cover image The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections

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

Lucy Danziger, Catherine Birndorf. Voice, $24.99 (275pp) ISBN 978-1-4013-2335-6

Editor Danziger (of Self magazine), and psychiatrist Birndorf (founding director of the women's program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center) have crafted a simple but effective approach to becoming the master of one's domain that speaks to women of any age. Using the analogy of a house to examine life, the duo provides insightful personal anecdotes and case studies alongside action plans for women seeking to be more fulfilled and content. In Danziger and Birndorf's formula, the living room symbolizes one's social nature, the bedroom stands for love and sex, the office represents career, and the center of the home is the kitchen, where family gathers to talk, make decisions and eat; the bathroom represents issues of health, aging, and body image, and the basement is where memories and emotional baggage are stored. The key idea is to focus only on the room you're in, enjoy the moment, and keep issues from one room out of the others. Each section, though, provides much friendly, direct advice on being happier-it's something you work at, ""like being fit""-by correcting priorities, picking battles and learning not to sweat the small stuff.