The Huddle with Goran Lozo

This episode opens a seven-part series on a healthy lifestyle. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine built its model on six pillars: nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, and positive social connections. Spirituality is not one of them, and religious practice, which is how many people live their spirituality, is pushed even further to the margins. I explain why I believe spiritual wellbeing should be the foundational pillar of a healthy lifestyle, what I asked my lecturers during Harvard Medical School’s advanced lifestyle coaching certification program, and what the original meaning of “mens sana in corpore sano” tells us about the dependency between a healthy mind and a healthy body.

This week’s assignment: look at the spiritual practices you already have, whether that is prayer, fasting, meditation, conscious breathing, or tai chi, and increase how often you do them. If you practice occasionally, practice daily. If you practice daily, practice twice a day. Then notice whether you have more clarity, feel more grounded, and stay calmer and more in control.

Next Monday: Healthy Lifestyle: Nutrition.

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

Simon denied knowing Jesus three times. Saul hunted down early Christians and approved their killings. Both became apostles and spent the rest of their lives serving humanity. In this episode, I use their transformations as a blueprint for escaping the trap of living in the past, and I talk about what I see in clients who cannot let go of their upbringing: adults raised in scarcity who will not risk even a little, and a trust-fund client who had many girlfriends but no real relationships. Your assignment this week is to identify where your past is holding you back, answer three questions, and make the first change that starts the chain reaction.

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

Philosophy means love of wisdom, and wisdom is not the same thing as intelligence. One can be smart and a fool at the same time. In this episode, I explain why everyone already lives by a philosophy, whether they examined it themselves or absorbed it by accident, and why I start my clients with Stoicism and its four core virtues: practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. I also tell the story of a former client, a very successful and very busy attorney, who has given unpaid pro bono time to people who cannot afford legal representation for decades, at the cost of revenue for his company and time with his family.

This week’s assignment: be intentional instead of reactive. Watch the gap between what you feel and what you do when you are under heavy pressure, when a stranger asks you for money, and when someone cuts you off in traffic.

In this episode:

• Why wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing
• The difference between an examined and an unexamined philosophy
• The four Stoic virtues, defined plainly
• Why many professionals learned Stoicism from their parents without ever hearing the word
• A pro bono story that shows what character looks like when no one is watching
• Marcus Aurelius on the obstacle that becomes the way

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

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.

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

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.

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

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