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.
Eddie Hall · Strongman, World's Strongest Man
He dropped the bar, quit his job, and went all in.
Eddie Hall won World's Strongest Man and walked away. He is open about what the title cost: a world record lost to a dropped bar, missed Christmases, and a body he feared would give out.
Asked whether he thought of giving up after a dropped deadlift cost him a world record:
I lost £500 that weekend in going to do that tournament, and I had just had enough of the sport. I was killing myself and losing money at the same time, but when I got home and I talked to the wife, she said, “What are you on about? You’ve just proved to the world that you can pull a world record deadlift, so you’re the best in the world right now at what you do. So if you can do that then why can’t you go on and win the World’s Strongest Man?” And that just flicked a switch… it lit the fire in my belly and off I went. [...] I quit my job that weekend; I never went back to work – I just concentrated on Strongman. Now I’m pretty sure that if I’d been given that lift, and walked away with a world record, there’s probably a good chance I’d have carried on working, not quit my job, and not won World’s Strongest Man. So yes, I definitely did turn that negative into a positive.
Asked how he pushes himself harder than everyone else:
In terms of keeping motivated and going that extra mile in training sessions, I always remember one quote from Muhammad Ali, about he was always willing to swim out to dark waters. [...] That’s what you’ve got to do… you’ve got to push yourself harder than anybody else on the planet. And that’s what I did, I swam out to those dark waters and I kept swimming. And that’s the mental attitude that you’ve got to have, that sort of “I’m willing to die to achieve my dream” attitude.
Asked whether the bigger battle was physical or mental:
It was both. Honestly, the whole thing broke me as a man, because towards the end of my career, just before I won World’s Strongest Man, I felt as though my family life was breaking down, my marriage was breaking down, my mental state was getting to the point where I just couldn’t cope. [...] I was walking around, 32st in body weight, in constant fear of health issues… having a heart attack or a stroke. Just every day I felt lucky to wake up, and that’s not a nice feeling – it’s a very dark place to be, but I had to go through it.