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.
Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychologist
Your brain is predicting, not reacting. Train it to predict better.
Lisa Feldman Barrett studies how the brain builds emotion. Her finding is good news for anyone with a temper: feelings are constructions, and constructions can be changed.
Asked how her theory overturns the old view of emotion:
The first thing is even though emotions feel like they’re reactions to the world, they’re not. When you feel sad, or angry, or happy your brain is predicting, not reacting. These guesses are the basis for every mental experience you have, including emotion and happen outside of your awareness, largely. By the time you become aware, the guesses have already become implemented.
Asked whether emotional maturity is the brain adjusting its predictions:
Sometimes it’s just re-categorising the meaning of your physical sensations. So instead of just trying to calm yourself down it’s knowing what the sensations can mean and knowing that sometimes the physical sensation is just that: a sensation. You don’t need to make it into an emotion. Also, learning emotion concepts and words is really important for your brain to be able to predict well. The bigger your emotion vocabulary is, the better your brain will be at making the version of the emotion best suited to that situation. Sometimes, being angry is the right response, but you don’t necessarily want to yell or lose control.
Asked whether a man can train himself to respond better:
Yes, you can train your brain to predict better. It puts you more in control of your emotions and your own behavior; you not only become the architect of your experience, you become the electrician too, because your brain wires itself to its circumstances. Instances of your brain not predicting well are called prediction errors, and your brain can learn from them to predict better in the future. I think we have more control over our emotions and our actions than we might otherwise believe. It’s really hard to control your emotions in the moment, but with a bit of effort you can cultivate those experiences, which then become the seeds of new predictions that will eventually be pretty effortless.