It’s a theme in our lives. The very act of worrying keeps us busy, but it can keep us from seeing the bigger issues.
The challenge is to figure out what’s really bothering you, what patterns of self-destructive behavior you want to change in order to be happier in every part of your life, in every one of your emotional rooms. Perhaps you’ll relate to this lament:
From the outside, you’d think I have it all: beautiful house, wonderful children, devoted husband. But am I happy? I think so. There’s nothing that has gone terribly wrong. There’s no reason for me
not
to be happy. But I don’t feel happy so much as I feel I’m just going through the motions. Sometimes I have the feeling that there’s more and I just haven’t found it yet. But what…and how dare I want more? Isn’t all that I have enough?
Of course it is. And she does have enough. So what is missing? Perspective, for one thing. Once you have put all the little things in perspective you can begin to discover your passion and purpose, and find out how you can make a meaningful contribution to the world.
If you are fixated on all the messes in front of you, it’s too easy to get distracted from the bigger picture. Once you figure out the big stuff, doing something as mundane as emptying the dishwasher can be a pleasure, if
your head is in the right space. We’re not saying you will become mindless. Quite the opposite: Everything you do can have a sense of purpose if you understand yourself better.
Who’s Happy? Not Who You’d Expect
As the saying goes, money doesn’t buy happiness. Nor do fame, glamour, your own TV show, and all the things you might think would make for a happy life. Dozens of studies have shown that the things we think will bring us happiness—winning the lottery, a new house, etc.—do little to boost our long-term inner satisfaction. They may make for a night of celebrating, but before too long the old you reappears, dissatisfaction and all. The effects are temporary—whether the event is positive (a new job) or negative (losing your job); within a few months people return to the same happiness level they had before. In fact, once your basic needs are taken care of,
more
money,
more
success, a
bigger
house, etc., won’t bring lasting happiness.
Studies abound that back this up. In a seventy-two-year longitudinal study at Harvard, research conducted by renowned psychiatrist Dr. George Vaillant looked at what makes men happy over their lifetime and found that happiness entailed having good relationships, particularly with their siblings and friends; adapting to crises; and having a stable marriage. Avoiding smoking and not abusing alcohol, getting regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight also added to individual happiness. It’s just the latest in a series of studies that all basically come to the same conclusion: Happiness comes from within.
In fact, we may even be born with it. Or at least half of it. Researchers believe each of us has what’s called a “set point” for happiness, which determines about 50 percent of your happiness quotient. The other 50 percent is determined by what happens after you’re born. Of that half, roughly 10 percent depends on where and how you live, the circumstances of your life. So whether you live on a palm-tree-lined beach or out on the frozen tundra, have ample wealth or just enough money to get by,
these details account for only one-tenth of your happiness. That means a whopping 40 percent of your happiness is completely up to you—determined by how you feel, how you react to events, and what your basic coping mechanisms are.
Think about how much 40 percent of
anything
is. How happy would you be if you got a 40 percent raise or were able to add 40 percent more longevity (or about thirty years) to your life? A 40 percent swing is enormous. And that’s how much of your happiness you can change with just a little bit of effort. All it takes is a decision on your part to reconsider some basic assumptions and patterns.
First of all, realize you are the sole proprietor of your happiness. You’re not a victim or a product of events—you’re in charge. This could work the following way in the office of your emotional house: You think the terrible economy is “happening to you,” but you have a choice in how you react to anything that comes your way. Imagine that your boss walks into a meeting and says, “The company is in dire straits. We have to downsize.” Do you say, “I know this is going to be difficult for everyone, and I will help in any way I can”? Or do you rush to the bathroom to burst into tears and call your significant other as you sob: “I just
know
I’m going to be fired!” Which person do you guess gets the ax?
Or instead of imagining a bad course of events, try thinking of what would happen if all the good things you wished for came true: Let’s say you won the lottery and were suddenly in possession of $30 million. What would it change? Everything? Nothing? I would travel more but do it in a socially purposeful way. I’d love to start a foundation to help women around the world live self-directed, meaningful, and healthy lives. Would I quit working altogether? Kick back and eat bonbons? No way! Having more money wouldn’t make me happier—it would make me feel more responsibility to give back and be a better person. It might change my job description or even my address by a few blocks, but it wouldn’t change my happiness. (Or so I tell myself; the effect makes me feel happier right now.)
What happens to you and around you isn’t always in your control; how you react to it is, and once you understand that, you can decide to change your own inner satisfaction meter. Your job is to stop thinking that life events make you happy (or unhappy) and start understanding you’re a participant in how happy you are, or aren’t, and that’s a very good thing.
You Have the Key to Your Own Happiness
D
on’t believe us? Okay, you’re right. It’s not one key. It’s several
keys, a whole ring of them, and in the coming chapters we will explain these keys, which will help you break your self-destructive patterns.
One such key is the Relationship Equation, A + B = C, where
you
are A, B is someone you are having trouble getting along with (your mother, your boss, your spouse), and C is the relationship you have with that person. You may never be able to change B, the other person, but that doesn’t matter. You have the power to impact the relationship just by changing A, yourself. Being able to alter C, the relationship, is what matters, and you can do it.
Catherine adds that when a patient comes in and complains that her mother is driving her crazy, as she has for the last twenty-five years of her life, she wants to jump up and down and say, “That’s such great news because we can solve this problem. To make things better, your mother doesn’t have to change. The only person who has to change is you. And since you are here, we already know that you want to make things better. I always say, ‘Look, you’re my patient, not your mother, and we can definitely help you. And by doing so, we will change the relationship.’”
The keys are in your possession and you decide which one to use to solve each problem that’s causing you angst. Knowing you can make your own inner happiness quotient go up is both comforting and a big responsibility, since it means you have the power to change—or not. It’s up to you.
About the Rooms Concept and Where It Came From
Catherine told me about a defining moment during her third year of medical school at Brown. This turned out to be a useful lesson for me as well and was the genesis of the main concept behind this book. Here’s her story in her own words.
A med student’s third year is traditionally an exciting but challenging one because you’re on the ward “trying on” being a doctor in several disciplines. I was on the pediatrics rotation, under the tutelage of a legendary teacher, Dr. Mary Arnold. I went to see her to talk about my career, and she steered the conversation to my personal life. Tapping into decades of bedside intuition, she was pressing me about what was really on my mind.
I started talking about my relationship with the medical student I had been dating seriously for two years. We had so much fun together that I ignored all the ways we were different, and not right for each other in the long term. For women, it’s one of the most important questions you can ask yourself: What would my life be like with this person? But it was one I’d avoided thinking about, probably because I knew the answer.
Dr. Arnold took out a pen and drew three circles on a legal pad. Each circle represented an area of my life with my boyfriend: social, romantic, and family. The social circle was where we shared common friends, the family circle represented our backgrounds, and the romantic circle was about the relationship. Next she took her pen and pointed to each circle and at me inquisitively, as if to say, How is it going here, and here, and here?
I didn’t even need to answer. Seeing it on paper, it was obvious where my life was good and where it was not working.
She put down her pen and sat back, as if to say: Session over. With one simple drawing, she helped me realize that my romance, for all the fun I was having, didn’t integrate well with the rest of my
life. If only one area was working well, it was not going to make me happy postgraduation. For most women, having a partner who fits into all three circles is essential to our happiness long-term.
Now when I think of relationships, I often think of a Venn diagram, overlapping circles. In my model each person is a full circle, and the relationship is the middle area, where the circles overlap. Women who are experiencing too much overlap (almost concentric circles) have lost a healthy sense of self, whereas those women who have too little overlap (circles barely touching) lack a sense of connectedness. These types of issues come up a lot in the bedroom.
Too overlapped—"merged" to the point of being unhealthy
Not enough overlap—you lack common ground
Optimal overlap—two individuals who share a healthy relationship
Catherine told me this story over lunch one day. She drew the connected circles, and all at once everything clicked—I realized that my life could be described as a series of spaces, and together Catherine and I transformed those spaces into the rooms of a woman’s house. An emotional house.
We saw that this house was a compelling metaphor for the way women live and think. We go from room to room all day long, switching
roles and needs with ease. And yet we’re often not emotionally in the room we are physically in, because we’re preoccupied by the mess down the hall. This makes it impossible to enjoy ourselves and be happy in the moment.
The emotional rooms metaphor is illuminating, since we can use it to appreciate the aspects of our lives that are going right, even when there are some spaces that may need a little cleaning.
How to Build Your Emotional House
The first step is to put up some walls and then delineate which feelings and behaviors are appropriate within each room.
Let’s take a tour:
- 1. The bedroom
is where you explore intimacy—sex, love, desire: our connection to our mate, or our search for a life partner. - 2. The bathroom
is where you face issues of health, well-being, vanity, body image, weight, and aging. - 3. The family room
is where you deal with those you’re closest to, such as parents, siblings, and other nearest and dearest. - 4. The basement
is full of childhood memories from your upbringing, your school years, and all those important experiences that have shaped your life. - 5. The living room
is where social connections happen: Here we deal with friendships, neighbors, and all types of peer comparison, such as envy. - 6. The kitchen
is about emotional nourishment and sustenance, sometimes even food. You discuss chores and the division of labor here, at the multifunctional kitchen table. - 7. The child’s room
is all about parenting, as well as the question of whether or not to have children. - 8. The office
is your job, career, and other meaningful work. It’s also where you grapple with money and financial security. - 9. The attic
in this house holds emotional heirlooms: expectations of your ancestors—where you came from and where they want you to go.
This is how we constructed our house. There are many other ways to do it. You may decide you have a different number of rooms. Or your rooms may be used for other purposes. Whatever suits you. You will get a chance to draw an emotional house that works for your life.
And what house would be complete without an add-on? That’s why we are including a tenth room, where you go to get away, to think or dream, to contemplate or vegetate, to do whatever you love, or do nothing but enjoy the solitude. But it’s not a place for you to self-destruct with alcohol, drugs, or Oreos. It’s a productive, positive space where you can think about your passion and perhaps even find your purpose, the pursuit that is most meaningful to you.
You need to visit this tenth room regularly. It can be an almost spiritual place, since it’s where you will get back to your true self, the person you are when no one else is around. This tenth room may not even be a room—it could be an activity such as jogging or walking, reading or meditating, cooking, folding laundry or knitting—but it is a mental space where you can think.
The tenth room is where you get to work on you and truly become the architect of your own life. But first we need to get the other rooms in order.
How Many of Your Rooms Are Neat? Just One? That’s Enough!
This is a very important point: You don’t need to have
nine
tidy rooms to be happy. Nobody ever has all of her rooms neat at the same time. In fact, one key process is to be okay with conflict, which helps you learn how to be happy even when things
aren’t
going right in all parts of your life. This is essential, since you may need to close the door on that messy room and come back to it later, when you have the time and inclination to clean it up.
The good news: There are probably more clean rooms in your house than you realize. The bad? You are often in the wrong room and have to go to the source of the problem before returning. The best news is that once you’ve done the heavy lifting, you don’t have to do it again. Your rooms will stay neat enough so that some light dusting or tidying up will let you feel happy and stress-free for a long time to come.
Say It Loud: I’m in the Wrong Room!
You often don’t realize it, but you are sabotaging your relationships and your happiness by letting thoughts from one messy room dictate your behavior in others.
Here’s an example: not having enough sex? You two love each other, but after a standoff, or a bout of the silent treatment, coming back together isn’t easy. Your fights are always over the same things: You’re tired, and he’s not making enough of an effort around the house. And the cash isn’t flowing the way it used to since he had to take a less well-paying job. If he’d help more around the house at least that would even things out a bit in your mind, and give you a moment to relax, sit, and put your feet up after dinner, and who knows? If he loaded the dishes in the dishwasher and gave you a little shoulder rub, things might start warming up. So the problem isn’t in the bedroom at all; it may start in the office, where the bills are paid, or the kitchen, where you divvy up the household chores.
Can’t allay your anxiety in the office because the
real
problem is a philosophical difference between you and your mate about spending and saving? You may need to visit the basement to explore childhood memories of family money woes. But the conversation should start at the kitchen table, not in the bedroom. When you finally do return to bed, hopefully you’re a bit enlightened and feeling closer. One thing is for certain: Withholding sex won’t solve household tension; it will only cause more fights.
We are always aware of the things going on (and wrong) in other rooms: bills to pay, children misbehaving, job tension, etc. And it can make it near impossible to just be happy in the moment, even in bed. And therein lies the problem. You may need to learn to close some doors.
We Clean Our Actual House, but Rarely Our Inner House
Women are caregivers by nature, often helping those around them before they help themselves. Most women focus their free time on their outer world, the parts of their life that exist in their actual house: relationships, children, job, extended family, and the rest of it. We clean and cook and do the laundry and go to work and then chauffeur the kids around on weekends, and when we do have a little spare time to spend on ourselves it’s usually the outer self that gets the attention: We focus (happily, most of the time) on getting dressed, doing our hair, looking our best, going to the gym. And while it is worthwhile, even enjoyable, to present a polished persona to the world, it’s not the same as taking care of the
inner
self.
