TU LAM: FROM CHAOS TO TRANQUILITY
Sitting alone in the dark on his Colorado Springs deck at 4:30 a.m., burning incense and focusing on his breath, Tu Lam says it took him years to relax into this daily routine.
“When I get up in the morning, I set the intentions of the day; set expectations for myself.”
“Everything I do is for a reason,” says the retired Green Beret, History Channel co-host, Ronin Tactics founder, and inspiration for the Ronin character in the Call of Duty franchise. “When I get up in the morning, I set the intentions of the day; set expectations for myself.”
“Every single day, I wake up at 4:00 o'clock in the morning because it's hard. It requires discipline,” he says. “And the thing is, you have to sit there in meditation. Make yourself do it..if you're saying that it's important to be a good human being or it’s important in your life to be happy … happiness don't come from money. Happiness doesn't come from success. It doesn't come from being a celebrity. It doesn't come from your cars, your house…happiness comes from consistency and what you're willing to do to make yourself happy every single day and training your brain.”
To put it another way, says Lam, “If I give you a 45-pound dumbbell and you have never lifted weights before, do you think you could curl it on the first try? If you never ran five miles, do you think your cardio is developed? Your lungs are developed? It's almost ignorant to think that you can sit in meditation for a day or two and see results right away. The mind is a muscle and you have to exercise that muscle.”
Once he completes his meditation, Lam follows with roughly 90 minutes of cardio, using different machines and methods to get his heart pumping. He then relaxes in a hot tub to complete the full morning circle of mindbody awareness and harmony.
In the years he was perfecting this daily routine, Lam never thought of giving up, even when he didn’t feel the connection. He credits this determination to a strong sense of discipline he developed at an early age.
Lam fled war-torn Vietnam with his mother and brother in 1974 and arrived in America as a toddler. He grew up near Fort Bragg in North Carolina and followed his Green Beret stepfather into the service at age 18. As an elite warrior, Lam traveled the world and saw conflicts and action in nearly 30 countries.
“[In those missions] you see the worst in the world,” he says. “You see the worst in humanity. You see the worst in yourself. You know, sometimes life takes us in a direction… sometimes we get lost so we can be found.”
Lam knows a thing or two about that. He was prescribed painkillers after a service injury in 2005, and soon became addicted. When he retired from the military after 23 years, Lam found himself in a place where many separating service members do — lost.
“When I got out of the military, I was stuck in this really bad rut,” he says. “I was stuck in this drug addiction. No purpose. And it was at that point that I realized I became this person I didn't want to be.”
“You know, sometimes life takes us in a direction… sometimes we get lost so we can be found.”
“I sat in this space for a while,” he says, “and then I realized it just wasn't working.” So, Lam dumped all of his medications, all of the painkillers, quitting cold turkey, and started a new quest to learn all he could about mental health, combating battle fatigue and PTSD. He then tried to heal himself using various methods including praying, journaling and practicing daily meditation, “but I didn’t believe in any of it,” he says.
“But I would sit there … every day … and I'd say the third year, I'm sitting there on the deck, and I heard birds. Now when I say that, you know we always hear birds, right? But to truly hear and be present enough to appreciate that noise, right? So that was the first thing,” says Lam. “And then I started noticing the sun. I sit there with God, I sit there with spirituality, and I can rid myself of this world — of ego, judgment, anxieties, and everything else, I'm transcending into the next level of consciousness, I'm living in a higher frequency. Basically, I'm allowing the soul to lead me, not my ego. I'm transcending past the ego. I'm sitting with my soul. It’s like a mission statement. Understand…it's not like, I quit [the drugs] and I immediately found everything. No, it took years.”
Now Lam focuses on releasing stress and anxiety each morning. “I saw different practices throughout the world and I [created] a routine that worked for me,” he says. “It’s the consistency that’s important — the only truth there is in life comes from consistency. When I focus on my inhale, I focus on how cool the air is entering my lungs, and on my exhale, I focus on how hot the air is exiting my lungs…I'm breathing that baggage out ... I'm breathing that emotion out because I don't want that trapped in my body.”
Shifting Focus
"God has given us free will,” says Lam. “I was born in war, escaped genocide and had my share of trauma. But I choose to be better. I know it takes work and it takes a different mindset. The mindset I had to kick in doors in my SF days is different from the one I have today. I shifted focus.”
“I took on a different mission,” says Lam. “You can make [your mission] anything you want — that’s the beauty of being Ronin … being masterless.” A “ronin” was a wandering samurai without a master in feudal Japan. “A warrior is here to stop the suffering from the evils of the world,” he says. “What does a warrior do when he’s off the battlefield? He gives.”
Lam calls his transition out of the military “one of the hardest times in my life. But people don’t see any of that,” he says. “They see the success, the end product. But they didn't see the depression, they didn't see the doubts. I had a lot of baggage when I came out. And a lot of emotional scars. A lot of things that we see, smell … it's forever burned into every crevice of your soul, right? So, while I was dealing with a lot of that trauma, I didn't believe I had trauma, because I didn't believe in any of it.”
Lam admits the military doesn’t always offer the best medical treatment for its veterans. “I'll say this,” he says, “it took me 23 years to get to where I was and just three days to separate from the Army.”
It can be difficult to forge your own path once you leave the service, says Lam, especially when you’ve been involved with a special team or group. “When you don't have that support base anymore, then you're going to walk alone … sit alone … eat alone … live alone. You find out more about yourself than when you ran around with a bunch of people who are telling you what you should think, feel or act, you know? I found that I'd been told how to do everything for so long, I didn't know how to act when I got out. So, I sat alone. And, you know, I sat with myself for several years. And I found that what I had been doing was no longer working, and what made me this warrior in the military, well, some of those characteristics I didn't need anymore. You have to reinvent yourself. Bruce Lee says that we don't add on to the sculpture; you chisel away at the sculpture. You take away what is not useful, and I had to learn to do that as a civilian.”
“When you remove yourself from the pack, when you walk alone, that’s when you find your true strength.”
Once Lam left the service and gathered his bearings, he drew from his special forces experiences and started Ronin Tactics in 2014. Ronin Tactics offers in-person training and provides specialized gear to law enforcement and civilian groups across the country. Lam records all of his training sessions and offers them online, as well. I thought about what would work and what was needed — something different than what was already available, he says. But Lam took the extra step to learn how to create a website, how to market his products and services and how to reach a wider audience with his company.
A few years later, his expertise with edged weapons, martial arts and special ops tactics, led Lam to co-host the History Channel’s show Forged in Fire: Knife or Death in 2018.
With plans to continue his collaboration with Springfield Armory and their Ronin line of firearms, Lam also currently is working with Harper Collins on a book. But with all his accomplishments and successes, Lam remains humble. “All these opportunities…they can drop out anytime, right?” he muses. “But I'm so grateful for all of it and I’m grateful to be able to give back to America, to be able to have the freedom I want to have, to be able to run a company with my wife.”
A few years later, his expertise with edged weapons, martial arts and special ops tactics, led Lam to co-host the History Channel’s show Forged in Fire: Knife or Death in 2018.
With plans to continue his collaboration with Springfield Armory and their Ronin line of firearms, Lam also currently is working with Harper Collins on a book. But with all his accomplishments and successes, Lam remains humble. “All these opportunities…they can drop out anytime, right?” he muses. “But I'm so grateful for all of it and I’m grateful to be able to give back to America, to be able to have the freedom I want to have, to be able to run a company with my wife.”
Lam credits much of his success to his post-military selftransformation. “Now that my brain is calm, my soul is calm,” he says. “A lot of guys may have been these elite commando personalities — very pack-driven. But when you remove yourself from the pack, when you walk alone, that’s when you find your true strength. Was it you or the team? You or the Army? If you’re not a good person to yourself, you can’t be good for your family. You can’t give what you don’t have. Confucius says if you wish the world to be a better place, start with yourself.”
