Happiness interview with Ben Casnocha.

From time to time, I post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness. During my study of happiness, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies. I’m much more likely to be convinced to try a piece of advice urged by a specific person who tells me that it worked for him or her, than by any other kind of argument.

This interview is with blogger, author, and entrepreneur-since-age-12 Ben Casnocha. I have an especially fond feeling for Ben, because he was one of the first people I met in real life after meeting him in blogland – I was flabbergasted when he actually turned up as real person, looking just like the photo on his site.

What’s astonishing to me is that Ben is only twenty years old, and a full-time college student, and yet he seems to be everywhere and doing everything. For example, he has started two companies, wrote a terrific book, My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley, and speaks and consults. He has a very popular blog, Ben Casnocha, and a large readership for his newsletter.

If you read his stuff, you know that he does a lot of thinking about happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Ben: Stimulating, soulful, laughter-filled conversation.

Gretchen: Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
Ben: Dwelling on a negative thought that seems to just cycle through my head. Wish I had better mind control so I could say to myself: "Accept thoughts on X, deny thoughts on Y." The passage of time, I've found, is the only reliable way a negative thought flushes out of my system.

Gretchen: Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve find very helpful?
Ben: I collect tons of quotes and mantras. One I read yesterday I liked: "The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable." - Martin Buber. Not sure it's my ultimate mantra, but it's a good one. I spend most of my cycles trying to figure out why things work they way they do, and I need to remind myself that some things just *can't* be rationally, logically explained.

Gretchen: If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
Ben: Treadmill and push-ups. Talking to family and long-term friends. And trying to cheer other people up (in the process, I cheer up myself).

Gretchen: Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy -- if so, why? If you were unhappy, how did you become happier?
Ben: I'm more even keeled. I think I have a high set point. But, the past few months I've felt more funks than usual, and while it has been difficult I think hitting lower moments makes you appreciate the highs more. How am I dealing with it? Confronting the unhappiness directly and moving swiftly to eliminate what I see as the causes -- the events, people, things, etc -- from my life. And trying to be at peace with the fact that life is cyclical and some days / months / years will be better than others.

Gretchen: Do you work on being happier? If so, how?
Ben: I think about it / work on it. If you don't actively think about it, you outsource what it means to others, like the media, and they tend to promote a materialistic conception of the word. So I do think it's possible to pursue happiness without ever really knowing what it means, or without ever thinking you'll actually *arrive*.

Of course, one of the main ways I think about happiness is by reading the blog The Happiness Project. Have you heard of it? Some great stuff there. :)

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This probably relates to the happiness of very few people other than myself, but I was happy to see John Tierney's Tips From the Potlatch, Where Giving Knows No Slump. Many, many years ago, on my lunch hour, I saw a diorama display on potlatch in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. -- and for years after, I was obsessed by the question, "Why do people destroy their own possessions?" (It is rare and beautiful to be obsessed by a question that way.) I wrote a paper about it in law school, I wrote a bad novel about it, and finally I got a chance to write a short book about it, Profane Waste, with my friend, photographer Dana Hoey. I will never tire of the mystery of potlatch.

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