When Did You Stop Being Able to Hear Yourself?

I have always had strong intuition. I trusted it early in my career and it served me well. I moved into senior leadership before I was 30, and a lot of that came from listening to something I could not always name — an inner sense of what the right decision was, what a situation needed, what felt aligned and what did not.

What I noticed as I got older was that voice became quieter. Or perhaps more accurately, I became less able to hear it. I started second-guessing decisions I would once have made with confidence. I found myself looking for external reassurance where I used to trust my own judgement.

I have been thinking about why that happens. There are several reasons, enough to fuel more than one article. But I want to focus on three here.

Hormonal changes

As women, our hormones change throughout our lives — through our monthly cycles, and then through the menopause transition. Perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.

The effects of perimenopause can happen much earlier than most women expect. Oestrogen levels fluctuate significantly during this transition, and oestrogen has a protective effect on almost every function in the body, including the brain. Cognition, memory, sleep quality and self-belief can all be affected, often before you even realise it is happening.

I thought I was sailing through it. Compared to friends dealing with rage and severe mood swings, I felt relatively fine. With hindsight, though, there were more symptoms than I registered at the time. What I put down to being busy and not sleeping well was almost certainly connected to perimenopause — including my growing tendency to doubt myself.

They sneak up on you. That is the difficulty. It is hard to notice something when you are living inside it.

Noise

We are surrounded by constant stimulation. Scrolling, listening, switching between devices, sometimes using several at once. Watching television while half-following a conversation while checking a phone.

I think many of us have quietly lost the ability to simply sit with our own thoughts. If every available moment is filled with input, there is no space left to hear ourselves think.

Intuition does not shout. It surfaces in stillness, in gaps. If those gaps never exist, neither does the signal.

Not exercising the muscle

We have also stopped trusting our own judgement on smaller things. We ask Google, or an AI tool, even for decisions we are perfectly capable of making ourselves. There is nothing wrong with using these tools well. But if we outsource our thinking habitually, something weakens. Intuition is a muscle. It needs to be used and tested regularly, or it becomes harder to access when it really matters.

This connects to leadership

This is not just a personal observation. I see it regularly in the women I work with. Highly capable, experienced leaders who have gradually stopped trusting the very instincts that got them where they are. The noise, the hormonal shifts, the habit of looking outside for answers — all of it accumulates. And the inner voice that was once clear and reliable becomes harder to reach.

The good news is that it can be rebuilt. Awareness is the starting point. Then practice.

A reflection

Take a few quiet minutes and sit with these questions.

When in your career did you trust your intuition most easily? What was different then?

Where in your life right now are you looking outside yourself for answers that might already be inside you?

What would it take to create a little more genuine quiet in your week?

And if you listened more closely to what your instincts are telling you right now, what might you hear?

Jo Urquhart is the founder of Resta Forte, a coaching and leadership development practice for women in senior roles. If something here has resonated and you would like to explore this further, you are welcome to book a free 30-minute introductory call.