To live a meaningful, fulfilling life, you have to accept that it’ll eventually come to an end, says Shoshana Ungerleider.

Over the years of caring for ill hospital patients, Ungerleider — a doctor who specializes in internal medicine — has observed regrets among people near the end of their lives, she tells CNBC Make It.

“Being proximate to the end of your life really allows you — pushes you — to be present because that’s all you have,” says Ungerleider, 44, host of the upcoming “Before We Go” podcast and founder of the nonprofit End Well Foundation. “That is true for all of us. Throughout our lives, this present moment is all we have.”

Here are five regrets she says people often express:

• I didn’t spend enough time with the people I love.
• I worked too much and missed out on life.
• I let fear control my decisions and didn’t take risks.
• I wish I’d been braver in the face of uncertainty or opportunity.
• I focused too much on the future and lost touch with the present.

Ungerleider’s advice for getting ahead of those regrets is simple: Remind yourself that your time is limited and unpredictable, and regularly ask yourself some big, important questions. How do I want to spend my time? What matters most to me in my life?

She particularly encourages young people, who often haven’t yet faced significant health challenges — in themselves or their loved ones — to think of that reflection as “really integral to living for a long, healthy life — with good quality of life.”

“As a doctor, I’d recommend eating a balanced diet, and exercising regularly, and avoiding things like smoking and high-risk activities. Reflecting on mortality should really be on that list,” she says, adding, “Reflecting on our own mortality throughout life, whether you’re 20, 50, 80, whatever, allows us to live better every day with more meaning and purpose in our lives.”

The mere acknowledgment that you’re going to die is a helpful way to find meaning in “the little things that bring us joy,” author Alua Arthur told “The Happiness Lab” podcast in a July episode.

“Grounding in my mortality means that at some point I won’t have access to all these senses anymore,” said Arthur, who’s also the founder of Going With Grace, a Los Angeles-based end-of-life planning and support organization. “And so, how cool is it that I can feel cold on my hands? How cool is it that I have plates for me to eat off of?”

Ungerleider’s observations are similar to those of Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and Bronnie Ware, an author and former palliative care worker.

On their deathbeds, people often wish they’d expressed more love and forgiveness to people they care about, Mukherjee said in a commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania in May. “Waiting [to express yourself] merely delays the inevitable,” he noted.

In Ware’s 2011 book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,” she wrote that the most common regret she heard was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

“Many did not realise [sic] until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits,” she wrote in a blog post. “Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.”

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You’ve probably worked with someone who’s always the loudest in meetings, talks over you and your co-workers, or takes more credit for projects than they deserve.

That’s the exact kind of anti-collaborative person who Sarah Paiji Yoo tries to steer clear from when hiring new employees.

“I like to lead as an open and collaborative leader. And I think that is a must-have for every team member that we bring on,” Paiji Yoo, the CEO and co-founder of eco-friendly cleaning product startup Blueland, tells CNBC Make It.

Anti-collaborative people can make for a particularly frustrating kind of colleague — even if they’re great at their job, on paper — often contributing to low morale, stunted productivity and broken workplace relationships.

“We like to hire people who aren’t coming in and saying, ’I’m the expert in this and thus, I should be able to make the final call,” says Paiji Yoo, 40. “Folks who understand that a different set of inputs, a lot of times, lead to a better outcome.”

Collaborative people don’t just appear friendlier in the workplace, according to Heidi K. Gardner, a leadership expert and distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School. They have a “major competitive edge” over their colleagues, because they typically “deliver higher quality results, get promoted faster, are [get] more noticed by senior management,” Gardner wrote for Make It last year.

“Being a collaborator isn’t easy. But the primary goal is simple: bringing people together to solve problems and learn something new,” Gardner added. “The mindset I always have is, ‘That person thinks differently from me. They know something different that I don’t, and I can learn a lot from them.’”

In 2019, Paiji Yoo co-founded Blueland and appeared on ABC’s “Shark Tank” to pitch the television show’s investors.

She and one of her early employees, Syed Naqvi — now Blueland’s chief innovation officer — launched their company in 2019. They appeared on ABC’s “Shark Tank” later that year, and secured an investment deal with Kevin O’Leary: $270,000 in exchange for 3% of the company and a royalty deal of 50 cents per product sold until O’Leary made his money back.

By 2022, Blueland had a total of $35 million in investor funding, over $100 million in lifetime sales and profitability. Paiji Yoo, who declined to share additional financial information, pointed to her company’s ongoing relationship with O’Leary — whose television persona is decidedly prickly — as an example of positive collaboration.

“He is always just a text or call away. We’re touching base by text or call, typically at least once a month. [In the] early days, it was like every week or every two weeks,” she says. “He’s been very engaged and very hands on with the business.”

The trick is to avoid coming across as transactional, says Paiji Yoo. Sending curt Slack messages or emails, or only talking to colleagues when they want something, can send a message to your co-workers that you aren’t interested in collaborating or building relationships.

“I think it’s more important than ever to come into work relationships with an open mind and assuming good intent,” she adds. “It’s [key] for innovation.”

She’s right, says Stanford University lecturer and communication expert Matt Abrahams: You’ll gain more workplace influence by finding allies and being helpful to the people around you.

“Check in with people and really listen when people say things to you,” Abrahams told Make It in March. “I’m not saying be manipulative. Buy [and respond] to the things you care about. Those are the things that, I think, can make a difference.”

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Syed Naqvi was one of Blueland’s early employees, and is currently its chief innovation officer.

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Timothy Armoo became a multi-millionaire after selling his influencer marketing firm for an eight-figure sum when he was 27 years old, but he says that being extraordinary is no easy feat.

Armoo, the co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes, grew up in a public housing development in an impoverished area of south London. He says that his remarkable success came with sacrifices like giving up on what he considered a healthy work-life balance.

“I believe in working extremely hard … I absolutely disagree with the idea of work-life balance,” Armoo said in an interview with CNBC Make It.

“I think anyone who has achieved anything of significance has not done it by being balanced. It’s just a myth.”

Armoo explained that “there is a season for everything,” which he said were time periods when you have to work extremely hard. He said these periods might look different for different people and they could be three months, three years or even 10 years in length.

“There is a season where you say, ‘I want to achieve this goal and I want to get different results to other people. I want to get extraordinary results.’ The way you achieve those extraordinary results is by doing extraordinary things, which literally means doing things that are not ordinary,” he said.

This means instead of being balanced, you put in extra effort which “increase your odds of success.”

Armoo reiterated his point on having “seasons,” saying this could mean leaning into work when it’s time to hustle — and then prioritizing family, health, and personal life during other seasons.

“You should also not have work-life balance when you’re in your family season. You should just be so intensely focused about creating the best family that you can,” he said.

Armoo was only 14 years old when he started his first business, a tutoring company where he connected students who needed help with other students who were good at a particular subject. He took a cut of the fee.

By the age of 17, he had sold his second company, an online blog called Entrepreneur Express, for £110,000 (around $145,000.)

He follows in the footsteps of many CEOs and billionaires like Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett who have all dedicated large portions of their life to building their companies.

Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, recently told CNBC Make It that he didn’t believe in taking vacations and weekends in his 20s, but that now as a 68 year old he advises people around him to take a break when they can.

Meanwhile, 94-year-old Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, still works six days a week and goes to the office on Saturdays.

Some young people are splashing out on luxuries like travel and designer clothes instead of saving, in a trend that’s being characterized as “doom spending” on social media.

Doom spending is when a person mindlessly shops to self-soothe because they feel pessimistic about the economy and their future, according to Psychology Today.

The practice is both “unhealthy and fatalistic,” Ylva Baeckström, a senior lecturer in finance at King’s Business School and a former banker, told CNBC Make It.

It’s happening because young people are chronically online and feel like they’re constantly receiving “bad news,” she said. “It makes them feel like Armageddon.”

These young people are then translating these bad feelings into bad spending habits, Baeckström added.

In fact, 96% of Americans are concerned about the current state of the economy and more than a quarter are doom spending to deal with the stress, an Intuit Credit Karma survey of over 1,000 Americans found in November 2023.

And the phenomenon is not exclusive to America.

Stefania Troncoso Fernández, a 28-year-old publicist based in Colombia who lives with her parents, told CNBC Make It that she’s a recovered doom spender, but that high levels of inflation and political uncertainty make it very difficult to rationalize saving money.

“I know for a fact that food [costs] are getting higher and higher every day, and in my house we can’t afford to eat the same way we did maybe a year ago because things are getting more expensive,” Fernández said.

Two years ago, Fernández said she was spending carelessly on clothes and travel despite the fact that she was earning less money than she does now. It was largely because she felt like she couldn’t afford to buy a house.

“We used to have this program by the government that would lend us money to invest in real estate and at a really low rate, but with the change of government, that is not available for us anymore so we will need to pay more,” she said.

And Fernández said she’s not alone in doom spending. “It’s not just me. It’s something that is happening within my circle.”

Only 36.5% of adults globally feel like they’re doing better than their parents financially while 42.8% think they’re actually worse off than their parents, according to CNBC’s International Your Money Financial Security Survey, conducted by Survey Monkey which questioned 4,342 adults globally.

“The generation growing up now is the first generation that’s going to be poorer than its parents for a very long time,” Baeckström said. “There’s that feeling that you might never be able to achieve what your parents achieved.”

DON’T MISS: How to master your money and grow your wealth

As a result, doom spending creates the illusion of control in what feels like an out-of-control world, according to Baeckström.

“But what happens really, is that it gives you less control in the future, because if you save that money instead and invest it and do all of those things, you might actually be able to buy a house,” she said.

Daivik Goel, a 25-year-old startup founder living in Silicon Valley, said he was a doom spender when he worked as a product engineer at a biotech startup.

The habit originated from a sense of dissatisfaction with his work as well as peer pressure, he said. “It’s just all the sense of trying to escape.”

Goel, who used to spend lavishly on designer clothes, the latest technology products and going out for drinks, says doom spending is very common in Silicon Valley.

He said people will buy two of three brand-new cars, “and the reason why is because they realize that saving up for a house is going to take a very long time … so they will spend on other different items instead.”

San Francisco has some of the highest property prices in the U.S., according to a 2023 analysis by real estate website Point2. It found that 62% of properties listed in San Francisco cost over $1 million.  

Goel says that since starting his fintech company Intrepid in 2023, his doom spending habit has “completely gone” because he’s found happiness in his work. “My whole mindset shifted.”

Finance lecturer Baeckström stressed the importance of understanding your relationship with money if you want to overcome doom spending.

She said a relationship with money is like a relationship with people: it starts during childhood and sees people form different types of attachments.

“If you feel like you have a secure attachment with money, you can make a sound evaluation of something. You gather knowledge and you can evaluate [it] … But if you are insecure, or if you’re avoidant, then you’re more likely to get lured into this unhealthy spending behavior.”

These attitudes stem from a person’s upbringing: whether they were rich or poor, for example, how their family managed money, and who controlled it, Baeckström said.

Fernández said part of the reason she had felt compelled to doom spend was a lack of financial literacy. She said her dad grew up poor and nobody had ever encouraged her to save.

Making a transaction more visceral and difficult can make people think twice about doom spending, Samantha Rosenberg, co-founder and COO of Belong, a wealth-building platform, told CNBC Make It.

Rosenberg explained that online shopping aggravates the doom spending issue, but looking at items in-person may prevent impulse purchases.

“The extra decision points like choosing the store, traveling there, evaluating the item in the flesh, and then having to stand in line to buy it will help you slow down and think more critically about your purchases,” she said.

Additionally setting up mobile banking notifications creates an “extra pinch of pain” when you see the transaction authorizations coming through.

Rosenberg also recommended maybe going back to using cash. Seamless payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay “increase the risk of mindless spending,” she said, because it’s so quick and easy.  

“They bypass the emotion associated with the purchasing decision process. They also eliminate the pain of handing over money,” Rosenberg said. You have to “increase the pain of paying,” she added.

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Daivik Goel’s previous job was as a product engineer.

Some people think asking questions — to friends, peers or bosses — can make you look weak or insecure.

But the simple act can actually help you garner influence and even get the people around you to change their minds, says communication expert Matt Abrahams — if you know the right questions to ask.

“Asking a question puts you in a position of power,” Abrahams, a Stanford University lecturer, tells CNBC Make It. “I can actually raise my status and lower your status when I ask a challenging question.”

Asking good questions “demonstrates you care, it demonstrates empathy, it demonstrates you’re willing to learn and, in some cases, admit you don’t know everything,” he adds. “Those are all valuable tools and assets to have when you’re trying to grow your career or deepen relationships.”

Effective leaders often balance their credibility with humility, a willingness to learn and connect well with their colleagues, experts say. But not every question will help you get ahead. You need to know how, when and why you’re asking the question for it to help make you more influential, says Abrahams.

Here’s how to ask the right questions, at work, home and in your social life, to get ahead and strengthen relationships, he says.

Good questions contain three elements, says Abrahams:

• They’re concise, so the listener doesn’t get distracted
• They build on what the other person has said — furthering the conversation, rather than paraphrasing or summarizing
• They revolve around a focused idea, or the conversation topic’s “bottom line”

“It can have multiple purposes,” but it should be quick, clear and focused enough so people understand the point of I’m trying to make,” Abrahams says.

You should consider your intention or goal before asking any question, he adds. Do you want show you’re listening and understanding, or that you’re very interested in the subject at hand? Maybe you want to subtly help the other person understand another perspective, or simply move the conversation along.

One of the worst intentions, Abrahams notes: trying to get participation points in workplace meetings. Your questions always need to be thoughtful, he says — if you aren’t helping clarify a point or furthering a conversation, your colleagues may just roll their eyes at you.

Asking good questions, especially to persuade, influence or change someone’s mind, takes practice. Start small, and try approaching your casual interactions like interviews, where you’re trying to learn more about the other person or conversational subject, recommends Abrahams.

If your questions often ramble, and you want to become more concise, he suggests turning to artificial intelligence: Ask a chatbot like ChatGPT for shorter ways to phrase specific questions, then analyze the results. You can also ask real people for feedback — after a big meeting or serious work conversation, find a trusted colleague and ask them what they thought of the questions you posed.

Above all else, always listen to other people before asking them anything, Abrahams says.

“Anytime you are listening, you’re doing yourself a service. You are showing the other person you’re here,” Abrahams says. Then, your question is more likely to feel like you’re “inviting the other person to collaborate, and solving the problem [together] helps you foster that relationship in the long-term.”

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.