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.
Kevin Braddock · Writer
Ask for help out loud and let the shame go.
Writer Kevin Braddock came back from a major depression by asking for help in public. Now he builds simple tools for staying well: movement, patience and plain honesty.
Asked how he lost the shame around mental illness:
Shame - I think that's the big, dangerous one because that's the thing that I think makes people kill themselves. I think there's a lot of shame I lost when I asked for help on Facebook. I thought there are a thousand people here, some of them know me really well, some I don't even know who they are – that's the nature of Facebook. I thought I can either carry on living this life of hiding how I genuinely feel about things, or I can ask for help. I'm not saying I'm un-embarrassable but I think there's some things that I'm not afraid of telling people anymore; that I suffer from these illnesses, not all the time, but certainly a lot of the time and it’s something that I have to think about and particularly I have to think, how does it affect other people?
Asked whether you have to act your way out of trouble:
I spent about a year living with a mate of mine in Bristol. He's a very wise man and he was kind of mentoring me. He had a lot of little heuristics and tips – as simple as getting up in the morning and just starting to move, whether that's walking or doing a few stretches. This is where things like yoga and tai chi are very useful just to re-embody yourself, rather than hit the gym and try to get a PB. It's more about a state of physical being, because I think one of the really insidious things about depression and anxiety is a lot of it does exist in your thoughts. You tend to walk around just thinking that I'm just perceptions and a mind and actually it's all a single system.
Asked whether he had to learn patience:
Very deep depression, or very acute anxiety, feels like a permanent state and it's the easiest thing to do to lose sight of the fact that it will change and it does, because people recover. All it is is irrational thought, but I think it has to be something held quite deeply within oneself that whatever is going on now it won't always be like this, and you can think back to a time when it wasn't like this. There's a visualisation a guy told me about. He said, “Look, just imagine yourself coming back towards yourself in five years in the future and telling yourself a good story”. Of course we're not taught to cultivate patience. We're taught to want all of our desires satisfied immediately. Having been someone who's been extraordinarily impatient for much of my life then I see the value in it now.