Read The Nine Rooms of Happiness: Loving Yourself, Finding Your Purpose, and Getting Over Life's Little Imperfections for Free Online Page B

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 timeand 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