Last month, I received an unexpected email: an invitation to guest-lecture on disaster recovery and business continuity planning at a local university. The audience? Nearly one hundred students, bright-eyed and notebook-ready. My first reaction wasn’t excitement. It was anxiety.
I’ve faced ransomware, nation-state intrusions, and zero-days that kept me up for nights. But public speaking? That was my personal hell—persistent, evasive, and deeply embedded in my psyche. For years, I avoided it like an unpatched vulnerability. Yet something in me whispered: This is the next level. Climb.
So I said yes. And in preparing, presenting, and reflecting, I discovered not just a new comfort with the stage—but a profound alignment with Taoist principles that had been guiding my defenses all along.
The Terror: Grasping at the Uncontrollable
In the days leading up, anxiety looped like a bad hash check. What if I forget a slide? What if they ask about real-world RTOs or BCP audits I can’t recall? What if I freeze?
The more I rehearsed, the more rigid I became. I was practicing against the Tao, not with it.
Lao Tzu writes:
“When you are sick of sickness, you will never be sick again.”
I was sick of my fear. And in that sickness, I saw the pattern: fear thrives in resistance.
The Pivot: Wu Wei on the Podium
The night before, I stopped rehearsing. Instead, I meditated. I visualized not perfection—but presence. I reminded myself: I don’t need to perform. I need to share.
On the day of, I walked into the lecture hall with nothing but a single slide deck and a quiet mind. No script. No crutches. Just the topic, the students, and the moment.
And then—somewhere between explaining the physical threats to security and covering the CIA Triad—I entered flow.
Time softened. Words arrived unforced. A student asked how to prioritize critical functions in a BCP; I answered not from memory, but from understanding. Another challenged the balance between cost and resilience in offsite backups; we explored it together. Laughter rippled when I compared a well-tested failover plan to a samurai’s spare sword—always ready, never needed until it is. The room wasn’t an audience—it was a dojo. We were all learning.
I wasn’t teaching. I was being the teaching.
The Flow State: When Preparedness Becomes Expression
In cybersecurity, we chase flow states in incident response—those moments when chaos clarifies, priorities align, and recovery becomes art. On that stage, I found the same current.
The tools (slides, voice, gestures) became secondary. What mattered was the how of transmission: clarity, curiosity, connection. The students didn’t need my fear or perfection—they needed my insight into continuity as a mindset, offered freely.
Taoism calls this ziran—naturalness, spontaneity, being as you are.
“The sage has no fixed mind; he makes the mind of the people his mind.”
I wasn’t performing for them. I was flowing with them.
The Shift: From Defender to Guide
Afterward, students lingered. One said, “I never knew that information security had so much to do outside of data.” Another asked about prior table-top exercises I have run. A third asked if you really can get paid to break into places to test physical security (and how to stay out of jail doing so).
In that moment, something clicked.
I’ve spent years hardening systems, teaching machines to resist. But what about teaching people to plan before the storm hits? What if the greatest vulnerability isn’t in code—but in confidence, foresight, and organizational resilience?
I began to wonder:
What if my next battlefield isn’t a SOC… but a classroom?
Taoist Lessons That Healed My Fear (and Might Heal Yours)
Here are the principles that carried me from panic to presence—and now guide my consideration of teaching:
- “The soft overcomes the hard.” Fear is brittle. Presence is water. I stopped fighting my nerves and let them pass through me. On stage, softness—pausing, breathing, listening—became my strength.
- “He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.” Paradoxically, the less I tried to prove I knew, the more knowledge flowed. Teaching isn’t about dominance—it’s about invitation.
- “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” My second talk wasn’t perfect. It was enough. Growth isn’t a leap—it’s a path. Each talk, each class, each tabletop exercise is another step.
- “Return to the root.” When I felt lost mid-sentence, I returned to why: not to impress, but to illuminate. Purpose anchors you when technique fails.
- “The Tao does nothing, yet nothing is left undone.” The best moments weren’t when I did more—they were when I let go. The lecture succeeded not because I controlled it, but because I allowed it to unfold.
The Next Path: Teaching as Upstream Resilience
In infosec, we say: the best defense is a well-trained user.
What if we extended that? The best continuity is a well-guided culture.
Teaching isn’t a pivot away from security—it’s the ultimate upstream strategy. Equip a generation to conduct risk assessments, build resilient processes, and embrace wu wei in planning—and you’ve embedded continuity into the human layer at scale.
I’m not leaving the field. I’m expanding it.
Your Turn: Where Is Your Stage?
Whether it’s a boardroom, a classroom, or a Discord call—your voice is a vector. Will you transmit fear… or flow?
If public speaking terrifies you, start small. One slide. One friend. One truth offered without armor.
The Tao doesn’t demand perfection. It asks only that you begin where you are.
And if you’re in infosec and feeling the pull to teach—trust it. The world needs more sages at the front of the room.
Have you ever found flow in an unexpected place? Share your story below. Let’s learn from each other.
The Half-assed Taoist 
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