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.
Ben Irvine · Author, Mindfulness & The Big Questions
Accept the situation, then ask what you can change.
Ben Irvine writes about mindfulness, but not as a retreat from hard reality. For him it is the step back that lets a man see his life clearly and act on it.
Asked how to get past the anxious, self-absorbed state:
Mindfulness is the simple act of paying attention to your experience, while also cultivating a conscious aloofness towards your thoughts, sensations and feelings. It creates a little bit of a distance between your inner self, the bit of you which is making decisions and who’s aware, and all the things that occur to that self. [...] As soon as that distance occurs then you get to make a judgement about your life and about all the things that are happening to you. Across that distance you can make changes and react differently to things.
Asked whether people are too ready to muddle along:
I think that's right, yes. I honestly don't think people really admit that to themselves sometimes. People are far too ready to blame others for situations that we find ourselves in. I always come back to this point of: what can I do? I think that's such a wonderfully healthy philosophy of life. What can I do? Of course you have to accept the situation in all its reality to have a hope of changing it at all. You can't just sail around blindly, not knowing what you're dealing with. That’s engaged acceptance; accepting what's happening around you and endeavouring to change it and improve it.
Asked what the end point of mindfulness is:
The end point of mindfulness is being able to face life in such a way that you're no longer hiding. You're no longer making the excuses for yourself; you're no longer coming up with feelings that deny life; you’re not trying to escape into nirvana. You're just living in a way that is engaged, practical, aware and through that kind of engagement, meaning just spontaneously emerges. Meaning just comes from doing stuff that you enjoy and you feel is important.