Menopause Brain Upgrade
Part 3: Decision-making
This is part of a series where I give you a sneak peek inside my upcoming book, In Her Prime: The Hidden Science Behind Menopause & Leadership and Why the World Needs You More Than Ever.
We are examining the upgrade we get during menopause, in bite-sized, bullet form.
Many misinterpret menopause as a decline. In fact, it’s a transition into a new era of life, where we are no longer pulled to manage everyone else’s needs, and able to level up to senior leadership, as evolution intended. Here’s Part 3 of our brain upgrade:
Decisions become slower and better
Earlier in life, hormonal cycles nudge the brain toward speed and responsiveness. That’s helpful when children need immediate action. But menopause shifts the brain toward integration, drawing on experience, pattern recognition, and long‑term consequences.
What this feels like
Less impulsivity.
A stronger gut sense of what aligns with your values.
Decisions based on accumulated wisdom, not emotional urgency.
Why evolution made this change
Older women were reservoirs of knowledge. Their role was not to react quickly, but to choose wisely, drawing on decades of lived experience.
Just in case your intuition is speaking more loudly to you than before, this is what you are seeing.
If you have ignored your intuition as many times as I have - at my peril - perhaps you are also seeing this as the upgrade it undoubtedly is.
One decision I have made based on experience, pattern recognition, and long-term consequences is to never ignore my intuition again. Same for you?
We talk about “women’s intuition” as though it’s some sort of magical insight.
I think it’s just our wisdom and lived experience telling us what we know to be true.
And like the rest of our brain upgrades in midlife, it only gets better.
If you’re enjoying this series, share it with someone else who needs to know she is not falling apart.
And join me with my friend Selin on our podcast Only Gets Better where we get into our feminist midlife wisdom and build community with other amazing women like you. And laugh A LOT as we go.
Heather x