Whether it’s an impending deadline, being faced with presenting to a crowd, or confronting a seemingly uncrackable novel cyber challenge, we will all experience moments of heart-racing, paralyzing panic. But what hopefully we’re also acquiring are skills we can rely on to stay calm and hack on.
Here are a few proven strategies (some inspired by PCGL community input!) for fighting that fear and pushing through the panic.
Maybe it’s sweaty palms, or butterflies in your stomach, but it’s important to be in touch with how you experience the feeling of anxiety or nervousness. Self-awareness is key. Then take a few deep breaths. Often we breathe shallower and take in less oxygen when nerves attack. Deep breathing centers us and helps counteract those other feelings.
Think about what your goal is and stay focused on that. Like, “Keep trying new tactics until I find a solution.” Avoid being negative. Studies have shown when you think “Don’t make mistakes,” or “don’t choke”, you psych yourself out and it’s bound to happen. Instead eliminate your scattered or chaotic thoughts with a simple clear intention to refocus your mind—such as, “I will stay confident and try to apply all my skills in this challenge.”
Whether you take your inspiration from the Karate Kid or repeat that every journey starts with a single step, it’s important to remember that most seemingly overwhelming situations become less daunting when broken down into smaller achievable parts. So maybe you can’t "wax on, wax off" in a CTF, but you can look for a clue in the challenge description, or start a Google search. Odds are simple actions will help you get back on the path to a winning performance.
Remember how boring it is to exploit the same buffer overflows over and over? Yes, nerves have struck, but at least you’re not doing the same old, same old. Tackling a new challenge—cyber or otherwise—means you’re pushing outside your comfort zone, and there’s something to be learned and/or new skills to be acquired. Solve rates are nowhere near 100%; remind yourself that the learning you take away is valuable.
Yan Shoshitaishvili has incredible cred as a hacker and gamer. He’s led the DEF CON conference, participated in CTFs for more than a decade, and done autonomous hacking. Here's a picture of him in Wikipedia under CTFs!
Despite his success, he admitted to having a feeling of panic at the start of every new challenge.
Check out the tips Yan provided in recent webinar, exclusively for PlayCyber Global League members, to help you push past fear when you face your next cybersecurity challenge.
Then chime in with your best tips to #fightfear on our Discord channel #webinars-trainings.
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