My former boss at Self, Lucy Danziger, just co-wrote a book, The Nine Rooms of Happiness, all about how to figure out, when you feel like crap, exactly why you feel like crap, and how to de-crapify your life.

Or at least change your feelings about your life, which is really all that counts, when you think about it. Most all happiness research uses measures of “subjective well-being” to gauge what is happy-making and what fails to deliver lasting joy. In other words, they ask folks what makes them happy, super jazzed, and off-the-hook ecstatic and for how long. Then they analyze the data and come up with truisms that the likes of Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Bette Midler and countless others have been singing about for decades: Girls just wanna have fun, you gotta have faith and you gotta have friends. Oh, and for what it’s worth, money can’t buy you love, nor does it lead to lasting happiness.

Good reminders, all, and I appreciate when there’s solid research that confirms what we know or dispels conventional pop music wisdom. It’s just that I live in fear of the day that science figures out where on a woman’s body to attach electrodes to measure how “objectively” happy she is. After that, it’s only a matter of time before certain people are declared sub-optimally content, even if they were pretty sure they felt fine (they’ll call it SOC Syndrome), and market old drugs under new names to treat it. Pretty soon, the women who feel fine will start to feel sub-optimally fine and want the pill. There will not be a generic until it goes off patent…you know the drill.

In any case, I’m enjoying the book, and not just because I know and like the author and see lots of little interactions we had over the years in a new light. There are lots of dishy women’s stories about the little irksome negative things that vex us every day, along with some interesting insight as to how to untangle them.

Lucy’s nine rooms refer metaphorically to each of your emotional spaces–the bedroom, in which you sort through intimacy and romance issues; the bathroom, in which you deal with health, body image and aging, and so on. (That’s the last time I make fun of my husband for spending too much time in the can. Apparently I practically live in the bathroom.)

The idea is to make sure the stuff in one room stays where it belongs, so you don’t, say, spew old “basement” problems (like that your dad never thought you were good enough) in your actual or metaphorical office, where you deal with issues of success. You also want to work on keep your rooms as tidy as possible, so you don’t open the metaphorical cabinet door and get concussed by a metaphorical can of chick peas in your metaphorical kitchen.

Living as I do in a two-bedroom apartment with a husband, two six-year-olds,  every single one of the elaborate glittery arts and crafts projects they’ve ever made and an inexplicable surplus of chick peas, I can’t help thinking that nine rooms (plus one that’s all mine to do what I want in it) would make me happy in the literal sense. But according to the book, it probably wouldn’t. What’s more, nine actual rooms would be hard to keep clean, just as it can be hard to keep all nine of your metaphorical rooms clean.

But it’s a worthy pursuit, and if the rambling Victorian mansion imagery helps you organize your thinking about how you take care of yourself, the book has lots of interesting new ways of looking and old problems (the co-author is a psychiatrist who has a lovely, non-judgmental way of approaching things.)

What I liked most about the book was that while I understood many of the aggravations the women in their 20s and 30s discussed–the needy friends, the belief that the behaviors of those close to me reflect on me–having lived through them, I have far fewer of them than before I was a Formerly. Whether my rooms are cleaner than they were, or whether I’ve come to embrace a certain amount of messiness, I’m not sure.

One thing I do know is, now that I’m a Formerly, my life isn’t objectively better than it was when I was in my 20s and 30s. I just feel better about it. And, like I said, that’s all I care about.

Question for you: Is it more important to change your circumstances to improve your life, or to change your feeling about your life, as is, including all or most of its preexisting conditions? I’d love to hear from you.

“Yeah, well, I got news for you: Life isn’t fair, so SUCK IT UP! If it were, our private chef would be making you lunch and the chauffeur would drive you to school and I would still be ASLEEP instead of having this conversation. AGAIN!”

No, I didn’t say that to my twin girls this morning, but I thought it so loudly they may have heard. What the ladies found so unconscionable was that after they had bickered for 20 minutes about who got to wear the pink sweatshirt with the fairy on it, I told them neither of them could. We then discussed how frustrating it is that we can’t always get what we want, and I explained the reasoning behind my entirely equitable decision. I knew they weren’t happy, I told them, but short of magically pulling an identical fairy sweatshirt out of my behind (gross-out faces ensued), it was the best I could do in the two minutes we had before we had to leave. Nonetheless, they harrumphed and stomped around and insisted that I was perpetrating a grave injustice against them and possibly children everywhere. This, before I’d had my coffee. But at least they weren’t arguing with each other.

It was a welcome respite, considering that Sasha and Vivian, who are 6, have recently found the following unfair (partial list): that Vivian’s class went to the museum, and Sasha’s didn’t; that Sasha’s class got to eat the marshmallows they used for making 3-D geometric shapes with toothpicks, while Vivian’s class didn’t even do that activity; that Viv’s tooth fell out first, even though Sasha was born 90 seconds before Vivian and so is “older”; that Sasha’s glasses are purple and not “boring old gold,” like Vivian’s; that Sasha “got to have” alone time with Mommy when she stayed home from school vomiting into the Hello Kitty trash bin; that Mommy sits on Viv’s bed to kiss her good night, but Sasha only gets kissed from a standing position (Sasha sleeps on the top bunk, which is hard for me to climb on). By the way, it also is sometimes unfair to Vivian that Sasha gets the top. It makes me insane.

I could go on, but you likely have a version of this fairness drama unfolding in your own home. The bones of contention can be just about anything — material (”Her lollipop is bigger!”), experiential (”He always gets to stay up later than I do!”), even metaphysical (”You laugh at her jokes but never mine!”). And, sorry, but parents of only children aren’t exempt, because having to share toys on playdates can seem unfair to some singletons, as can not getting to do or have what their friends have when they reach school age.

Clearly, kids’ concept of fairness differs greatly from ours, and it changes over time. “For very young children, like three or four, fairness is just desire: I want what I want, and if I don’t get it, that’s not fair,” says Judi Smetana, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester in New York. For a period after that, until they’re anywhere from 7 to 11, fairness means equality — the same thing as someone else at the same time, or pretty darn close. Most children, when they get to school, will start to recognize some nuance, like it’s fair if two kids have different things of similar value (a chocolate and a strawberry ice cream, for instance), but the intensity of the issue is just as great. “Depending on how diverse their school is, they’re probably going to have major comparisons along socioeconomic lines,” says Robert Myers, Ph.D., an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California at Irvine School of Medicine and webmaster of Childdevelopment info.com. This complicates things even more, as a 7-year-old generally does not yet have the perspective to understand why one family may be able to afford things that another cannot.

It’s not until middle school or early adolescence that most kids can be more logical about fairness, says Myers. That includes, say, accepting the idea that her little brother might need more attention from you sometimes, and while that’s not thrilling, it is fair. Not that it’s easy getting to that place.

“Sometimes I think it’s about ‘Who do you love more?’” says Andrea Kane, the Atlanta mom of Carina, 7, and Josephine, 9. Her daughters protest perceived inequities in how many sleepovers the other gets, who got which treat and how big it was, and dozens of other issues. Which is why Kane tries hard to show them there are, in fact, no inequalities on that front. “If I bring up something I love about Carina that Josie doesn’t have,” she says, “I’ll make sure to point out that I love Josie for who Josie is, too.” Then again, sometimes it’s just about a pink sweatshirt with a fairy on it, or anything that doesn’t have a duplicate. Vivian Scheidt of Seattle, a mom of two girls, 6 and 8, recalls a particularly baffling fight over a silver cup that had contained Hanukkah dreidels. “As soon as the cup became interesting to one child, the other child wanted it. They created the inequality.”

So what’s a parent with a caffeine-withdrawal headache to do to keep the peace? Take a deep breath, and remember that all this arguing is part of learning how to be a good person. Several studies have shown that kids’ early sense of fairness may have deep roots in human survival — if everyone treats everyone fairly, the group will continue to thrive. But whether a child develops a strong sense of fairness and empathy has partly to do with how parents handle things, says Myers. Below, a few strategies that can help your kids move in the right direction.

Explain Yourself Understanding that you’re not being arbitrary doesn’t always soothe kids’ immediate sense of injustice (see sweatshirt anecdote, above), but walking them through your logic isn’t a waste of breath, either. “It’s a good way to stimulate their development and understanding of fairness,” says Smetana. Try something like “The reason I let him stay up later than you is because younger kids need more sleep than older ones. When you’re his age, you will be able to stay up until the same time.” Reassure them that you’ve given the issue of fairness and their concerns a lot of thought. Myers suggests saying, “You have to realize that I treat everybody fairly, but I treat both of you differently depending on your needs.” Eventually, they’ll catch on.

Point Out What’s Really Important For a while, when the girls were 4 and we were having our alone-time afternoons, they each asked that we do exactly the same activity and eat the same food at the same restaurant. “Vivian saw the monkeys, and it’s not fair if I don’t get to see the monkeys,” Sasha would say. No amount of playing up the rockin’ reptiles (that Vivian didn’t see) could dissuade her, and things got mighty boring, at least for me. Because it’s still tricky for kids this age to get that “fair” doesn’t mean “identical,” Myers says it might have helped to remind them that even if they did different activities, the prize was Mommy time, which they both got in equal measure.

Listen to Their Feelings You know you’re being fair, and, deep down, they may even know it, too, but they’re still plenty pissed off. Joel Jacobs, a dad in Berkeley, CA, recalls an incident in which his 8-year-old daughter, Talia, didn’t want to go to a holiday gathering at her Aunt Nancy’s house. “She thought it was unfair that her views were being ignored,” he says. Rather than dragging her to the car (which we all resort to in a pinch), he encouraged her to talk about her feelings. “I saw that she was conflicted about it,” says Jacobs. It wasn’t that Talia didn’t want to see her aunt; it was just that, because her mom had been seriously ill that year, she wanted the holiday to feel like it used to, before all the tumult. That meant spending the holiday at home. Jacobs then asked her to imagine how her aunt might feel if they canceled at the last minute, and she came around.

Bounce It Back to Them If they disagree with your strategy, asking them what they think would be fair works shockingly well sometimes. When one of my girls came to me insisting that it was her turn to pick what they watch on TV, I said (truthfully) that I didn’t know whose turn it was, but that they needed to come up with a solution. (I said this not because I’m such a genius but because I had referee fatigue.) Within a minute, they decided to watch what one girl wanted for half the time, then switch. Bonus: Because it was their rule, they stuck to it, letter and spirit. This works differently but just as well with older kids. “Sometimes they come up with a great idea together, but other times they realize that the situation is, in fact, fair exactly the way it is,” says Jacobs of his daughters.

End the Conversation If the protestations continue even after you’ve explained why something is fair and allowed the aggrieved party to have his say, give yourself the last word. Telling him to SUCK IT UP! isn’t ideal, but something along the lines of “You’re right, life can be disappointing sometimes; we all hate that” works. It’s tempting to give in, but resist if you’re able; otherwise, it sends the message that you’ll accommodate him if he persists in playing the unfair card. “Something can be fair even if they don’t understand it,” says Kane.

Don’t Expect Everyone (or Sometimes Anyone) To Be Happy With little kids, “you’re never going to satisfy them,” says Judith Sansone, a mom in San Francisco who has two girls, 4 and 6. “They are irrational beings — their needs are so immediate.” Even when they’re a bit older, you still may not be able to, at least not entirely.

Scheidt, the Seattle mom, recalls the time she got her girls identical hats because each always seemed to covet what the other had; besides, her younger daughter wanted to look like the older one. Wouldn’t you know it? Her older daughter informed her that it wasn’t fair that she had to wear the same thing as her little sister just so her sister would feel the situation was fair, which was, well, a fair point. “There is nothing I can do about that. They’re the keepers of equality, and they’re always looking for unfairness,” Scheidt says.

Happily, other parents and Ph.D.’s say that the issue fades somewhat on a day-to-day level as kids’ understanding matures, usually by age 11 or 12 (thanks, in part, to your having the fairness conversation. Again.). But brace yourself: As they grow into adults, they tend to remember the perceived inequities, not all the times you twisted yourself into a pretzel to do the fair thing. Indeed, Kane says she felt for a long time that her younger sister always got the goodies when they were growing up, a feeling her older daughter has shared, despite the fact that Kane knows she’s being equitable. “I look at my girls and think, You’ll only get it when you have kids.” That’s called karma, and while it can be a bitch, it’s totally fair.

Stephanie Dolgoff has been writing and editing for magazines and newspapers since she graduated from college in 1989. Her first book, MY FORMERLY HOT LIFE: DISPATCHES FROM JUST THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUNG, based on her blog Formerlyhot.com, is due out in September of 2010.

Stephanie is currently senior projects director at Health magazine. Before that, she was editor-at-large at Parenting, a contributing editor at Real Simple, health director and features director at SELF magazine, and prior to that, executive editor and senior contributing editor at Glamour. She’s written for “O” The Oprah Magazine, Fitness, Parents, Parenting, Redbook, Seventeen, CosmoGirl, Ladies Home Journal, Prevention, American Photo, and many others. For five years she authored a monthly sex column for teens, Ask Anything, for the now defunct YM magazine. Her articles have also appeared in the New York Times and the New York Post.

Stephanie has won several awards for her writing, and a section she helped to oversee, SELF magazine’s 2005 Breast Cancer Handbook, won the ASME award in the category of personal service. Her work has also been published in several books, including The Elephant in the Playroom (Penguin), and The Enlightened Bracketologist (Bloomsbury). One of her essays appeared in Behind the Bedroom Door (Delacorte), in 2008.

To view a few of her television appearances, click here

When she’s not working at Health, Stephanie is cranking out Formerly Hot, and looking for new and innovative ways to get the word out about her book.

Stephanie was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives with her husband and twin girls. She attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.