In this episode of Changemaker Insights, host Thomas interviews Simona Deckers, a Frankfurt‑based leadership advisor and success strategist. Simona opens with a philosophical story about identity, then outlines her personal background: a childhood driven by a desire for happiness and fulfillment, early exposure to meditation and self‑development literature, and supportive, un‑prescriptive parents. She cites formative books and thinkers such as Dale Carnegie, Vedanta philosophy, Hermann Hesse, and Thomas Mann, and later mentors from the coaching world. Simona’s mission is to foster self‑leadership and inner transformation in CEOs and entrepreneurs, believing that authentic leadership starts with deep self‑reflection and a willingness to constantly change. She describes her practice as a simple, one‑on‑one coaching model supported by a small team, emphasizing individualized, tailor‑made work. Continuous learning is a core habit; she participates in online programs with international coaches, valuing the global campus of knowledge. Key pieces of advice she shares include taking responsibility for the energy in any room, embodying the relationships you wish to have, and living as if you are reborn each day—adopting a beginner’s mind. When asked to imagine a single law for humanity, she proposes “be kind to yourself and to others,” linking it to compassionate economies and justice. She closes with a concise call to action: listen to yourself, follow your heart, trust intuition, and act on your dreams.
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Welcome, Simona, to Changemaker Insights. I'm really looking forward to this episode. First and foremost, it would be really great to have a short introduction about yourself. Let us know and let the world know who are you and what do you stand for?
Thank you so much, Thomas, for inviting me. I'm so happy to be here with you. And that's always a question I love. Who are you? What are you? about in life. And, you know, I thought that maybe as an introduction, I would tell a little story. And there was a woman once, she wanted to know who she was. And then she heard a voice and that voice said, who are you? And she said, well, I am, and let's say Sabine.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. And that voice said, no, I don't wanna know your name. Who are you? And then she said, well, I am Mike's wife. And she said, I don't want to know whose wife you are. I wanna know who you are. And she said, well, I work as a secretary. I don't want to know what you do, what your profession is. I wanna know who you are. And the whole conversation goes on and on and on. And at the end, the woman didn't know what to tell, what to say, what kind of distinction she could say again or bring forth once more. And then there was silence. And then the voice said, this is who you are. So actually the solution is who you are is what your consciousness is about, who you are in terms of your own personal development, who you are as a self-reflected being. So I mean, this is a bit philosophical, but I like it as a beginning. So who I am, I mean, I will start now with some attributions. and some outer distinctions and some outer definitions, which actually is not who we are in a philosophical or existential sense. So, but I am Simona. I live in Frankfurt in Germany, and I work as a leadership advisor, success strategist, and I am self-employed already for 12 years, so quite a while. And I love what I'm doing, what I do. I love to get up every morning and go to work, and I love to be here with you and tell you more about my mission, about what I'm doing. And it's leadership advisor, is I work very closely with CEOs, entrepreneurs, managing directors, and I help them develop a new sense of their leadership self, of their leadership style. Because we live in a world where leadership has changed and shifted enormously. And who we were in the past or how people managed companies in the past is not sufficient anymore. We need way more in terms of what we bring to the table as a person in leadership today.
That's powerful. And what a wonderful introduction with the little story. And it's about, and I love that it's about personal development and your conscious state of being. I think defining ourselves like that should happen more. Thank you very much. Before we move into, your beliefs and your conviction on what needs to change and how we lead ourselves and how we lead teams, how we lead people. That's a topic that I'm also very, very deeply involved in. So, I'm curious about that, but a little later. Let's keep on talking a little bit about yourself and your mission.
Yeah.
What made you the person that you are today? How did you become who you are? Like, usually we have dreams as kids. Who we want to become. Are you what you wanted to become when you were a kid? How did you become the person you are today?
I think, yes, I am the person I always wanted to be because what I wanted to be when I was a teenager, actually, I had some professional dreams when I was a kid. I can tell you later about that. But when I was a teenager, what I wanted, I wanted to live a happy, fulfilled life. I wanted to be deeply fulfilled. And it doesn't matter, or it didn't matter to me what that would look like in detail as a profession. But I knew as a teenager, I want to come to the end of my life and say it was wonderful. I'm in, you know, I can die and I'm full of life.
That's nice.
And yeah, and so that was my motivation. And I was starting to look into ideas and concepts that can help us to be happy and fulfilled. And I had the great, yeah, it was a miracle. I had the great chance that I had books at my disposal very early on about meditation, about self-reflection, about personal development. And I read those books and I was, a new world opened and I was so enthusiastic about that because I felt this is a way that can lead to long-lasting happiness and fulfillment. because the authors described it as the way to happiness and fulfillment. And I believed them somehow intuitively, said, yeah, this is true. And there was one master, he wrote about breath, breathwork. And he said, when you can breathe deeply, you will be happy. You know, they were very simple, very simple sort of recipes. what happiness looks like, how we can be a very relaxed person without opposition, resistance. And I love diving into that. So what shaped me or what are books inspiration, but also I became the person I am today because I had the freedom to roam around.
Wonderful.
To be and become whoever I wanted to become. My parents had no fixed ideas about who I had to be. They didn't say, you need to be whatever, teacher or a judge or whatever. You know what? parents would like their kids to be. So there was no conditioning, very few conditioning, very few, yeah, very few expectations imposed on me. And that made me the person I am today. And yeah, it's great. I'm very lucky.
And speaking of, You already spoke of your parents, you spoke of books, you spoke of the possibility to live the way or to explore your life in the way you wanted to explore. Can you name a few people or maybe even authors that you don't know personally, but who shaped you most on your journey? I guess parents, close relatives, friends.
Yeah.
But anything that you could recommend where you say this was really an epiphany when I read this book, this author still stands out. Any recommendations for the audience?
It's actually very old books, classics in time, and it's How to Make Friends by Dale Carnegie. It's how to actually, a book about how to be a good person, how to be not only a nice person in a social way, but how to be deeply interested in people. How to be conscious about what you're doing towards yourself and other people. So I like that very much. And there's one book by an Indian master in Vedanta philosophy. Vedanta is a very popular and very known philosophy in India, and it's called the philosophy or the belief of oneness. There's only one. There's not two. There's not black and white, there's actually one, you know, there's one thing that encompasses the opposites. So that was something that impressed me a lot.
Okay.
And also some authors of my childhood, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, they impressed me a lot. Yeah, I have to say that. And later on, I discovered coaches, And that opened another world to me as well.
And how long would you say is your mission ongoing already? And could you already name it, like, precisely? What is your mission?
Yeah, my mission is actually my passion. And my passion, I'm passionate about self-reflection, personal development, inner transformation. self-leadership, but that leads to leadership, of course, in the world, in the companies. I work with CEOs and managing directors, and they cannot stop with just being content with self-reflection. They need to, of course, lead teams. They need to inspire people. They need to be way more to just self than self-reflection. But that's, it starts with that. It starts with self-reflection. It starts with the desire to embrace change constantly.
Mm-hmm.
And that's my mission, to help people navigate these areas, navigate these unknown corners of themselves, to transcend themselves constantly, to discover themselves in a different way. And then of course, with that renewed self, to make an impact in their companies and in the world.
And how do you bring that mission into the world? Like, I mean, you're a coach. Is there a team that supports you? Do you have a board of advisors? Tell us a bit more about your day-to-day of living that mission.
Yeah, I have a team that works with me and I work very closely with my clients, with CEOs, with managing directors and entrepreneurs. And I work mostly one-on-one with them.
Mm-hmm.
So no group programs or webinars or so on, very closely one-on-one. And I love to see their development. I love to be very individualized and very custom, tailor-made, custom-made in the approach with them. And yeah, that's how I work. So it's actually very easy.
Yeah.
I, when I was before my self-employment, before I was of course also an employee and life was very complex and I longed to live a way more simple life. And so I have a very simple business model. You know, I have some people who work with me, support me, work closely with me, and then I work one-on-one with my clients. That's, and that's very, very overseeable. You know, it's— I like it. You know, it makes me happy when things are simple.
Simplicity is certainly a form of clarity, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Brings us broadened consciousness. So that's super great. And for yourself, like living your true self, your mission, this is what makes you happy. But what do you do to develop yourself? What do you do to constantly reconnect with that mission, to reevaluate it? I mean, it seems you've been on that journey for quite a while. Many start that only later when they realize, oh, change starts from within and I don't need to change the world, but rather start with myself. But it also, it's a process that never ends, at least to my understanding. So what is your approach to self-discovery, continuous self-discovery and development?
Yeah, I like your question that you asked, what do you do to reconnect with your mission? Actually, I am my mission. I'm so on fire, you know, I never need to reconnect with it. So for me, the problem is more when can I disconnect, you know, to have a break, to just relax and regenerate. But of course, there are also people in my life who inspire me immensely. Coaches. I have, I'm with coaches for several years. I am in their programs, in their coaching space for years. I joined 2 coaches end of 2017, and I'm with them today. And I have another coach, he's fantastic. He's very inspiring, and I book all his courses and whatever he does, whatever he puts out, I buy it and I'm in. And that also since 2015, '16.
Wow.
So this is, they really, I never met them personally because they're in the United States. So this is also a bit like, you know, Tomorrow's University, it works. I can assure and I'm convinced that online studying is very useful. You know, I did most of the, the most, how can I say, the most important studies that I've ever done was online with people, fantastic people from all over the world.
It enables us to see the world as the campus. And also coming back to what you said, as one. And there's not 190-something nations and everybody's separated, but it empowers us to connect at a deeper and different level. I mean, that doesn't mean that the physical connections are, they're equally, if not for other instances, super important, but technology enables us to do a lot of things more, which is great.
Yeah. I love to, you know, I love to connect to fantastic teachers around 2016, '17 when I was professionalizing my skills and my capacities, competencies a lot. So I love to learn from the best via the internet, you know. Yeah.
And that means you can be local but still global.
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I love to get to know the other students also from around the world. I have people from, friends from all over the world. That's fantastic. Nice.
And maybe speaking of friends or the best teachers, the best advisors, could you share or would you want to share what is the best advice that you've ever received? So could you pin it down to one? It's hard, I know.
It's hard, yeah. But I think it's, you are responsible for the energy in the room. You have to create the energy you want to experience. For instance, if you want to be in a fun environment, you have to bring the jokes. You have to bring the fun. You know, no one else will do it. Or if you want to, whatever you want to experience, you are responsible for the energy in the room. And if that's with friends or in a professional environment, especially in— that's important for my clients. They are responsible for the energy that is in the room. You know, so they need to know how to create the joy, the team spirit, whatever it is.
Nice. Yeah, that's super great because energy is, I think, an incredibly useful concept when it comes to personal development. It's energy within us, but it's also the energy that you create, that you transmit. that you, when you more or less shine or not shine, right? But I think this is a really, really important element to consider.
And a variation of this advice is, for instance, in relationships, be the friend or be the partner you want to have. You have to become first the person that you want to be.
Wish for. Yeah.
Yeah.
That's also great. And is there something that you'd like to reveal here that you found incredibly inspiring as a learning that was for you also super insightful, that was really like a pivotal moment throughout your long-lasting journey? So where you say, wow, this moment really changed a lot of things. This is— this was my biggest learning. Dude, it passed. Decade, if not more?
I think one of the biggest learnings is you have to live in such a way that you feel you're being reborn every day. So that means change is constant, transformation is constant. You're not, when you wake up in a new morning, you're not the same person as yesterday.
Yeah.
And this is something that I like a lot, this idea of being new, a new person every day, because life is never boring with that attitude. Never, ever. Yeah.
Wow.
Life is always different. Life is, life, the world changes every day, you know, deeply.
That also means that you need to let go of your experiences of your past and constantly adopt this beginner's mind, right?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And be flexible and open and adapt quickly to situations, not put resistance into it. I like this very much.
Yeah. Earlier I asked you during your childhood, you most probably had dreams of who you'd want to become. Do you wanna share, like, Did you wanna become a doctor? Did you become—
Yeah, exactly.
Was there anything that you didn't become?
Yeah, I wanted to become a vet.
Okay.
A doctor for animals. I wanted to become a doctor at some point. At some point, I think I wanted to be a professor at high school, at a university. So there's this great love for learning and helping people that they have, that, yeah, that they have a good life again. So healing, learning, this is something that I wanted. And to some extent, I do that today. So I don't feel that I'm that far away from my childhood dream.
It's a different attribution or definition, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Being a professor at high school, you're coaching people, you're helping people. You're in essence doing exactly what you more probably dreamed of.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, because sometimes we're very stuck into the very narrow definitions of jobs, right? Or professions or other people. We don't really understand the essence that is behind. So powerful. And maybe last couple of questions. I'd be super interested if you had the magic wand Yeah. To wish for change in this world, in this one society, on this one planet, where everyone would need to follow a single law that will exist from tomorrow.
Yeah.
How would that law look like? What would it be? What would you do with that magic wand that's given to you?
I love this question because it would change the world so much. And my law would be, be kind to yourself and to others. That would change everything. That would change how we interact. That would change how we do business. That would change how we treat nature. That would change how we treat animals. That would change everything. Everything.
Fully agree. And it's separated into 2. The one is be kind to yourself. I think many struggle with that, like including myself, this constant self-criticism of not being enough, not That's the one piece of that. Also moving from, for example, the scarcity economy, like there are scarce resources we need to fight over towards a more compassionate economy where we help and grow together.
Absolutely, absolutely. With fairness and justice and fair retribution. And I mean, it could be, heaven on earth here, you know, with different systems.
Maybe it will be.
Yeah, I believe that. You asked me if I have a belief, a very singular, a very specific belief. Maybe that's one. I believe it has to change and it will change.
I believe so too. Last question, like to the audience, is there an advice that you would want to leave everyone with? Is there anything that— You think like could be starting small, but also having a big vision. But what is it that you would like to tell everyone to start doing today or latest tomorrow?
Yeah, listen to yourself, follow your dreams, listen to your heart, trust your intuition and go for it.
Nice. That's a powerful closing statement. Simona, thank you very much for spending the podcast episode with me. Super insightful. We're really happy to have you as an ambassador and supporter of Tomorrow University. And I'm sure that we will see the world that we both wish to live in.
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Thomas, for the invitation.
