Hack The Box

The Will

The term will is a concept interpreted differently in many disciplines. In psychology, will is considered a descriptive construct that presupposes a conscious decision to act, and thus, it is primarily associated with rational action.

Will is used in different contexts and has several meanings: the mental act from which an impulse to achieve specific goals emanates and the setting of goals, and the ultimate translation of these personally or collectively made decisions into action, that is, into conscious and deliberate or even planned action.

From a philosophical point of view, will is defined as deciding on a particular type of action based on the motives for acting consciously. So let us say will is the effort to perform a certain action or achieve a specific goal. Therefore, it is most relevant for us to have decided to achieve a goal that we have determined and strive for it.

Before we decide to achieve a specific goal, we must become clear about our desires. In as much detail as possible, we should explain to ourselves what we want and how it must feel to achieve our goal. This process can also be thought of as dreaming, where we imagine a situation we would like to be in. Unfortunately, most people stop dreaming shortly after they start because they do not see a way to get there.

These people overlook the essential component that the path plays absolutely no role in how we reach that goal because, ultimately, our path is only created by the steps we take.

We can look at interviews of the most famous actors, developers, and scientists, and we will see that none of them have planned and foreseen their careers in the way they came about.

Desire is very dependent on the belief in it. When we believe in our abilities, it relieves us of our complexes (at least from some of them), and we get access to chains of associations of our thinking, interrupted by the pressure of our fears. Let us remember and deeply internalize the following sentence:

  • Fear is a state and the product of our imagination of the future and its consequences where the present is suppressed.

Fear is essential and healthy in life-threatening and health-threatening situations. However, sitting in a chair in front of a computer, afraid of not being up to the tasks we find here, is irrational. After all, we have not yet worked through most of the material, but we are already beginning to program (adjust) ourselves to fail. So let's ask if this fear is real:

  • Have we already worked through all the material?
  • Have we already seen what is being taught and how it is being taught?
  • Do we already have to have the skills that are expected of us?

If we answer "no" to these three questions, it should be clear that we are afraid of something without even trying it. This leads to the fact that the fear, in this case, is not real.

It is interesting that, especially in our field of penetration testing, many students react paradoxically. Most of those who feel a particular "fear" during learning are unaware of what they are afraid of. They believe they are afraid of failing and not learning something well enough, but sometimes as soon as they get stuck on a subject that is not easy for them, they give up. Nevertheless, is not that the failure they were afraid of all along and wanted to avoid by all means? Actually, yes. However, these types of students find it easier to give up and fail than to keep learning and improving. Getting better inevitably happens when we keep practicing and trying different approaches.

We must keep a clear goal in mind to prevent this from happening so quickly.