The secret to a happier life may be remembering that you’re going to die

For many of us, confronting the limited time we have with this mortal coil is something we only do when facing the end, whether in illness, old age or a near-death experience.

Most of us fear, or even deny, death – even more so in our era of ageless celebrities and “immortality influencers”.

Dr Shoshana Ungerleider, founder of US non-profit End Well, came up with the idea of a “two-minute mortality check-in” to make thinking about death more palatable and, ultimately, help us wring more from the finite time we have.

Indeed, while facing the fact of death seems morbid, it may help us derive more pleasure and purpose from life.

The notion that thinking about dying can make our waking hours more meaningful is nothing new.

From the concept of Memento Mori (Latin for “remember you must die”) to Margot Robbie’s record-scratch-inducing “Do you guys ever think about dying?” question in Barbie, mortality is at the heart of our existentialism.

It’s a question Bronnie Ware often pondered during the near decade she spent working in palliative care, which inspired her to write her bestselling memoir, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

This experience, Ware says, taught her that “using death as a tool for living is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself”.

“By speaking about death more openly, you come to realise just how precious your life is. You find the courage to live your dreams, have hard conversations, take risks, and show up with more presence and gratitude. You realise you don’t have forever to honour your dreams.”

Sometimes called “mortality salience”, research shows that small reminders of our own mortality are important for meaning-making in life – whether through relationships, work or daily life – and even drive us to make healthier choices.

While it may sound like an oxymoron, positive psychology can be a powerful framework for thinking about life, death and meaning, says Dr Lauren Miller-Lewis, a psychology lecturer at CQUniversity and member of Flinders University’s Research Centre for Palliative Care, Death and Dying.

“You do get raised eyebrows when I start talking about the positive psychology of death because there’s a colloquial misunderstanding that positive psychology is only about smiley faces and happiness.”

In its simplest form, Miller-Lewis says positive psychology is the “scientific study of what makes life worth living”.

One of the field’s founding thinkers, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, was a Holocaust survivor who wrote about the notion of finding purpose through suffering, in his book Man’s Search for Mea