Keynote

In this RVAsec 2022 keynote, Dorsey Levens, a retired NFL running back who later moved into acting and mindfulness teaching, opens by asking the room about the stress people carry. He argues that after the pandemic many people are running on a way of thinking that no longer helps them, and that how we interpret events shapes our feelings more than the events themselves.

The middle of the talk lays out his program, Re.Mind. Listeners are encouraged to notice what they are thinking, to separate what they can control from what they cannot, and to focus on the things they care about most. He covers giving up unsolicited advice, treating setbacks as lessons, and reframing hard moments with a parable about a horse that keeps turning out to be good or bad news depending on what comes later. He compares changing habits to physical training, where repetition over weeks matters more than one strong effort, and points out that most feared outcomes never happen. Examples come from his football career, including a switch from running back to wide receiver that he later saw as useful, and from everyday frustrations such as traffic.

He closes with practical steps: check your inner dialogue, replace fearful or hostile thoughts with more useful ones, reset each morning instead of waiting for a fresh start, and look back at the past only to learn from it. A short Q&A covers staying motivated on low-energy days and how he handled leaving professional sport. The talk contains no technical security content. Its value for practitioners is in its guidance on staying composed under pressure, which applies to incident response and other high-stress work.