Rinzu Mindset
A Path of Discipline, Stillness, and strength for a Powerful Mind and Peaceful Spirit
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Life will test you. The question is not whether adversity will come, but who you will become when it does.
Rinzu Mindset is a personal code for developing a powerful mind while preserving a peaceful spirit. It is a practical philosophy of discipline, stillness, faith, humility, kindness, awareness, and strength under control.
At its center are five guiding pillars:
R - Respect
I - Inner Stillness
N - Next Right Step
Z - Zanshin - The Mind That Remains
U - Unshaken Character
Together, these principles offer a way to face anger without being ruled by it, fear without surrendering to it, conflict without becoming hateful, and responsibility without trying to carry the entire road at once.
The Rinzu Mindset teaches you to pause before reacting, become still enough to see clearly, and ask a simple question:
What is the next right step?
Throughout the book, these ideas are brought into ordinary life-family, work, leadership, training, difficult conversations, disappointment, failure, and the quiet moments when no one else is watching.
You will explore what it means to be slow to anger, carry strength without becoming hard, remain kind without becoming weak, practice humility without shrinking, and choose faith when fear begins speaking too loudly.
The book also introduces simple practices that can be carried into everyday life. The Five-Minute Mind demonstrates how a few intentional minutes of breathing, prayer, reflection, physical practice, writing, gratitude, service, or disciplined action can help train the response before the difficult moment arrives.
And when calmness fails-as it sometimes will-the path does not disappear.
Rinzu teaches responsibility without hopelessness: stop, become honest, apologize when necessary, repair what can be repaired, learn from the failure, and return.
Rooted in Christian faith, Rinzu Mindset does not present itself as a religion, a martial-arts system, or a promise of a life without hardship. It is a personal code for meeting hardship with greater awareness, self-control, faith, and character.
You do not need to become fearless.
You do not need to become emotionless.
You do not need to become perfect.
Become steady.
Become aware.
Remain kind.
Remain humble.
Choose faith.
Take the next right step.
One breath.
One decision.
One day.
One step.
Bow... Begin.
Mike Johnson
Mike Johnson, fiction writer and poet, is widely regarded as one of New Zealand's most innovative writers. He lives on Waiheke Island and has taught creative writing at AUT University and the University of Auckland. In 2002 he received The University of Auckland's Literary Fellowship, having been Literary Fellow at Canterbury University in 1987. His first novel, Lear, the Shakespeare Company Plays Lear at Babylon was short listed for the New Zealand Book Awards in 1986, his novel Dumb Show won the Buckland Memorial Award for Literary Excellence in 1995, and he won the Frances Kean Award his short story, 'Magic Strings' in 1999. His first book of poetry, The Palanquin Ropes, (1983) was co-winner of the John Cowie Reed Memorial Competition. His non-fiction, Angel of Compassion, was shortlisted for the Ashton Whyle Award in 2014, and a poem from Vertical Harp, The selected poems of Li He (2006) has been anthologised in the Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page (Random House, 2015). Mike Johnson is the author of twenty-six books including nine books of poetry, three of shorter fiction, one non fiction, three children's books, and ten novels.
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