My sweet dad, whom I miss every day, used to tell a dark joke:

‍I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like his passengers.

Even if you think that’s super corny, you probably let out a little chuckle, and that was involuntary. Humor is based on surprise, which when resolved in the brain (in the parahippocampal gyrus, in case you are keeping track), provokes laughter. My dad led you down the road to thinking about dying in bed, and then suddenly made you see him asleep at the wheel of a bus.

My dad was a math professor. When students asked, “Can we have class outside?” on the odd sunny day in rainy Seattle, he was the one professor who said yes. They loved him.

My dad died when he was just four years older than I am today. A mere child. Near the end of his life when he was very sick but had accepted what was coming, he reflected quite a bit on his passing. It wasn’t sad or grim, though. On the contrary, it seemed to give him a sense of peace and perspective.

It turns out that you can do this, too, whether your death is around the corner, or many decades away. And that’s today’s newsletter topic.

For most people, death is hard to think about. We tend to avoid the subject—involuntarily, even. In one 2019 study, researchers described an experiment in which people viewed videos of faces, including their own, morphing into other faces over a six-second time span.¹ Participants were instructed to press a button when they felt that the face had definitively changed to another person’s. Appearing over the faces were various words with negative and death-related connotations (such as “grave”). When participants saw their own face with a death word, they usually pressed the button earlier than when they saw others’ faces accompanied by one, suggesting to the researchers that the participants tended to avoid associating death with themselves.

The result? We naturally want to banish death from our thoughts.

But by forcing ourselves to think about death—our own death and that of loved ones—our resource-use decisions change. I ask my 20-something graduate students to estimate how many Thanksgivings they realistically have left with their parents, and then to consider how they should spend those remaining occasions. This exercise alters decisions such as where they choose to live and work. Rarely, if ever, have I heard anyone regret deciding to live near friends and family—any more than I recall hearing someone say, as they near death, “I sure wish I’d spent more time on United Airlines.”

In completely unrelated news, I recently passed ONE MILLION MILES on United Airlines. Here I am celebrating, and thinking about, my death.

There are other benefits of contemplating death. For example, paradoxical though it may seem, doing so can encourage positive thinking, as researchers found in 2007.² It encourages you to think extremely clearly, and realize that you have a choice about how to see the present moment—and choose the more positive alternative.

So, if thinking about your death is actually a good happiness protocol, how can you put it into practice? Try these three ideas.

  1. Make it a routine. Try beginning each day with a version of this: “I know that in a few years, I will be dead. But I am alive today, and I will not waste it.” This will help bring positivity and energy to your day. Maybe even spend some time on how you intend to make the day truly memorable. (For example, you might decide that today is the day you share your best marine mammal impression with your colleagues at the weekly staff meeting, flopping up on the table and barking like a seal. Or you could give away all your possessions and join the violent cult that’s living in that house at the edge of town. These are just two that I have tried.)
  2. Survey your goals and plans. For the sake of some future reward, are you neglecting your family life today? Your friendships? Your spiritual development? Envision yourself having just months to live and giving your current self some life advice. You’re probably not saying, “The health of your marriage can wait; use all your time now to make it to assistant regional manager for sales!”
  3. Think of the good that will outlast you. Whether you are religious or not, some psychologists posit that this is a good way to experience deeper meaning in the here and now.³ I don’t mean that you should struggle to achieve some glorious legacy. Rather, the idea is to think of how your efforts to make life better for others will enrich future generations, regardless of whether they know your name.

See you next week—if the cult lets you read your email,

Arthur

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Mrs. B and I are hard at work on our marriage retreat in Santa Fe next week. If you are free and want to see how to attend, click here. If you can’t make this one, click here, and I will keep you posted on future retreats.

P.S. We’re hiring! If you possess the hyper-efficient, “think three steps ahead” logistics mastery of The Devil Wears Prada, but your heart is pure Ted Lasso, we want to hear from you. Interested? Apply here. You can also learn more about our other open roles at www.arthurbrooks.com/careers.

References​
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[1] Dor-Ziderman, Y., Lutz, A., & Goldstein, A. (2019). Prediction-based neural mechanisms for shielding the self from existential threat. NeuroImage, 202, 116080.

[2]DeWall, C. N., & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). From terror to joy: Automatic tuning to positive affective information following mortality salience. Psychological Science, 18(11), 984-990.

[3] Anderson, K. A., Fields, N. L., Cassidy, J., & Peters-Beumer, L. (2022). Purpose in life: A reconceptualization for very late life. Journal of Happiness Studies, 23(5), 2337-2348.