What Is Your Body Asking For? The Leadership Wisdom of Midlife

Your body is not an obstacle to your leadership. It is a source of intelligence.

For years, high-achieving women often override hunger, fatigue, pain, stress, and the need for recovery in the name of performance. You keep going because people depend on you, deadlines matter, and ambition feels urgent.

But what happens when pushing through becomes your default operating system?

In a Chief article, “Dr. Giulia Enders Wants Women Leaders to Ask Their Bodies: ‘What Can I Do for You Now?’,” Dr. Giulia Enders invites women to replace guilt and fear with appreciation. The physician, bestselling author of Gut, and author of Organ Speak: What It Really Means to Listen to Our Bodies offers a powerful mindset shift: “You’ve done so much for me. What can I do for you now?”

That question can change how you lead, work, and live.

Start With Appreciation, Not Self-Criticism

Your body adapts, compensates, and carries you through demanding seasons. It supports your goals, your teams, your family, and your big ideas: often without receiving your attention until something feels wrong.

Instead of asking, Why can’t I function like I used to? try asking:

• What is my body communicating today?

• What helps me feel steady and clear?

• Where am I asking too much without enough support?

Curiosity creates a better leadership strategy than shame.

Recognize Midlife Change as Leadership Data

Perimenopause and menopause can coincide with the years when women occupy senior leadership roles. Hormonal transitions may affect sleep, mood, cognition, energy, gut health, cardiovascular health, and bones. These experiences vary widely, so persistent or concerning symptoms deserve discussion with a qualified healthcare professional.

This transition is not simply a story of decline. As Dr. Enders explains, some women experience greater clarity and less willingness to accommodate unnecessarily. That directness can become a leadership asset when you understand your changing needs and support them responsibly.

Your body may be asking you to establish firmer boundaries, redesign your schedule, or stop spending energy smoothing over issues that require candor.

Treat Rest as a Performance Strategy

Recovery requires more than collapsing after an intense sprint. The body grows and repairs through an ongoing rhythm of activation and rest.

Rest is not the opposite of achievement. It supports achievement.

Burnout recovery also requires renegotiating your inner story:

• What does success mean now?

• What is enough?

• What am I asking my body to prove?

• Which expectations still align with my values?

Without this deeper reset, time off becomes a temporary pause before the same unsustainable pattern resumes.

Choose Coherence Over Peak Output

Thriving is not symptom-free perfection or maximum productivity every day. It is coherence: your work, values, lifestyle, and physical capacity operating in meaningful conversation.

You do not have to move against your body to prove your commitment. You can move with it.

Three Questions to Practice This Week

1. Notice: What signal: fatigue, tension, hunger, or irritability: am I dismissing?

1. Respond: What is one supportive action I can take today?

1. Recalibrate: What boundary, expectation, or work rhythm needs to change?

Build a Leadership Community That Supports Wellbeing

Sustainable leadership is not a solo sport. Trusted relationships, honest conversations, and supportive communities help create safety, connection, and perspective. When you share experiences with other women leaders, you replace isolation with practical wisdom.

Your body has been working for you every day. Now, listen closely and ask what you can do for it.

I work with leaders and organizations to transform burnout, overwhelm, and disconnected work cultures into sustainable peak performance. Explore my executive coaching, keynotes and workshops.

#WomenInLeadership #MenopauseAtWork #BurnoutRecovery #WorkplaceWellbeing #ExecutiveCoaching #SustainablePerformance #CarolineDowdHiggins #KeynoteSpeaker #WellnessAdvantage