Law 13 · Build Before You Are Ready
The man who paid for his own risk.
Tom Hardy put $2.5 million into Taboo knowing half the room would hate it. On why permission never arrives, and why he stopped waiting for it.
Tom Hardy · Actor
Law 18 · Become Dangerous, Then Govern It
The challenges on the mat are bigger than on set.
The director has a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He says the mat is harder than any film set, because nobody can help you there.
Guy Ritchie · Director, jiu-jitsu black belt
Law 13 · Build Before You Are Ready
Doing things rather than dreaming about them.
DJ, actor, kickboxer, and now director. Elba on a father who died at seventy-two and the urgency that followed.
Idris Elba · Actor
The first cup is the quiet one.
A washed Colombian for the hour before the day gets its hands on you.
Red apple, panela, a long clean finish. Roasted in the UK to order and posted through the letterbox, so it is on the counter when you come down. Grind it while the kettle runs. Drink it before the phone.
Inside every bag there is a card. One of the twenty-two laws, printed on thick stock, yours to keep or pass on. The coffee is the point. The card is the gift.
250 g · Huila, Colombia · Washed · Whole bean or ground
More stories
All stories →One story a week.
Someone who earned their ground, read slowly, in your inbox on a Sunday. The coffee ships to the list first.
About the author
Shane Quigley
The people I interviewed
Actors, athletes, adventurers and founders. Tap a face to read their story.
A code · not motivation
The 22 Laws
of Growth & Freedom
Twenty-two patterns, found in the lives of people who had to earn their ground. Read them slowly. Come back to one.
A man does not rise in one heroic moment. He rises by returning to the work after comfort, failure, resentment, fear, and distraction have all invited him to stop.
One slow, painful brick at a time.
In life, everything meaningful is earned.
Rise Strong. Nothing’s Given.
A new story every week.
RSNG Coffee · No. 01
The Foundation
Washed Colombian. Red apple, panela, a long clean finish.
The first coffee in the range. A clean washed lot from Huila, roasted light to medium for clarity rather than weight, so it is as good black at six in the morning as it is with milk at ten. Roasted in the UK the week it ships, posted flat through the letterbox.
- Origin
- Huila, Colombia
- Process
- Washed
- Roast
- Light-medium
- Weight
- 250g
- Roasted
- UK · to order
- Inside
- One law card
The first roast is on its way.
Inside every bag
A card in every bag
Thick uncoated card, one colour, one of the twenty-two laws on the front and the whole of it on the back. It comes stapled to the back of the bag and tears off clean. Keep it on the fridge. Give it to someone who needs it.
Stop wishing it was. Start building.
rsng.com/laws/1
Later · the tool
Pocket will hold you
to the code.
It reaches you only when it needs you.
An agent on your phone that carries the 22 Laws as its operating code and runs one practice a day in the law's voice. It is not ready. The coffee, the laws and the proof are. Leave your email and you will hear when it is.
No blue. No streaks you did not earn. The accent appears only when something needs you.
Today
Become Hard To Threaten
You named your salary yesterday. If it stopped on Friday, what is the first thing you would do on Monday?
Practice
Do the work.
Short, plain exercises. Each one serves a law. Most take minutes a day. Pick one and start tonight.
Aldo Kane · Former Royal Marines commando sniper
A sniper learns to be present long before anyone calls it mindfulness.
He joined the Royal Marines at sixteen and fought behind the lines in Iraq. The stillness he learned in a sniper's hide now carries him through the world's most hostile places.
Asked whether sniper work was mindfulness before the word caught on:
Well, as a Commando sniper you have to be more aware of your surroundings than anyone else has ever been. If you’re changing from hedgerow to field and you haven’t changed the camouflage and made it exactly the way it is in nature – or you've turned a leaf upside down and it has a slightly different coloured underside – as a trained observer 300 metres away, I can see that. So you have to be super-aware of your surroundings and camouflage, and the bigger picture too. Probably out of all the stuff that I learned in the Marines – you know a lot of it’s just a hard slog and you bang your head off a brick wall physically and mentally. But with being a sniper it very much does teach you about being present and about being mindful, which I wasn’t really aware of until very recently, and since I did the trans-Atlantic row. So yeah, you have to be super-present and very much in the moment.
Asked whether he went looking for risk after the Marines:
Not initially. I left and went offshore to work on oil rigs and did that for three years and that was the safest job, even though the perceived risk of working on an oil rig is: it’s risky. It’s actually one of the safest jobs you can do. You do round about three hours of work a day and the rest of it’s safety meetings and eating pies and doughnuts! I kind of went away from risk and danger. But it wasn’t long coming back. I always felt unfulfilled and then you do end up going into chasing that sort of work.
Asked what from the Commandos he uses every day:
The one thing that I use everyday is The Commando Spirit: Courage, Determination, Unselfishness and Cheerfulness In Adversity. That’s drilled into you as a soft skill in the Royal Marines, and I pretty much use it on a daily basis – being mindful. But I never thought about it until I started writing talks to give to kids. The more I thought about it, the more it’s in every part of the jobs that I do out of the country now, relying on what I was taught when I was 16. I don’t think I could do the jobs that I do now without those soft skills drilled into me. Take Cheerfulness In Adversity: there are so many pictures of me round the world in absolute shitholes, in horrible situations where you just have to smile and get on with it. The Commando Spirit is probably the most important thing I take away from the Royal Marines over everything else.