As a Bath Rugby supporter, I first heard head coach Johann van Graan use the phrase in a rugby context.
Never too high, never too low.
At first, it sounded very much the coach’s line. A very good one, certainly, but still the sort of phrase you hear in elite sport and admire from afar, mainly for how cleanly it captures the emotional discipline required over the course of a long season. A squad cannot afford to get carried away by a big win, just as it cannot afford to lose belief after a poor result. The line made immediate sense in that world.
The more I watched Johann van Graan though, the more the phrase seemed to represent something larger.
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What stood out was not simply that he said it, but that he appeared to live it. In an environment where sport often rewards noise, reaction and theatre, there has been something notably measured about him. Calm without being passive, controlled without being cold, ambitious without becoming erratic. The phrase began to feel less like a slogan and more like a window into the kind of leadership Bath Rugby had found in him.
That is probably why it has travelled so well.
Because “never too high, never too low” does not stay neatly inside rugby once you hear it enough. It starts to sound useful elsewhere. First as a sporting principle, then as a life principle. And now, as Bath supporters, many of us hear it not just as Johann’s mantra, but as a standard that has started to move out through the sports pages and into ordinary life. You hear people use it about work, family life, setbacks, progress, training, mood. It has become a kind of check and balance for the highs and lows, the swings and roundabouts, of modern life.
That does not happen by accident.
A phrase only travels that far when people trust the person carrying it.
I think that is part of Johann van Graan’s influence. He has not just given Bath a rugby identity, he has modelled a psychological one. He has put a language around steadiness that supporters can recognise, repeat and apply themselves.
And it matters because the modern world makes emotional steadiness much harder than it should be.
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Many people now live too close to the surface of events. A good week sends confidence soaring, but a setback knocks belief. Praise lifts mood more than it should, yet silence dents it more than we would like to admit. Progress creates optimism when delay creates frustration. We become over-responsive to what is happening around us, and that constant movement of state is exhausting.
That is why this phrase has such depth.
It offers proportion.
Not indifference, emotional flatness or a refusal to care, but proportion.
That distinction is important. “Never too high, never too low” does not mean becoming robotic. It means not letting success carry you so far that you lose discipline, and not letting disappointment drag you so far down that you lose perspective. It means remaining steady enough that your standards survive both praise and pressure.
That is a serious life skill, especially when crafting a better life.
And the more I think about it, the more I admire Johann van Graan for making it feel so central. Because the temptation in leadership, especially visible leadership, is often to amplify. To over-celebrate or overreact. To feed the emotional swings because they create energy in the moment. Johan seems to have done something much harder and much more valuable. He has kept returning people to process, to discipline, to composure, to the longer view.
That is leadership with real substance.
It is also why the phrase works so well beyond rugby. Most of us do not need more emotional drama in our lives, we need better regulation, better perspective and better ways to stop external events from having quite so much authority over our internal state.
A good result arrives… never too high.
A difficult patch lands… never too low.
A week goes well… stay with the process.
A week feels heavy… stay with the process.
That is where the mantra becomes more than memorable. It becomes useful.
It helps protect judgment, relationships and consistency. It reminds you that neither success nor struggle should be allowed to rewrite your identity too quickly. That is true in the week-to-week world of rugby, but it is just as true in our weeks of work, family life, health and ambition.
I suspect that is why so many Bath supporters have taken to it. It carries the authority of sport, but the usefulness of something much broader. It feels like the kind of line that can steady a team on a difficult afternoon and steady an individual on a difficult Tuesday.
That is not a small thing, especially in our worlds today.
In a culture that constantly invites people to overreact, “never too high, never too low” feels almost radical in its restraint. It asks for maturity over mood, process over noise and perspective over impulse.
And perhaps that is part of Johann van Graan’s gift. Not just that he has brought direction and standards to Bath Rugby, but that he has given people a phrase that quietly improves the way they move through life beyond the game.
That is when leadership has really landed.
Because the best leaders do not only shape results, they shape language, values and behaviour in ways that endure outside the environment they lead.
Johann van Graan’s mantra has started to do exactly that.
Never too high, never too low.
A good result does not mean you have arrived and by the same means, a poor one does not mean you are off course.
Both still ask for the same thing, to live and think with clarity, perspective and a steady hand.
That may not be the loudest way to live, but it may just be the most effective.
So perhaps the useful question is not whether life will continue to throw highs and lows at you, because it will.
The better question is whether you are giving either one too much power over your state.
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Better Life — Founder’s Journal
Written with clarity, structure and less getting carried away either way.