Welcome to Mindful Monday!

My book, The Price of Becoming, is on sale right now on Amazon. So far, it is a USA Today National Bestseller, an LA Times Bestseller, a Publishers Weekly Bestseller, and a Success Magazine Bestseller. Thank you for buying it, reading it, writing Amazon reviews about it... Everything. Thank you.

Here are some things from this week...

• A great conversation with Tiago Forte about doing your annual life review
• A John Gardner essay about self-renewal
• A cool story about Pat Tillman climbing to the top of the light tower of a football stadium
• Some useful rules to memorize
• Wise words from Richard Feynman

#714: Tiago Forte - Start Planning Your Annual Review Now

​Tiago Forte is the best-selling author of Building a Second Brain. He has done an annual life review every year since 2008, and his new book, Life in Perspective: The Art and Power of the Annual Life Review, teaches the method he built along the way. We talk about... How to Reflect on Your Year & Plan the Next One: Annual Review Questions, Gratitude Lists, Building a Second Brain, and Goals as Learning Experiments. You can also WATCH our conversation on YouTube.

The Road to Self-Renewal

John W. Gardner was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, an activist and author, and recipient of the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is an interesting essay. One paragraph: Still another example is Winston Churchill. At age 25, as a correspondent in the Boer War, he became a prisoner of war, and his dramatic escape made him a national hero. Elected to Parliament at 26, he performed brilliantly, held high cabinet posts with distinction, and at 37 became First Lord of the Admiralty. Then he was discredited, unjustly, I believe, by the Dardanelles expedition -- the defeat at Gallipoli-- and lost his Admiralty post. There followed 24 years of ups and downs. All too often the verdict on him was "Brilliant but erratic...not steady, not dependable." He had only himself to blame. A friend described him as a man who jaywalked through life. He was 66 before his moment of flowering came. Someone said, "It's all right to be a late bloomer if you don't miss the flower show." Churchill didn't miss it.

Above The Noise: The Story of Pat Tillman's Light Tower Climb

It’s often said that every picture tells a story. That’s the start of this one. The day the entire country — including ASU’s coaching staff and many of the linebacker’s teammates... Discovered that Pat Tillman liked to climb to the highest point of Sun Devil Stadium just to sit and reflect, to get above all the noise.

Memorized Rules

We treat life advice the same way we learn someone’s name: briefly acknowledge it, then assume we’ll remember it. By committing six Memorized Rules to memory, something critical happens: You remove the friction that makes advice unlikely to be acted on. You no longer have to look at your notes. The most profound realization, however, is that adding a new Memorized Rule redefines your identity. These principles become your intuitions for what the right thing to do is. They influence how you treat others. What you work on. What you value. CLICK HERE to learn more.

Wise Words

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.” -- Richard Feynman​

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Ryan Hawk NEW Book - The Price of Becoming​