The Huddle with Goran Lozo

Every excuse you make has one purpose: to stop you from making a decision. In this episode, I talk about the psyop the weak person in you runs against the smart person in you, using blame, accusations, and an endless supply of reasons why nothing is your fault. I explain the Habit Loop of cue, routine, and reward, and why you should never erase a bad habit before you know which habit will replace it. You keep the cue, you keep the reward, and you change the routine. Research shows that new habits take about two months to form on average, so patience is part of the plan.

This week's assignment: List at least five decisions that would improve your life if you replaced old habits with new ones. Choose one, write down its cue, old routine, new routine, and reward, and start working on it.

Most professionals believe a moment will come when they finally achieve work-life balance. That is the myth. In this episode I explain why balance is not a destination you reach someday, but something you build into your schedule every day, and I share the sentence from Alan Weiss that changed how I organize my days. I did not start working less. I still work 50 to 60 hours most weeks, but every day I create 2 to 4 hours for the things I love, from riding my Harley through the Georgia mountains to tactical shooting training and chess. Your assignment this week: grade your work-life balance from 1 to 10, then schedule two activities you enjoy on two separate workdays and decide at the end of the week whether it was worth it.

Growth and maturity are not the same thing, and I want to draw a hard line between them in this episode. Growth comes from learning. Maturity comes from taking responsibility for what that learning produces. I have met plenty of professionals who grew without maturing, people whose knowledge outpaced their self-awareness, their accountability, and their empathy. I call them the sociopaths with business cards.

In this episode, I lay out five questions that will tell you exactly where you stand on your own maturity, and I give you one exercise to work through before we talk again: pick someone you resent, and make a real effort to understand their motivations instead of your grievance toward them.

The Huddle is a short weekly briefing on being ready for what life and work put in front of you. One idea, one move to make this week. Mondays.

Goran Lozo is a combat and counterterrorism veteran, a 7th-degree black belt in traditional karate, and the creator of the Pressure Performance Protocol™. More at goranlozo.com

Heraclitus said you can never step into the same river twice. But change alone is not growth. After years of observing people closely, first through martial arts, then through his executive protection career, Goran explains why he sees change in nearly everyone he meets again after years, and growth in almost no one. This week: an honest look at whether the last five or ten years actually changed how you think, relate to people, and fail, or only changed your circumstances.

The Huddle is a short weekly briefing on being ready for what life and work put in front of you. One idea, one move to make this week. Mondays.

Goran Lozo is a combat and counterterrorism veteran, a 7th-degree black belt in traditional karate, and the creator of the Pressure Performance Protocol™. More at goranlozo.com

I can't do it. I have no talent. The economy is bad. I have no connections. Four excuses that keep people stuck, and mental self-defense rather than verdicts. 

In this episode, I reverse each one and walk through four tactics for low-confidence first aid: reframing catastrophic thoughts, checking your track record against your worst predictions, breaking a big task into steps you can actually take, and using combat breathing to calm your body before you try to calm your mind. One assignment to carry into the week.

The Huddle is a short weekly briefing on being ready. One idea, one move to make this week. Mondays.

Goran Lozo is a combat and counterterrorism veteran, a 7th-degree black belt in traditional karate, and the creator of the Pressure Performance Protocol™. More at goranlozo.com

In the late 1990s, I protected a politician who was the target of multiple assassination attempts. Several of my colleagues did not survive that assignment. What kept the rest of us functioning was not luck. It was rehearsal.

This week on The Huddle, I break down the visualization method I trained in as a soldier and used every day in executive protection: not visualizing the outcome, but visualizing the process. Four moves: walk yourself through the entire situation step by step, rehearse the moment everything goes wrong, put your body and your breathing through the motions in advance, and practice recovering when something does go sideways.

None of this is limited to protection work. It applies to layoffs, restructuring, a job interview, a health scare, or any moment where the pressure could take over before you do.

Your assignment before next Monday: pick one situation you are bracing for, and rehearse it.

The Huddle is a short weekly briefing on being ready. One idea, one move to make this week. Mondays.

Goran Lozo is a combat and counterterrorism veteran, a 7th-degree black belt in traditional karate, and the creator of the Pressure Performance Protocol™. More at goranlozo.com

Your voice shakes. The words don't come. You lose track of the room.

None of that means something is wrong with you. It means your nervous system can't predict what's coming, so it prepares you for everything at once. Which points at the fix: if the problem is that the situation is unfamiliar, make it familiar before you get there.

In this episode, Goran walks through the visualization method a Special Operations captain taught him after Basic Training — the one he carried into combat and counterterrorism operations and has used in competition and coaching ever since. He also covers the mistake that makes most visualizations worthless: picturing the victory and skipping everything in between.

Your work this week: Pick one situation you're dreading in the next thirty days. Ten minutes, three times before Monday. Move through it step by step and give yourself the hard version — the hostile question, the slide that won't load, the moment your voice catches. Arrive at the outcome you want by going through the difficulty, not around it.

Next Monday: advanced visualization.

The Huddle is a short weekly briefing on being ready. One idea, one move to make this week. Mondays.

Goran Lozo is a combat and counterterrorism veteran, a 7th-degree black belt in traditional karate, and the creator of the Pressure Performance Protocol™. More at goranlozo.com

Five things from this week's episode:

1. Talent becomes useless the moment it has to be used under pressure. At twenty-one, I beat a world vice champion in his own city, in overtime, where the first score ends it. He was the more talented fighter. That wasn't the deciding factor.

2. Certainty is built, not issued at birth. When I walked on the mat, I felt it belonged to me and everyone else was an intruder. That came from years of training two and three times a day, not from temperament.

3. Your opponent's ability is outside your control. I never spent a second on how good the other man was. I worked only on what I could control: composure, breathing, body language, timing, distance, execution.

4. Preparation and pressure training are two different things. A director I worked with knew his board material better than anyone in the room — he built the model himself. One unexpected question three minutes in and he lost the thread. He wasn't underprepared. He had never trained for the moment things stop going to plan.

5. This week's assignment: don't avoid tough situations. Walk into them. Then notice your breathing, your composure, your body language, how you speak to your family and colleagues, and how you decide when the going gets hard.

When you see how pressure affects you, you'll know where you have the most room to improve.