Not health or medical advice. Speak to a qualified professional before making changes. Published 2025-11-28.

Use This 10 Second Reset Before Your Next Stressful Meeting

You know that knot in your neck before the hard meeting? The tight chest? The small sink in your stomach before a call? Most leaders push through it. They fire off the email. They walk into the room, tense but polite. On the surface, nothing looks wrong. Yet the tone is just off. The room feels heavy. The words land harder than they should.

In my talk with leadership coach Katie Rocker, she called this what it is: your stress response. Your body is not the problem. It is the early warning system. The client who said “forgets her head is connected to her body” is not alone. Many high performers live from the neck up. They treat the body as noise, not data.

Katie’s mental fitness work starts in a very small place: notice the signal, name it, then pause for ten seconds. That is all. Tight throat. Knot in the neck. Heavy chest. Drop in the stomach. Then pause. Ten clean seconds before you reply or speak. Bring your focus to one simple physical point: your feet on the floor, your breath in and out, your fingers touching.

You do not need ten minutes. You need ten clean seconds before you react. From there you respond, you do not react. The same words, but with less strain and more presence. For a firm owner or CEO, that tiny shift compounds. Fewer sharp emails. Calmer meetings. Staff who do not walk on eggshells.

Why This Matters If You Run a Serious Business

• You stop reacting from tension and start responding with clarity, which changes the tone of every conversation.
• Your team reads your nervous system before they read your words, so a calm leader builds a calm culture.
• Ten seconds of pause before a difficult reply can prevent weeks of clean up from a message sent too hot.
• Clients and partners feel the difference between someone who is present and someone who is performing calm while actually bracing.
• This is not soft work, it is the quiet infrastructure that allows you to hold bigger conversations without burning out.

Key Ideas in This Video

• Your body is not the problem, it is the early warning system for stress before your mind catches up.
• Most leaders live from the neck up and treat body signals as noise instead of data.
• Mental fitness work starts very small: notice the signal, name it, pause ten seconds.
• Common signals include tight throat, knot in neck, heavy chest, drop in stomach.
• The pause gives you ten clean seconds before you reply or speak, which shifts you from reacting to responding.
• Bring focus to one simple physical point: feet on floor, breath in and out, fingers touching.
• You do not need a full wellness plan to start, you need one clear rule to follow when the body speaks.
• For firm owners and CEOs, that tiny shift compounds into fewer sharp emails, calmer meetings, staff who do not walk on eggshells.
• The client who said “forgets her head is connected to her body” is not alone among high performers.
• Katie Rocker’s leadership coaching focuses on helping people reconnect with their stress response in real time, not after the damage is done.

Less reacting from tension, more responding from ground.

If you want a quiet system like this running in the background, book a Reputation Review with LPV.Agency.