Early in my cybersecurity journey, I believed my value lay in finding vulnerabilities, maintaining detection capabilities, and keeping adversaries at bay. The work was enjoyable, and it let me focus on technical skills while building a strong foundation for problem solving and analytical thinking.
I've never been great at uncomfortable conversations. Not at work, and not at home.
There was always something in me that zeroed in on the uncomfortable aspects and amplified my anxiety. I'm sure there are plenty of explanations I could research to understand why but that's not the aim of this post (maybe another time).
Every tough discussion felt like a minefield and I couldn't help but want to avoid them altogether. As I got older, and wiser, I learned that the difficult, challenging parts of life are where real growth happens. I began exploring ways to practice and overcome this tendency.