Rest isn’t a reward for a job well done. It’s a strategy for holding your power.
In every room you walk into whether that is the boardroom, a client Zoom or a difficult family conversation, there’s an invisible game playing out.
It’s the conversation beneath the conversation. It’s the game of who can stay clear, calm, present and in command when everyone else is subtly (or not so subtly) spinning.
That’s power, presence and influence.
And here’s the bit we’re rarely taught… Without rest, you cannot win that game.
No rest = no balance, no focus, no attention, no cognitive edge to stay curious, alert and in control.
Power requires a regulated nervous system
Power isn’t just about volume, job title, or who’s at the head of the table.
Real power is your nervous-system controlling:
- Can you stay present when someone pushes your buttons?
- Can you hold your ground when there’s money, conflict, or status at stake?
- Can you think clearly when everyone around you is drowning in urgency?
You cannot do any of that if your system is permanently in full-on-go-go-go mode.
When you are under-rested:
- Your attention scatters, your ability to read the room distorts, you miss vital information.
- Your focus narrows in the wrong place (usually on self-criticism, perceived threats and spiralling what-ifs).
- Your curiosity shrinks. You’re not exploring. You’re defending.
And the more exhausted you become, the more likely you are to hear yourself saying I’ll be alright when… and then fall back into old patterns including:
- People-pleasing instead of setting boundaries.
- Over-explaining instead of asking one clean question.
- Avoiding the conversation instead of calmly naming the problem.
From the outside, it looks like a “confidence issue” or “imposter syndrome.” But on the inside, it’s often simply that you’re too tired to access your power.
Rest is how you reclaim the high ground
Most people think power dynamics are set before they enter the room. They think they’ve got it all sorted:
He’s the chair. She’s the senior partner. They’re the investor with the cheque book. Done?! Wrong!
There’s another layer of who has more internal capacity available in that moment to simultaneously track what I see as 8 points of data in every room.
Rested you:
- Notices micro-expressions, tone shifts, small openings.
- Has the bandwidth to pause, not pounce to defend.
- Can choose a strategic silence or a precise sentence instead of a flood of words.
- Holds their body, breath and gaze in a way that calms the collective nervous systems around you.
Exhausted you:
- Overreacts or shuts down.
- Misses opportunities because your attention is fried.
- Hands power away by apologising, softening, shrinking, or going along with decisions you don’t agree with just to “get it over with.”
So, when we talk about rest, we are not talking about “self-care” as an optional extra.
We’re talking about the root system of your authority, of your power.
Your breath controls your nervous system.
Your nervous system controls your brain.
Your brain controls how you lead, think, decide and perform.
Rest is what gives that whole system a chance to reset.
Rest sharpens attention and focus
Think of it this way:
- Attention is the light.
- Focus is what you choose to illuminate.
- Rest is the power supply.
If the power supply is low, the light flickers. You can’t hold your attention where you want it. You’re pulled into every distraction, every email, every minute decision giving you another layer of more worried thoughts.
When you’re rested:
- You can choose where to place your attention and keep it there.
- You can widen your awareness to hold both the room and your own internal state.
- You can track dynamics and hold who is aligned, who is threatened, where the real decision is being made, all without drowning in it, and then walk away feeling fresh and enlivened by the conversation and outcome.
This the architecture of influence.
Your ability to notice plus your ability to stay with what you notice.
Rest fuels both.
Rest as a commercial strategy
Let’s be very clear: this isn’t a nice to have. It’s commercial.
When you are rested, you:
- Make better decisions.
- Spot better opportunities.
- Walk away from the wrong deals sooner.
- Have the patience to negotiate on value, not panic-discount out of exhaustion.
- Lead teams who feel safe, seen, and willing to tell you the truth and that is where your real risk management lives.
I often say, little hinges swing big doors. Rest is one of those hinges.
Designing rest into your power strategy
So, how do you turn rest from “nice idea” into a “non-negotiable power move”?
Here are some starting points:
1 Treat your nervous system like a key asset
Schedule recovery with the same seriousness you schedule revenue.
- Build in clear, non-negotiable space before and after high-stakes meetings.
- Take 5–10 minutes to breathe, walk, or sit in stillness before you step into a room where the big hitters reside and power is in play.
Clarity always lands after stillness and not after another scroll through your inbox before a key meeting.
2 Use micro-rest, not just holidays
You don’t need a two-week retreat to reclaim your power (though I will always vote for sea, trees and silence!)
You need:
- 90 seconds of deliberate breathing before you speak on stage, in a room or opening a meeting.
- 3 minutes (and leave your phone in another room) while you drink water and lgaze out of a window.
- 6-minute “Breathing Breaks” between calls to reset your system so you don’t carry one room’s energy into the next.
Small, consistent micro-rests keep your system out of permanent red alert.
3 Re-negotiate your relationship with urgency
Not everything “urgent” deserves your nervous system to jump to full on action.
Ask:
- Does this genuinely need my attention now?
- What happens if I respond in one hour instead of one minute?
- What am I afraid will happen if I slow this down?
Most of the time, urgency is someone else’s poor planning or anxiety being handed to you. You’re allowed to decline the transfer.
4 Let rest be a boundary, not a bonus
You don’t earn rest by being exhausted.
You maintain your power by resting before you hit the wall.
That might mean:
- Leaving the event earlier than others.
- Saying, “I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow,” instead of deciding at 10:30pm.
- Protecting one evening a week as sacred non-negotiable offline time.
You are not being difficult. You’re being strategic.
Ready to be seen, heard and make a difference?
Remember, power isn’t just who speaks the loudest, earns the most, or holds the title. Power is who still has access to their full self when the stakes are high.
Rest is how you make sure that person is you.
Contact me to discover more about how to reclaim your inner power. I hold masterclasses, small group training and private advisory where I share a unique perspective on power, presence and influence that affect your affluence.
Love. Gail.