Author: Listen To Your Gut
The brain of today's woman's isn't her grandmother's brain. It's changed and evolved to meet the stresses of a more complex world. And, paying attention to intuition - the signals from the brain - can improve a woman's health and happiness.
That, Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz tells The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler, is what women must do to live in a man's world.
Dr. Schulz notes, "Women have twice the incidents of depression, anxiety. Midlife, our brain feels like a Q-tip. We have to be a woman inside with our emotionality and intuition, but we still need to walk in a man's world. Whether we're a doctor, lawyer, CEO, or a parking attendant, it doesn't really matter. We have to ultimately manage being a woman and acting in a man's world."
She unlocks the mysteries of the brain in her new book, "The New Feminine Brain." To read an excerpt click here.
"The new feminine brain is a mind that has adapted to our society," she says. "Intuition is the capacity to make good decisions with insufficient information. I teach people how to use the brain you have to maximize your mood, minimize panic, focus your attention and get in touch with your genius."
How do we do that? She says, "When you walk into a board room, you feel in your gut something's wrong. You feel that feeling of dread. And if you don't pay attention to it for the rest of the day, you start to get anxious, you start to worry.
"You learn how to take your woman's intuition, and then say: 'Hmm, I have a great idea. Do you guys get a sense that…(and then, you say your intuition)?' And they almost always will say, 'Yes, I thought that, too.' Because a man's brain for intuition keeps it a little bit segregated. It has a hard time coming out the mouth. Women get to voice it. If you say it the right way, and the book will teach you how to do it, you'll go in, getting to the top of your game. The women in the room were having the same intuition. They just didn't voice it."
Dr. Schulz says she teaches people to pay attention to the brain-body connection. When someone is going in the wrong direction, his or her body show that. She explains, "Every illness is partially genetic and there are things in our environment that aren't good for us. But every illness or susceptibility to illness is also related to emotions. We know that women with lifelong depression have a predisposition to osteoporosis."
And if you are going in the wrong direction, she says, take a leap of faith and make a change. She says, "The last chapter gives you a way of making change based on what intuition you get. Ultimately, it teaches you the steps on taking a leap. You tell as many people as possible what you need to change so if you don't, you're humiliated. There are a variety of ways of taking your gut and making the right solutions in your life."
"The New Feminine Brain" is published by the Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by Viacom, the parent company of CBS.