Spiritual Health in Cybersecurity: The Why Behind the Work

Spiritual health on a cybersecurity podcast sounds like a stretch. Stay with us. Because somewhere between the vendor pitches, the patch cycles, and the 3 a.m. page, a lot of us stopped working for the why and started working for the number.

Episode 24 of Plaintext with Rich is the second installment of the Month of Mindfulness, a five-week series on self-care for people working in security and tech. This week we define spiritual health as the values that make up who you are, the things you won’t trade even for a raise. We get into mission drift, the quiet trap of lifestyle creep in a high-paying field, and the 3 a.m. test for whether your values are still alive when the paycheck isn’t watching. We acknowledge that for some listeners these values come from a faith tradition and for others they don’t, and both are valid. The episode lands with a Plaintext Starter Kit, including the simple act of writing your values down, asking yourself what ‘enough’ actually looks like, and finding people (including communities like Shield that are built for grounded, sustainable careers in tech and cyber) who remind you who you are before the title does.

If you’ve ever wondered why the bigger paycheck stopped making the work feel better, this one is for you. Whether you’re a SOC analyst, an engineer, a CISO, or the one person doing security at a 40-person company, your values have to outrun your comp.

Ten minutes or less. One topic. No panic.

Shield Community, a wellness program built specifically for technology and cybersecurity professionals. https://www.shield.community/

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Transcript

When Work Stops Feeling Meaningful

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're three meetings deep. The vendor's deck has hit slide 47 of 90. You're nodding. You're not listening. You're trying to remember when protecting people became managing renewals. The paycheck is bigger than it was five years ago, but yet you feel worse. Welcome to Plain Text with Rich. Today we're talking about spiritual health on a cybersecurity technology podcast. I know. Stay with me for at least 10 minutes. If you still think it's a stretch at the end, fair. No harm, no foul. But I think you'll see it. Quick recap of where we are. Last week we kicked off the month of mindfulness with mental health. This week is the second leg of the stool, and that's spiritual health. Now, before anyone clicks away, let me define what I mean. Because spiritual can be a loaded word, and I want to be careful with it. Now, in plain text, spiritual health for the purposes of this episode is the set of values that make up who you are, not your title, not your LinkedIn, the things you actually won't compromise on, the things that define you before the job does. Now, for some of you, those values come from a faith tradition: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, something else. That's valid. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise. For others, they don't. Your values might come from how you were raised or what you've watched go wrong or the people you want to protect. Also, valid. Both fit under this tent. What I'm not doing today is telling you what to believe. What I am doing is asking whether the life you're building actually fits the person you say you are. Because here's the part that actually matters. Most of us, I would like to think, didn't get into security for the money. Think back. Why'd you start? Maybe you read about a breach that hurt people, you didn't know, and decided you wanted to be on the defender side of that. Maybe a family member got scanned and you wanted to learn how to stop it. Maybe you read Cliff Stoll or watched Mr. Robot or accidentally found yourself in a CTF and got hooked. Maybe you came up to the military or government because you believed in the mission. Or maybe you stumbled in sideways from IT and discovered you actually liked the puzzle. Whatever it was, there was a value underneath it: protection, curiosity, duty, craft, justice. There was something. Then the industry found you. The first race felt earned, the second felt exciting, the third came with a bigger house, a newer car, a few more subscriptions you never cancel. And somewhere along the way, the question changed. It used to be, what's the work I care about? And it's become what's the offer I can't turn down. I like to look at that as mission drift. And in security, it's especially quiet because the money is good and the titles get bigger and nobody flags you for chasing the next level. You're still doing security, you're still patching, monitoring, escalating, attending the stand-up. But the reason you took the job and the reason you're still there don't quite match anymore. The stock analyst who started because they wanted to catch bad guys and now stays because the shift differential covers the truck payment. The engineer who got into this to build defenses and hasn't shipped one in a year, but the comp is too good to walk away from. What about the CISO who took the job to protect users and spends 70% of their week on board decks because that's what the title now costs? None of those people are villains. They're doing what the system rewards, but the system rewards output and compensation. It doesn't reward the values underneath. And here's the trap: the bigger the paycheck, the bigger the life. The bigger the life, the more of the paycheck you need. One day you look up and you're not working for the why anymore. You're working to maintain a lifestyle. You didn't totally choose. That's not a money problem. That's a values problem dressed up as a budget, right? Now here's the test I want to give you. I call it the 3 a.m. test. And I'm going to date myself here, you know, the before times, but I want to put yourself in this mindset, right? When the page goes off at 3 a.m. and your house is quiet and nothing about that moment is rewarding, what do you tell yourself to get out of bed? The paycheck isn't there at 3 a.m. The LinkedIn audience isn't there. The counteroffer you used to brag about isn't there. If what you tell yourself is because I have to, that's a job. If what you tell yourself is because if I don't, someone or some organization gets affected, and that matters to me, that's value. The 3AM TIS is brutal because it strips out everything performative and it tells you the truth about what you actually believe. That's where spiritual health lives. And here's the honest part I don't think you can fake it. You either have values that survive that page or you don't. And if you don't, no amount of caffeine or commission is going to truly fill that gap. So what do you do about it? Well, this is the plain tech starter kit for spiritual health in security work. Again, five moves, some are quiet. I don't think any are too weird. One, write down your values, not your goals, but values. Three to five, no more. The things you won't trade even for a raise, open a dock, a notebook, the back of a napkin, just for you. No editing for the LinkedIn audience. This is honestly between you and yourself. Two, audit your week against those values. Look at the last seven days. How much of what you did actually connected to them? How much was paycheck preservation? If the percentage feels off, that's information, not failure. Information. Three, ask yourself what enough looks like. Pick a number, the real number, the salary where your life actually works. And what I mean by works is bills paid, savings growing, enough margin to breathe. Most people never ask themselves that question. They just keep climbing and wonder why the ladder doesn't end. Living within your means isn't a finance hack. It's the thing that gives you the freedom to pick a job for the why, not the number. Four, find people who share your values and not just your title. A faith community if that's your lane. A mentoring group, a volunteer nonprofit, a book club, the Defender Slack, Hacker Valley Listeners, SHIELD, a wellness community built for people in tech and cyber who want grounded, sustainable success, right? The people who remind you what this is for in any setting where the reminder actually lands. Five, mentor someone newer than you. This one is sneaky. The act of explaining your values to someone just starting out forces you to remember them yourself. You hand them the thing, and the thing comes back to you stronger. So our plain text recap. Spiritual health for our purposes is the set of values that make up who you are. Mission drift is what happens when your paycheck climbs faster than your values do. The 3 a.m. test is the cleanest measure of whether your values are still alive. Living within your means is a spiritual discipline that gives you the freedom to choose the job that matters over the job that pays. Faith fits here for some of you. Others, different practices fit for the rest. Both are valid. The point is the practice, not the label. Now, you don't have to have it all figured out by next week. You just have to remember that the why is part of the maintenance, not a luxury, and that the why doesn't come from the paycheck. That's the second leg of the stool. Physical health is next Friday. Now, if you have a topic you want broken down in plain text, or you just want to tell me what your three values are, send them my way. Email me, DM me, drop in the comments. Smoke signals from the mountaintop you've been meaning to climb are also accepted. I read them all and I get back to you. If you're listening in a browser, hit subscribe and whatever app you use. It's the single best way to make sure you don't miss the next one. Now, if this episode helped, share it with someone who'd actually benefit. This has been plain text with rich. 10 minutes or less, one topic, no panic. I'll see you next time.