Purpose, Rewritten: What Twenty-Four Years of Work Have Taught Me About Meaning
- Mar 6
- 3 min read
By Andrea Simon, PhD
When I began my business twenty-four years ago, I believed my purpose was clear: help organizations change.
I was trained as a corporate anthropologist, skilled in observing culture, diagnosing patterns, and helping leaders see what they could not see from inside their own systems. My work focused on strategy, growth, and transformation—on helping companies adapt in fast-changing markets.
What I did not fully understand then was how personal change truly is.
Over the years, I learned that organizational change is rarely about charts, plans, or even strategy.
It is about people—people whose brains are wired to protect them from uncertainty, loss, and perceived threat. Change activates fear. It triggers fight, flight, or freeze responses. Even when change is necessary or beneficial, our nervous systems resist it.
That realization reshaped my purpose.
Early in my career, fulfillment came from solving complex business problems. I was energized by helping companies find new markets, redesign offerings, or rethink how they delivered value. Success looked like scale and visibility: healthier organizations, stronger leadership teams, measurable results.
Today, fulfillment looks quieter—and deeper.
I began blending new methods into my work: neuroscience, behavioral change, leadership development, and experiential learning. I stopped asking only, “What needs to change?” and began asking, “What are people afraid of losing?” and “What story are they telling themselves about what this change means?”
My role shifted. I became less of a business fixer and more of a guide.
Clients often ask how I stay so positive after decades of work rooted in discomfort and uncertainty.
The answer surprised even me: I am no longer focused on fixing businesses. I am focused on helping people move through fear.
Whether I am leading a leadership academy, working with executive teams, or helping individuals prepare for retirement, the pattern is the same. Our brains hijack us during transitions. We fear irrelevance. We fear the loss of identity. We fear the unknown future more than we trust our capacity to navigate it.
Purpose, for me, has evolved into helping people do the very thing their biology resists: pause, reflect, reframe, and move forward with intention.
Fulfillment now comes from watching someone shift their story. From seeing a leader stop interpreting change as failure and start seeing it as evolution. From helping a professional recognize that retirement is not an ending, but a redesign of meaning, contribution, and identity.
With experience comes a different kind of wisdom.
I no longer believe change needs to be forced. It needs to be made safe. People don’t resist change because they are stubborn or incapable; they resist because their brains are doing exactly what they were designed to do—protect them. When we understand that, compassion replaces frustration. Curiosity replaces judgment.
What I know now is this: purpose is not static. It grows as we grow. It deepens as we learn where our work truly lands.
My purpose today is to help people become friends with change—to see it not as something happening to them, but something unfolding through them. When that happens, fear loosens its grip, possibility expands, and meaning becomes something we actively design rather than passively inherit.
That is the work I will continue to do—because helping people evolve may be the most enduring form of change there is.
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