5 books that teach you how to die well — by living better

Every now and then, if you’re lucky, you’ll encounter a book that changes your life. History’s great novels have earned a reputation in this regard. While the stories of Homer, Virginia Woolf, Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Jane Austen may not be for everyone all the time, an education in the classics can change people in profound ways and give our minds a meeting place in the world of ideas.

Some books take a more direct approach: They explicitly aim to change how readers live their lives. They may be shelved in philosophy, psychology, or self-help, but their goal is to help you find perspective, search for meaning, or guide you to find your purpose so that when the end inevitably comes, you can look back on your life with gratitude and contentment.

Here are five books that have helped millions of people do just that. Use them as you will.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946)

Finding purpose in one’s life is arguably the most potent means of change. There are countless stories of people who have altered the course of their lives by working hard to accomplish or express something important to them. Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s semi-autobiographical magnum opus, is all about what we can achieve when we have purpose. It’s also a warning about what we lose when we lack it.

In the book’s first half, Frankl recounts his time as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps, describing not only his experiences but also his observations of others. In particular, he focuses on the psychology of the victims who had to suffer a “suffering [with] no limits.”

“From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world,” Frankl writes, “but only these two — the ‘race’ of the decent man and the ‘race’ of the indecent man.”

He concludes that those who had a purpose or something to look forward to in the future were more likely to survive the ordeals. This observation leads to the book’s second half, where he introduces his school of psychotherapy, known as “logotherapy.”

As you might have already guessed, his theories are based mainly on the need for people to have meaning and purpose in their lives. He argues that this is the primary motivator for human beings: We must have meaning. Only when people have a “why” can they endure.

When they don’t, well, as Frankl writes: “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future — his future — was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.”

Perhaps the best-selling book ever written in less than ten days, Man’s Search for Meaning has sold more than 16 million copies and been translated into several languages. It frequently appears on lists of the most influential books of the 20th century — and for good reason.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande (2014)

Everyone will die one day — sorry if we’re the ones to break the bad news to you. The good news is that if you like, you can try to delay death as long as possible. More bad news: That comes with its own costs. It turns out everything is bad for you, especially if it tastes good or gives you any sense of pleasure. Even if you fully optimize your lifestyle around health and longevity, nothing can stop the inevitable march of time.

How we approach this shared fate is the central question of Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Much of the book directly examines how doctors approach aging. He argues that the medical field overemphasizes survival at the expense of patients’ well-being and quality of life.

“In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all of its moments — which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep,” Gawande writes. “For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.”

He also delves into the history of age-related care in our society, philosophizes over stories of his brushes with mortality, and discusses the comparative advantages of different kinds of end-of-life care. While he ultimately favors hospice, his musings are worth reading for those on any side of the euthanasia debate.

A wise man once said, “You’re going to get sick, get old, and die someday.” How we live our lives with that understanding can vary considerably. This book is an excellent set of thoughts on how we might do better as we (inevitably) age.

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (1973)

If you were a bit distressed by the news that you’re going to die one day, that’s absolutely normal. In fact, according to the next book on our list, this sense of dread may be the fundamental driver of your life and most human activity throughout history.

In The Denial of Death, cultural anthropologist Ernst Becker argues that the basis of human civilization is our desire to ignore our mortality. For some people, this will mean creating something to outlast them, such as writing a novel or building a grand temple. For others, it’s having kids and a legacy that lives on after them. Many others turn to religion. But ultimately, your activities, personality traits, and lifestyle choices result from this ever-simmering fear.

“Beyond a given point man is not helped by more ‘knowing,’ but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way,” Becker writes. “As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes.”

Those who can’t process their death anxiety with an “immortality project” often turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms or petty distractions. One of the problems of modern times, he argues, is that the systems of immortality humanity had used for millennia were breaking down. The old religions, with their promise of life after death in one form or another, no longer held their old sway in the age of reason.

The book has enjoyed consistent popularity since its publication. It also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Perhaps fittingly for an immortality project, Becker won the award a few months after his death.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck (2006)

Since the last few entries dealt with death anxiety and other heavy topics, let’s turn to something more upbeat. Psychologist Carol Dweck has been studying implicit theories of intelligence since the late 1980s, and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success details her findings for a non-academic audience. If you’ve ever heard the term “growth and fixed mindsets,” this book is where it comes from.

In it, she contends that many people fall into one of two mindsets regarding their intelligence and skills. Some people believe their abilities are fixed, meaning there is precious little they can do to improve them, so they don’t bother trying. Others feel their abilities can improve with time. This is known as a growth mindset. Such people are more likely to view qualities such as hard work, resilience, and determination as virtues. Failure is less of a danger to their sense of self or social standing. It is instead a learning experience.

“Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?” Dweck writes. “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

The book is mostly written with an eye toward the education system, but its core lessons can be applied in many parts of your life. Not everything about you was set at birth or even your 30th birthday. If you maintain a growth mindset, things can change, Dweck argues, and that helps you enjoy life’s bounty more fully.

Man and His Symbols by Carl G. Jung (1964)

We’ll wrap up with a book by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Written at the end of his life, Man and His Symbols covers a wide range of topics related to his theories of the human mind. Its discussions of Jungian analysis, dream interpretation, and the individuation process may strike many readers as strange. However, it is perhaps his most striking work for a general audience, as its central message has resonated across many cultures over time: Know thyself.

As Jung puts it in one essay: “A man likes to believe that he is the master of his soul. But as long as he is unable to control his moods and emotions, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into his arrangements and decisions, he is certainly not his own master.”

For Jung, this understanding includes that parts of ourselves that we don’t like (our “Shadows”) just as much as it consists of the parts we identify with. Jung’s writing beckons us to consider the psyche as a much larger system than many people suppose. Something closer to a soul than simple mind. In his system, knowing yourself and becoming who you are is the journey of a lifetime, but one that everyone must decide to take or avoid. Will you say no, or dare to know?

Perhaps that is the key takeaway from these books. Know what motivates you, how you grasp your own mortality, and how you understand your ability to change. So please give them a read. After all, those who don’t change their minds never change anything. Let alone the rest of their lives.