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.
Andy Barton · Sports psychologist
Call it discomfort, and the brain listens.
Pain is real, but the mind decides how loud it gets. Sports psychologist Andy Barton on the words, breaths and pictures athletes use to turn the volume down.
Asked what to do the moment pain arrives:
When you refer to soreness as pain you’ll feel pain. If you call it agony, you’ll experience agony. That’s why nurses refer to “discomfort”, because it allows you to make up your own mind as to how you feel instead of looking for pain. Obviously, if you’ve got a broken leg then it’s going to hurt. No amount of subliminal language use will stop you calling bullshit there, but for recurring or niggly injuries this method can make a difference.
Asked about the pain that does not come from an injury:
Antidepressants don’t contain anything except what’s supposed to unlock what you already have inside your head. You’ve got a pharmacy in your brain, and it releases chemicals depending on what you believe. One proven theory is that we have a ‘Central Governor’ in our mind, protecting our body. So, when a long-distance runner starts to feel unbearable pain, it’s actually the brain shutting down the muscle fibres, and not the other way around. We’ve all got a second tank. I’m a big believer in the placebo effect, and if you believe you can go further, this Central Governor will allow it.
Asked how to handle stress that turns into a headache:
When mental pain manifests as physical, such as headache, you need to unwind and de-stress. When we’re in pain we tend to take shallower breaths, the same as when we’re stressed. We breathe higher up in the chest, so take your breath lower down and have deeper breaths. One method athletes are now using for recovery is the 4-7-8 trick. Breathe in through the nose for four seconds, hold it for seven seconds, then breathe out of the mouth for eight.