I worked as a fisherman for many years, I think once you have come close or pushed to the edge you learn to accept your mortality a bit better, I doubt many of us want to die and it's something we must all prepare our minds to work through..Try Skydiving or bungee jumping .. certainly give you the fear and once you experience that it should be easier..If all you do is sit and wonder that's all you'll ever do..confront it and smile at it then say see ya later..

Look at it this way.
Everything that lives will die, there is nothing after that no afterlife.
It is no different for believers, they will still die, they will not have another life after this.

So accept that you have been dying since the day you were born, your now is more important than you past or future because they do not exist. They have existed or will exist, but for now they don't.
Your death is part of your life as much as your birth was, they are like book ends.
Your life is the books and pages of books in between.
To quote Don Maclean,
the book of life is brief,
and once a page is read,
all but love is dead.

Life is a journey,
except you don't finish this journey and look back on it,
you end when the journey ends.
Nothing will or can change that.
Accept what life is,
accept the reality of it because you can't change it.
Accept it and enjoy it,
savour it, relish it,
LIVE it.
I have spent time with a lot of people even older than I am who are quite happy to shuffle off,
as you get older
life is less fun
I am noticing it myself,
I cannot do as much as I could and I still have 35 years and 23 days to go as of today.
When that is gone I think I will be content to shuffle off.
If you are around, the party starts 16th February 2053 and goes for 3 months.
When you fully accept your mortality, it is actually quite easy.

The truth is, whatever is going to happen will happen, nothing can change that, so why worry.
Live each day with a smile.

Atheistic Taoists hold we should treat everything we are given with delight and when it is gone give it no more thought. I say we should look upon growing older as an opportunity to love, cherish and identify with those things that will continue once your own heart stops beating. ?

We are here for a good time not a long time. Do whatever makes you happy content and satisfied and don't care what others think.

Did you fear your existance in 1920? You shouldn't fear your existance when you are gone. It's the false/fantasy that you are imortal that has your anxiety razing it's fur. You felt nothing good nor bad in 1920 and you will likely feel the exact same way in 100 years. Your atoms will be in something else. Grass, a dolphin, a bird and baby boy and maybe all at the same time.

Well I've been an agnostic/atheist for around 40 yrs. Most days I want to live forever and dread the end of existance. On some (luckily)rare days it could end yesterday.. Same as it ever was..

I don't fear death...but I am pissed off that I won't get to do everything, see everything, learn everything before I go. I feel cheated.

Everyone's afraid to die that's normal...it's being afraid of what happens afterwards is the weird thing like everyone is saying it's exactly like before you were born so really there's nothing to be afraid of

Fear of death never really goes away no matter what you believe. But I have found a cancer diagnosis tends to force one to live more intentionally with less fear.

Mark Twain said it pretty well;
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

You have to get it taken away by life or circumstance but can prbably find a more controlled way .. I have faced it enough times not to fear it but do respect it. I have been in situations where it was an inevitability and it didn't feel how I imagined .. everytime I have got to the point where have to accept about to die on that spot right then it's been amazingly peaceful. Not what I thought. I don't really fear it now and think it's only to be feared if you are not at peace with yourself on some fundamental level. Luckily I haven't done anything worth real guilt.

Make peace with yourself I don't think there is anything to fear.

When you except that death is the end of the life cycle. We all die at some point. The best thing to do is to live life tothe fullest. I have accepted that one day I will die andit doesn't scare me, I don't look forward to it and hope it doesn't happen for a long time but I don't fear it.

Do you remember how you felt before you were conceived? Because that's exactly how you'll feel after your demise. The year 2100 has no less to fear than the year 1900 did.

Death is a difficult concept. It is strange to think about being gone because being alive is all you've ever consciously known. I try to focus more on how to make the most of the precious time I have here and now.

If you think about it, fer of death is mostly fear of the unknown. Beyond that is our basic animal instinct to survive. So, you never coimpletely get over the fear of death completely, but you may experience ti differently, or jus tthink about it differently.

Remember before you were born? It’s kinda like that.

I don't know because I don't have this dread but I sort of think that if I don't have it then others can 'not have it ' ; like the fear is optional . And if you think about every other person who died were they not scared, maybe because they imagined a better beautiful life after death or were they still scared that they might not get into heaven? I suppose it takes until you decide not to worry about it because its your life that is suffering right now - and death is inevitable for all of us

If you had this fear while religious -- then you're going to have it still. You must overcome your fear. There are some who recant on their death bed. How I overcame fear (and this had nothing to do with religion) is to memorize a poem: Book -- "Dune" by Frank Herbert, 'Litany Against Fear". It has always helped (though not needed in decades). It is part of our nature to fear the unknown -- it's written into our genetic makeup. Find someone to cuss / discuss your fears.

The idea of my consciousness ceasing to exist terrifies me beyond my ability to express with words. Live your life as if it’s the only one you have, but treat the world and those around you like you’ll live forever.

I can't answer your question, but I can tell you that I'd rather face a hard truth than a comforting lie. All but the most famous of us will be at best a name in a family tree after a three or four generations. You can take comfort in the idea that some part of you will live on in either your progeny or in the influence you've had on those you've interacted with. If that doesn't help, then just live the best life you can while you're here. It's the only life you have.

Believing in the boogy man in the sky or not, won't change how you feel about the unknown, and things beyond your control. The unknown will remain unknown, but you SHOULD have the comfort of knowing it is just you vs the world (as it always was), but now you KNOW it !!!! There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, so just relax and enjoy the ride !!!!

Death is a part of life. Everyone and everything eventually dies ...
Make the best in life, because life is short. Death, however, is forever ...

I don't know whether we will end, exactly. What I felt around my stepmother's deathbed makes me wonder about dualism and whether some part of our consciousness might survive.

It's not a given that as an atheist you will no longer fear death.
Me, personally, I got over my fear of death when I accepted that it is only my ego that is afraid of dying, and in fact, my ego doesn't actually exist - my ego thinks it exists, bit it is only a figment of my imagination.
Your ego isn't real. It never was. So let it die now, and then you will be free of its bullshit and its clinging to life and its need to exist forever.