The Purpose Evolution: Staying Human in an Accelerating World

The Acceleration Paradox

I grew up in an analogue world. Slower. Quieter. Patient. Electricity took decades to reach every home. The internet went global in seven years. Artificial intelligence did it in five days.

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Something extraordinary is happening to time. Not time itself, but our experience of it. The world is accelerating faster than our minds can follow. That’s not philosophy, it’s neuroscience.

The human brain is built for sequence. We tell stories in straight lines, beginning, middle, end, because that’s how we make sense of a moving world. Story gives chaos a rhythm our brains know how to dance to.

But that rhythm has changed. The world no longer unfolds step by step. It skips ahead, edits itself mid-sentence, writes new chapters before the last one has closed. We’re living inside a story that’s evolving faster than we can read it.

When Purpose Becomes the Disruption

In the rush, we’re losing our anchor. Not just because AI is reshaping how we work and the skills that matter, but because our relationship with meaning hasn’t kept pace. The real disruption isn’t automation. It’s purpose.

I know this because I’ve lived it. Three years ago, I walked away from the business I built to find a new kind of freedom in my contribution to the world. I thought consulting would buy me time. It paid the bills, until one day I realised something unnerving. The very work I’d once offered as my unique value was now being replicated faster, cheaper, and often better by AI.

It hit me harder than I expected. If my skills were no longer relevant, what was my purpose? How was I meant to serve?

For me, it was crafting thought leadership brands, creative mastery brought to life through words. For my husband, a music composer, it was his world turned upside down as algorithms began generating entire soundscapes in seconds. For friends, it’s been graphic design, photography, marketing strategy, coding, even art itself, all being reshaped by the invisible hand of automation.

But I’m also part of the problem. Just last week, I uploaded a photo to ChatGPT to analyse my skin. Within seconds, it told me exactly what I needed, complete with links to the products. In one effortless sweep, it replaced the role of a beautician and a dermatologist. Later, I shared the same tool with a friend searching for retinol for sensitive skin. She tried it too, and sourced a boutique Korean range in minutes.

That’s how fast expertise is being rewritten. Tasks that once demanded years of training are now executed in seconds. And beneath the convenience is a deeper question none of us can escape: if intelligence can be automated, what happens to the meaning that made our mastery matter?

Nothing remains untouched.

And if you haven’t felt it yet, you will. That quiet unease of wondering whether the thing you’ve spent years mastering still matters. The disorientation of watching your identity and your worth shift beneath your feet.

Because this isn’t just about work. It’s about meaning. What happens to our sense of self when the very thing that once defined us can be replaced in a matter of months?

For me, those questions became a turning point. Over time, they shaped a new understanding of purpose itself, one that isn’t fixed, but fluid. Not something to declare, but something to live.

And it’s that living purpose I want to share with you. A way of seeing and being that might support all of us as we navigate the shockwaves of change still unfolding.

The Mirror We Called Work

Here’s the thing. For some, work is simply about paying the bills, and if that’s you, I see you. Money is one expression of purpose. But for many of us, work is something more. It’s the portal through which we define who we are and where we belong. It’s the architecture of our sovereignty, the space where our effort meets identity, and our contribution shapes our sense of self.

That’s why we built our lives around it, chasing the hero’s journey that work once promised. We climbed ladders, followed linear paths, and found meaning in the ascent. It was never just about the job. Work was a mirror, reflecting our value through contribution, connection, and the quiet belief that progress meant purpose. And for a long time, that held true. It worked, when the world moved slowly enough for our stories to keep up.

Today, those ladders are collapsing faster than we can climb them.

Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2030, 300 million jobs will have changed or disappeared entirely. And by as early as 2027, nearly half of all the skills we use at work will be different.

The disruption isn’t just economic, it’s a psychological reframe. We’re losing the mirrors that showed us who we were and the stories that told us why we mattered.

From Reskilling to Re-rooting

This is exactly why leaders need to start asking different questions, not just about productivity or performance, but about what it means to stay human in an age of exponential technology. If we truly value the preservation of our humanity, we have to account for more than skills. We have to consider meaning.

Can we reskill and adapt while staying anchored in something deeper, something we can feel, not just think? Because purpose isn’t a concept we hold in our heads, and reskilling alone won’t save us. What we need isn’t just retraining. We need re-rooting.

Purpose must shift from being a finish line we chase to the heartbeat that keeps us human while everything else evolves. Because if true human purpose fails, progress loses its compass, and with it, its humanity. Technology was never meant to replace life. It was meant to serve it.

Meaning can no longer live inside a single sentence or slogan. It has to be cultivated, continuously, consciously, and in rhythm with the world we’re shaping.

Lessons from the Living World

So how do we re-root ourselves?

I’ve been asking that question while literally uprooting my own life. In the process of moving, we tore out a patch of bamboo. Within days, it sprouted back, strong, supple, undeterred by weather or disruption. That’s what rooted resilience looks like.

There’s a lesson in that. Purpose isn’t about standing rigid in the storm; it’s about staying connected to the ground that gives you life. Bamboo doesn’t resist change — it bends with it, and that’s exactly why it survives.

Nature has been solving the adaptation problem for 3.8 billion years, and it never needed a five-year plan or a statement of why. Walk into any forest and you’ll see it: an intelligence that makes GPT look like a pocket calculator. Trees communicate through vast fungal networks. They share nutrients with the weak, warn each other of danger, and feed their young.

A forest breathes as one living system, yet every tree remains distinctly itself. That’s the kind of intelligence, and interdependence, we need to remember as we learn to evolve with purpose, not apart from it.

The DNA of Purpose™

Nature has always been my greatest teacher when it comes to understanding purpose. Many of you who’ve followed my work will know I often speak about the parallels between what I’ve learned from more than 120 conversations on human purpose, and the living intelligence of DNA. (Via The DNA Of Purpose Podcast).

So let me explain. Because if you’re a leader searching for a more grounded, human way to navigate reskilling and technological transformation, this way of thinking about purpose might help. It offers a way to keep pace with progress while protecting the heartbeat of your organisation, the people within it.

In scientific terms, DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, is the molecule that carries the code of life. It’s the quiet architect behind everything that grows, adapts, and survives. DNA tells every cell how to build, how to function, and how to respond to change. It’s why you look the way you do, move the way you move, and carry traits that reach far beyond your own lifetime.

But here’s the part that fascinates me most: DNA isn’t just a code. It’s a conversation, between stability and change, memory and possibility. And that, I believe, is the same dynamic that defines human purpose.

If we think of DNA as a symbol for purpose, the parallels are striking.

DNA is unique to every form of life, and so is our purpose.

DNA is passed down through biology, and purpose flows through story, culture, and belief.

DNA extends beyond one lifetime, and purpose does too, through legacy and impact.

DNA doesn’t have a single job; it orchestrates an entire living system. In the same way, we don’t have one fixed purpose, but many, unfolding through the seasons of our lives.

And just as DNA evolves with its environment, purpose evolves through experience, continually rewriting itself in response to change.

Both DNA and purpose are living intelligence, stable enough to preserve essence, yet fluid enough to keep life and meaning in motion. Both hold memory and possibility. And both remind us that evolution isn’t something that happens to us. It happens through us.

Purpose in Motion: The Branson Story

Take, for example, Richard Branson.

Branson was born with dyslexia, a difference that shaped how he saw the world. What many viewed as a limitation became the source of his originality, his unique code. His family nurtured independence and adventure, embedding the belief that business could be bold, human, and joyful, a force for good, not just for gain.

His purpose, like DNA, extends beyond one lifetime. The Branson ethos of curiosity, courage, and play lives on through every venture and entrepreneur he’s inspired. His impact outlives the brand itself, and through his own DNA, his daughter Holly, Virgin’s Chief Purpose and Vision Officer, that purpose continues to evolve.

Branson’s purpose has never been singular. From records to airlines to space, each venture expresses a different strand of the same essence: to explore what’s possible. And just as DNA evolves with its environment, his purpose has evolved through experience, turning failure into adaptation, and adaptation into growth.

The Path Forward

So what does all of this mean for you as a leader, especially if you’re trying to reskill, adapt, and evolve while keeping human meaning-making at the core? How do we live this way? How do we cultivate purpose that evolves as fast as the world changes?

Next week, I’ll share The DNA of Purpose™ — a practical framework that brings this philosophy to life. It’s designed to make purpose not just something your team talks about, but something they live and feel as they move through this extraordinary era of transformation. It’s practical. It’s real. And it will ground everything we’ve explored today in action.

In the meantime, keep purpose in motion. Our future depends on it.

Rebecca