The 10-Second Reset Nobody Taught You in Leadership Training
What if a powerful, easy antidote to burnout was at your fingertips - and it didn’t come with regret?
You know the feeling.
Back-to-back incident bridges, a board presentation in 40 minutes, and your brain is still locked in threat-detection mode. Your shoulders are up near your ears. Your thinking has narrowed to the tactical. You need to walk into that boardroom and be strategic, composed, and clear — but your nervous system is still running the last crisis.
The standard advice is to meditate, take a walk, breathe. All good. All requiring time you don’t have and a context switch you can’t afford.
What if the reset took 10 seconds and didn’t require leaving your desk?
I’m going to make a case that might surprise you, and it’s going to take a hot minute. Stay with me. There’s science behind it that is important to know. What I’m about to share is a practice so simple on its face that you may not believe it’s effective. I’m asking you to suspend that disbelief long enough to reach the science — and then try it once. If it doesn’t work, you’ve lost 10 seconds. If it does, you’ll want to tell me about it.
We Are Not Okay
Let me put some numbers on the problem of burnout in cybersecurity.
Proofpoint’s 2025 Voice of the CISO report found that 63% of CISOs experienced or witnessed burnout in the past year. Sophos put that number at 76%. BlackFog reported that 93% cite unsustainable stress levels. Seventy-four percent of cybersecurity professionals globally have taken time off due to work-related mental health problems. The average CISO tenure is 26 months — less than half the 5.3-year average for other C-suite roles.
In 2023, Gartner predicted that by 2025, nearly half of cybersecurity leaders would change jobs, with 25% leaving the field entirely. A quarter of CISOs are actively considering stepping down. Some still estimate the global cybersecurity workforce gap stands at 4.8 million unfilled positions — growing 19% year over year, while the active workforce stayed essentially flat.
And then there’s the isolation. CISOs operate under what Shamla Naidoo of Netskope called “a cloud of secrecy and confidentiality” that cuts us off from potential support systems. Unlike other C-suite roles, there’s often nowhere to escalate. As Malcolm Harkins, former CISO at Intel, put it: “Other than to the board, there is really nowhere to go that’s higher.” Fifty-seven percent of CISOs rarely or never switch off from work.
I lived this. I was a corporate CISO at Microsoft and, before that, the head of IT Risk Management and CISO for AT&T Wireless. I know what chronic hyper-vigilance does to your body, your sleep, your relationships, and your decision-making. The threat never stops, so your nervous system never downshifts. CISOs are the tip of the spear - hyper-vigilance affects people throughout the cybersecurity organization. Many of us have been speaking and writing about this for a decade. It is not improving.
The Coping Mechanisms We’d Rather Not Talk About
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
A 2023 study by All Points North and Censuswide surveyed 501 tech executives at companies with over 1,000 employees. The findings were devastating. Half of tech executives self-identified as heavy drinkers — consuming between three and seven alcoholic drinks a day. Forty-five percent reported using painkillers. Thirty-six percent are on antidepressants. Thirty-four percent use stimulants. Thirty-five percent use sleeping pills. Over a third reported increasing their alcohol intake specifically to cope with work stress; another third increased their use of controlled substances.
Read those numbers again.
These aren’t junior analysts. These are senior leaders running critical functions in major enterprises. And this is what they’re doing to get through the day.
The pattern is revealing: the coping mechanisms that win are the ones that require no calendar slot, no context switch, and no appointment. Alcohol to downshift after a 14-hour day. Stimulants to push through the next incident. Painkillers to manage the physical toll of chronic stress. They require zero extra effort, and that’s exactly why they beat meditation apps and therapy sessions every time.
They also make everything worse. Alcohol disrupts sleep architecture - and without having good restorative sleep, the damage adds up fast. Stimulants amplify anxiety. Painkillers blunt the cognitive sharpness the role demands. The coping mechanism becomes its own attack surface — on your health, your relationships, and your judgment.
No judgment here, just empathy. I did it too.
I spoke about this “dirty little secret” from the stage at RSA in 2019. Industry spokespersons like Bill Brenner have made this a platform, but as I read these latest statistics, the situation isn’t improving. If these numbers are even directionally accurate, a non-trivial percentage of senior technology leadership may be making high-stakes decisions while physiologically dysregulated or chemically compensated. That should concern all of us.
Why the Current Solutions Aren’t Enough
I’m not here to dismiss therapy, meditation, exercise, or organizational change. They matter. I’ve benefited from all of them.
But they share a common limitation: they’re additive. They add something to your schedule. They require dedicated time blocks, context switching away from work, willingness to acknowledge the problem (there’s still stigma), and sustained practice over weeks before any benefit appears (if it appears at all).
For someone in chronic sympathetic activation — running on cortisol, processing alerts, preparing for the next board meeting — the activation energy to start a meditation session can feel impossible. That’s not weakness. That’s neurophysiology. Your brain is in survival mode, and survival mode doesn’t want to sit still and focus on your breath. It believes it HAS to scan for the next threat.
So the question becomes: what if there was a regulation tool that worked continuously, required no calendar slot, carried no stigma, and actually helped your nervous system rather than numbing it?
What I Found
After I left my CISO role, I did something unexpected. I completed 2,000 supervised clinical hours, earned another master’s degree, and served as a Palliative Care Fellow at the VA hospital in Portland, Oregon. It was there — working with veterans facing life-limiting diagnoses — that I first understood the neuroscience of how our bodies hold stress, how moral injury accumulates silently, and how the nervous system can get stuck in states that no amount of willpower can override.
I studied trauma-informed care. I started studying frameworks for nervous system regulation—what actually shifts someone out of survival mode and into a state where strategic thinking, creativity, and calm decision-making thrive.
Then I stumbled onto something I didn’t expect.
I’ve been a fragrance enthusiast for some time — 225 bottles of niche and indie perfume, if we’re being specific. But what started as a personal interest became something different when I began paying attention to what was happening in my body as I intentionally engaged with scent. Not just wearing perfume. Deliberately pausing to smell. Noticing the shift.
It wasn’t subtle. And it wasn’t placebo. My Whoop data started telling me something I couldn’t ignore: engaging with scent was a gateway to intentionally managing my highly sensitized nervous system.
The Neuroscience (Stay With Me — This Is the Good Part)
Three independent lines of research converge on why this works. None of them are from the fragrance industry. All of them are from peer-reviewed neuroscience and pharmacology.
Your sense of smell is unique in its neuroanatomy. Olfactory signals project directly from the olfactory bulb to limbic structures — including the amygdala and hippocampus — without first routing through the thalamic relay used by vision and hearing. That direct projection pathway is unusual, and it matters.
The act of sniffing itself modulates cognition — in other words, just taking a deliberate sniff can shift how your brain thinks and focuses — even without an odor present.
This is the finding that changed everything for me. Andrew Huberman, the Stanford neuroscientist, highlighted a study from Noam Sobel’s lab at the Weizmann Institute published in *Nature Human Behaviour* (Perl et al., 2019). The researchers found that people spontaneously inhale at the onset of cognitive tasks, and that performance accuracy improves when task processing aligns with inhalation. As Huberman explained on his podcast: “The act of inhaling itself wakes up the brain. It’s not about what you’re perceiving or what you’re smelling… sniffing as an action has a powerful effect on your ability to be alert, your ability to attend, to focus, and your ability to remember information.”
Let that land. The act of sniffing — with or without a scent — enhances alertness, attention, focus, and memory. The act of deliberate inhalation is neurologically active.
Here’s where perfume comes in: fragrance gives you a reason to do it deliberately, all day long.
Without a scent to engage with, you don’t think to pause and inhale deliberately. But fragrance on your skin creates a continuous invitation to activate that inhalation-linked modulation of attention.
Executive coaching science takes this to the next level.
In Shirzad Chamine’s Positive Intelligence framework — widely used in executive coaching — a “PQ rep” is 10 seconds of focused sensory attention that shifts brain activation from survival mode to creative and strategic mode. Chamine’s research with over 500,000 participants shows that these brief sensory interventions, practiced consistently, measurably improve performance and reduce stress reactivity. Intentional smelling is a PQ rep — arguably the most neurobiologically efficient one, because it combines direct limbic access with the inhalation-cognition link that Sobel documented.
For certain fragrance materials, there’s a pharmacological layer too.
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences have published a series of studies showing that agarwood (oud) essential oil exerts sedative and anxiolytic effects through the GABAergic system — the same neurotransmitter system targeted by anti-anxiety medications like diazepam, but through a different mechanism. A 2023 study demonstrated these effects specifically through inhalation, not injection — meaning actual smelling, not a lab-only route. The same research group showed that agarwood essential oil suppresses HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis hyperactivity — the very stress-response system that’s perpetually over-activated in people under chronic occupational pressure.
I want to be precise about what I’m claiming and what I’m not. There are two distinct layers here:
First: any quality fragrance, intentionally engaged with, functions as a somatic regulation tool through focused olfactory attention and the inhalation-cognition mechanism. This works regardless of what’s in the bottle. This is the foundation.
Second: specific natural materials — such as agarwood-derived sesquiterpenes — may offer additional neurochemical benefits via documented bioactive pathways. This is compelling, peer-reviewed research, but it’s a bonus layer, not the foundation.
You don’t need a $700 bottle of oud to regulate your nervous system. You need a scent you love and 10 seconds of intentional attention.
Sidebar: Not Just Oud — Fragrance Materials with Documented Neurochemical Effects
You don’t need rare or expensive materials to access these benefits. Peer-reviewed research supports anxiolytic and regulatory effects for fragrance materials found at every price point.
Jasmine — The strongest evidence after agarwood. Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum screened hundreds of fragrances and found that jasmine-derived compounds increased GABA receptor activity by more than fivefold — matching the potency of barbiturates and propofol, through the same molecular mechanism (Sergeeva et al., 2010, Journal of Biological Chemistry). A 2023 network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials ranked jasmine as the most effective essential oil for reducing state anxiety (Frontiers in Public Health, 2023). Its active compound linalool modulates GABA-A receptors directly. Jasmine appears in fragrances from drugstore to designer.
Rose — Rose oil inhalation decreases salivary cortisol levels (Fukui et al., 2007, Neuroendocrinology Letters) and suppresses HPA axis hyperactivity under chronic stress — the same stress-response system the agarwood research targets (Fukada et al., 2012, Chemical Senses). Damask rose contains isoflavones that bind directly to GABA receptors (Frontiers in Public Health, 2023). Rose is one of perfumery’s most common materials, available in natural and synthetic forms across every market segment.
Patchouli — A randomized controlled trial with emergency nurses found that patchouli inhalation significantly increased compassion satisfaction — the ability to find meaning in high-stress caregiving work (Seo, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2020). Separate research showed it reduced sympathetic nerve activity by approximately 40% in healthy adults (Haze et al., 2002, Japanese Journal of Pharmacology). Patchoulol, the primary active compound, works primarily through dopamine elevation — a complementary mechanism to the GABAergic effects of jasmine and oud. Patchouli is a base note staple present in thousands of fragrances.
Vanilla — Vanillin shows oral anxiolytic effects comparable to diazepam in animal models, acting through GABA receptors (International Journal of Nutrition, Pharmacology, Neurological Diseases, 2013). Vanillin aromatherapy restored brain BDNF — a neuroplasticity marker — in depression model rats (Journal of Neuropsychiatry, 2018). The inhalation evidence is weaker than for jasmine or rose, but vanilla’s near-universal appeal and presence in fragrance makes it a practical entry point.
The takeaway: The pharmacological research on agarwood is compelling, but it’s not the only path. Jasmine, rose, patchouli, and vanilla (among others) are all supported by peer-reviewed evidence — and they’re ingredients you’ll find in fragrances at every price point. What matters most isn’t the specific material. It’s the intentional engagement with scent that activates the inhalation-cognition mechanism and shifts your nervous system state.
Pick something you love. Smell it on purpose. That’s where the science starts.
From Intervention to Anchor
Here’s where my own experience added something I haven’t seen in any of the research.
Chamine’s PQ reps are designed as reactive interrupts. You notice you’re in saboteur mode — stressed, reactive, narrowed — so you do a 10-second sensory rep to shift back. That’s valuable.
But fragrance on your skin isn’t a one-time intervention. It’s a persistent sensory anchor. Every time you catch it throughout the day, you get a micro-reset you didn’t have to initiate. You don’t have to notice the stress first. You don’t have to remember to do the rep. The fragrance is doing continuous work in the background.
I discovered this by accident. I’d been working through Chamine’s Positive Intelligence program, identifying my own saboteur patterns (Hyperachiever, Restless, and Avoider — a classic combination for someone who’s built a 40-year career and keeps launching new ventures). I designed a weekly task management system to accommodate both high-priority strategic work and the tedious operational tasks that Avoider loves to sidestep — expense reports, tax prep, administrative work.
It worked. Everything was getting done. I was enjoying the process. And then one day I realized: the fragrances I’d been wearing weren’t incidental. They were the continuous Sage anchor keeping my nervous system regulated enough that resistance never fully formed. I wasn’t fighting through the task list. I was regulated enough that the fight never started.
Two weeks from identifying my saboteur patterns to an operational system I actually enjoyed using. The fragrance practice was the variable I almost didn’t notice.
What This Looks Like in Practice
This is not a perfume recommendation. It’s a framework for experimentation.
Before a high-stakes meeting: a deliberate 10-second pause with a scent you’ve chosen for that purpose. Not a spritz on the way out the door — a moment of focused olfactory attention that shifts your state. Bring your wrist to your nose. Inhale. Notice what happens in your chest, your shoulders, your thinking.
During sustained operational pressure, fragrance on your skin is a continuous anchor. Every time you catch it, your nervous system gets a micro-reset without conscious effort. You don’t have to do anything. The scent re-engages the mechanism identified by Sobel’s research.
Transitioning between contexts: notice how different scent profiles affect your state. Cooler compositions for analytical clarity. Warmer resins for depth and sustained focus. Brighter, citrus-forward profiles for activation when you’re dragging after a long afternoon.
This requires no app subscription, no calendar block, no therapist appointment, no stigma, and no substance that impairs your judgment.
It requires one deliberate choice in the morning, a willingness to notice what you’re smelling, and curiosity about what shifts.
The Real Comparison
There’s a better than even chance that you are already using substances or behaviors to regulate your state. The question is which ones.
Alcohol — used by half of tech executives at heavy-drinking levels — provides temporary nervous system depression at the cost of disrupted sleep, impaired cognition, dependency, and health deterioration.
Stimulants — used by a third of tech executives — provide temporary activation and focus at the cost of increased anxiety, crash cycles, and cardiovascular risk.
Painkillers — used by 45% of tech executives — numb physical stress symptoms at the cost of dependency, cognitive dulling, and withdrawal.
And then there are the behaviors we don’t even recognize as numbing. Brené Brown’s research on vulnerability identified that substances are only one category — we also numb through doom-scrolling, staying “crazy busy,” compulsive online shopping, binge-watching, overworking, and overeating. Sound familiar? These aren’t moral failures. They’re nervous system regulation strategies — the ones your body defaults to when it doesn’t have a better option.
Brown’s core insight applies to all of them: “We cannot selectively numb emotions; when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” Every one of these behaviors trades short-term relief for diminished access to the creativity, strategic clarity, and joy that make leadership — and life — worth the effort.
Intentional fragrance practice supports nervous system regulation through direct limbic access, at the cost of a bottle of something you enjoy. It doesn’t numb. It doesn’t impair. It doesn’t trade tomorrow’s capacity for tonight’s relief. And unlike every other option on this list, it actually enhances the cognitive functions your role demands.
I’m not suggesting fragrance replaces therapy, medication, or the organizational changes our industry desperately needs. Those matter. But for the daily, in-the-moment regulation that most of us are currently outsourcing to a bourbon after the board meeting or an Adderall before the incident bridge — there’s a better option. One that actually improves cognitive function rather than impairs it.
What I’m Building
I’ve been developing something called The Way of Fragrance — a practice framework that brings together the neuroscience of olfaction, somatic regulation principles, and intentional fragrance engagement. It’s informed by the research I’ve described here, by my clinical training in palliative care, by Chamine’s PQ framework, and by my own biometric data tracking the physiological effects of different fragrance materials.
I’m not publishing this as a clinical trial. I’m publishing it as a practitioner and a 40-year veteran of technology leadership sharing what I’m observing — with data, with citations, and with full transparency about what I know and what I don’t yet know. The peer-reviewed research supports the mechanism. My biometrics support the practice. Early feedback from technology executives who’ve experienced it has been striking — not for the fragrance itself, but for the immediate recognition that this is doing something different from anything they’ve encountered in the wellness space. The word “healing” keeps coming up unprompted.
There’s more to come. I’m writing a series called “Holy Smokes” on my Scents.n.Sensibility Substack (link below) that goes deeper into the science of specific fragrance materials and their somatic effects. I’m building practice kits designed for people who want to experiment with this approach. And I’m continuing to track my own biometric data to build a more robust evidence base.
Your 10-Second Experiment
You spent your career building systems to protect organizations. This is about protecting your own operating capacity.
Here’s what I’m asking: try it. Tomorrow morning, before you open your laptop, pick up a fragrance you love. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to be niche. It just has to be something that genuinely engages you when you smell it.
Hold it to your nose. Inhale for 10 seconds. Really smell it. Notice what happens to your shoulders. Notice what happens to your breathing. Notice what happens to the quality of your attention.
Then wear it. And notice what happens to your first meeting.
That’s not preference. That’s your nervous system talking.
For more fragrance content and to read the Holy Smokes series, subscribe to Scents.n.Sensibility on Substack.
Karen Worstell served as a serial CISO for iconic brands such as AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, and Russell Investments, and as palliative care chaplain. She is an executive coach, and the founder of Create Your Leading Edge℠ and Way of Fragrance℠. She writes CISO SOS for cybersecurity leaders navigating risk, resilience, and well-being and a fragrance blog on Substack called Scents.n.Sensibility.
References
Burnout and attrition:
Proofpoint (2025). Voice of the CISO Report
Sophos (2025). The Human Cost of Vigilance: Addressing Cybersecurity Burnout in 2025.
BlackFog (2024). CISO Research Report
Hack The Box / Censuswide (2024). Building a Firewall Against Cybersecurity Burnout
Nominet. CISO Stress Report
Gartner (2023). Press release: “Gartner Predicts Nearly Half of Cybersecurity Leaders Will Change Jobs by 2025”
ISC2 (2024). Cybersecurity Workforce Study
Dark Reading (2024). “Persistent Burnout Is Still a Crisis in Cybersecurity”
Computer Weekly (2025). “CISO Burnout: A Crisis of Expectation and Isolation”
Substance use among tech executives:
All Points North / Censuswide (2023). *2023 Mental Health in Tech Report* (501 tech executives surveyed at companies with 1,000+ employees)
Employee Benefit News (June 2023). “Tech leaders struggle with mental health and substance abuse”
Cognitive neuroscience and olfaction:
Perl, O. et al. (2019). “Human non-olfactory cognition phase-locked with inhalation.” Nature Human Behaviour, 3, 501–512.
Huberman Lab Podcast, Episode #25: “How Smell, Taste & Pheromone-Like Chemicals Control You” (June 2021)
Huberman Lab Podcast: “Dr. Noam Sobel: How Smells Influence Our Hormones, Health & Behavior” (May 2023)
Systematic review: “Does Olfactory Training Improve Brain Function and Cognition?” PMC (2023)
Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection. Hazelden Publishing.
Fragrance materials pharmacology:
Wang S. et al. (2017). “Agarwood Essential Oil Displays Sedative-Hypnotic Effects through the GABAergic System.” Molecules, 22(12):2190.
Wang S. et al. (2018). “Agarwood Essential Oil Ameliorates Restraint Stress-Induced Anxiety and Depression by Inhibiting HPA Axis Hyperactivity.” International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 19(11):3468.
Wang S. et al. (2023). “Agarwood essential oil inhalation exerts antianxiety and antidepressant effects via the regulation of Glu/GABA system homeostasis.” Biomedical Reports, 18(2):13.
Pang et al. (2022). “Effective Components and Molecular Mechanism of Agarwood Essential Oil Inhalation.” Molecules, 27(11):3483.
Sergeeva et al. (2010). J Biol Chem. DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M110.103309
Fukui et al. (2007). Neuroendocrinol Lett 28:433–437
Fukada et al. (2012). Chem Senses 37(4):347–356
Haze et al. (2002). Jpn J Pharmacol 90:247–253
Hongratanaworakit (2009). “Relaxing effect of rose oil on humans.” Natural Product Communications 4:291-296.
Frontiers systematic review (2023). Front Public Health 11:1144404
Positive Intelligence:
Chamine, S. (2012). Positive Intelligence. Greenleaf Book Group.
positiveintelligence.com
I am a huge fan of Andrew Huberman’s podcast and have referenced it in previous CISO SOS articles. If you want to go deeper on the olfaction science, start with Episode #25 and the Noam Sobel episode.