The Nine Rooms of Happiness

All too often, women fear their momentary mistakes rather than reveling in their episodes of excellence. The number of mistakes adds up, gathering mass and force to shake the foundations of even the happiest life. Unfortunately, this is the way many women think about everything—their love lives, their bank accounts, their family life, their career, and their body image.

Lucy Danziger, editor in chief of Self, and Catherine Birndorf, a psychiatrist and expert on women’s mental health issues, have teamed up to figure out why it’s all too common for women to be thrown off balance if things are going well in all areas of life except for one.

In their new book, THE NINE ROOMS OF HAPPINESS: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life’s Little Imperfections, they use the simple metaphor of a house to illustrate the central problem: when women should be grateful for what they have in their lives in the room at hand, they are either seeing the room’s imperfections or, worse, worrying about another room. The book takes women through different parts of their lives (homes), helps them understand their patterns, and gives them new ways of thinking to solve their own problems.

Each room represents a facet of a woman’s life:
- the bedroom is about issues with intimacy—sex, love, desire, and the connection to a partner;
- the bathroom is about issues of health, vanity, body image, weight, and aging;
- the kitchen is about food, nourishment, and cooking; it is also the place to discuss household chores and the division of labor;
- the office/study is about work, career, money, and financial security;
- the living room is about social connections: friendships, neighbors, and social experiences;
- the family room is about family ties, siblings, parents, and other nearest-and-dearest;
- the basement is about memories—childhood, college years, and important life experiences;
- the kid’s room is about parenting issues, including the question of whether or not to have children.
- the attic is about family expectations, the desire to create one’s own legacy, and other emotional heirlooms; and

Danziger and Birndorf evaluated problems that came up in hundreds of interviews with women to find out why a woman’s jubilation or even just self-satisfaction tends to be fleeting, and why the extended periods between those joyful moments are plagued by the inability to appreciate all the good around her.

This book offers insight and strategies for dealing with issues that chip away happiness—and gives women new ways of thinking to break their old self-destructive patterns. With this book, readers will learn not only how to be happier in every emotional room, but also how to live in the moment and enjoy each room—joyfully accepting, improving and appreciating themselves and their lives.