I Was Climbing the Right Ladder. It Was Leaning Against the Wrong Wall.
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There was a time when “Head of French” felt like an identity, not just a job title.
Eighteen years in schools in Wales. Two prestigious institutions. Students who came back years later to say thank you. A career that, by every external measure, made sense. Made me look like I was doing it right.
And I was. I genuinely was. I am not here to dismiss any of it.
But here is the thing I did not ask myself, not once, for all those years: is this actually what I want to build? Is this actually my life purpose? Or is this just what a good teacher does next?
Who Is David Bayer?
If you have read my post “Hustle Culture Lied to You,” you will have encountered this world already – the idea that we spend enormous energy running hard in the wrong direction. David Bayer is a mindset coach whose work centres on what he calls the distinction between the “Primitive” state and the “Powerful” state. Fear, scarcity, and lack versus alignment, trust, and flow.
In Episode 142 of A Changed Mind, he turns that lens on something most personal development content skirts around: not how you work, but why. Not productivity. Purpose. What are you actually building your life toward – and did you consciously choose it?
Inherited Life Purpose vs Chosen Life Purpose
This is the central idea and it stopped me mid-walk.
Bayer argues that most of us are executing on a purpose we never wrote. It was handed to us – by our parents, by our culture, by the version of success that was modelled around us. We absorbed it so early that it feels like ours. But it isn’t. Not really.
For me, the absorbed script was something like: be excellent at teaching. Work your way up. Be respected. Build a career with weight to it.
And I did. And then I moved back to France in 2020, and my British qualifications meant nothing here, and the career I had built – the ladder I had climbed, rung by careful rung – simply ceased to exist in its old form.
Here I was. Nothing like losing the ladder entirely to make you question the wall.
What Do You Actually Want?
Bayer asks this question and then immediately names the problem: most people cannot answer it honestly. Not because they are incapable, but because the answer gets immediately intercepted by what seems realistic, what would impress others, what would be sensible given the circumstances.
He pushes beneath that. He wants the raw answer. The one that might feel embarrassing or too big or too vague.
Mine, when I finally let myself say it properly: I want to create something that is mine. I want to teach and write and think and build something online, on my own terms. I want to stop performing someone else’s version of what I am supposed to be.
It sounds obvious when I write it out. It was not obvious for a long time.
Purpose as Identity, Not Destination
This landed hard, in the best way.
Bayer is not talking about setting a purpose goal the way you might set a fitness target. He is talking about a shift in identity. Not “I want to build an online business” but “I am someone who creates, who teaches, who builds things that matter to me.”
It is the same framework James Clear uses in Atomic Habits – identity-based change – applied not to habits but to the whole shape of your life.
The moment I stopped thinking of Notes from Soph as something I was trying to achieve and started thinking of it as something I already am, everything shifted. Slightly. Partially. I am still figuring it out. But the shift is real.
It Is Never Too Late (And I Mean That)
I am 46. I live in a village in the Var, my French teaching career looks nothing like the one I had in Wales, and I am writing blog posts on the internet at an age when plenty of people have long since decided who they are.
Bayer addresses the “I’m too old” thought directly in this episode and calls it exactly what it is: a Primitive state story. A fear wearing a rational disguise.
Purpose does not have an expiry date. Full stop.
That is not a motivational poster. It is just true. The only thing that makes it feel untrue is the fear that you have left it too late – and fear is not a reliable narrator.
New phase, new me, it’s never too late to improve. I used to say that slightly ironically. I say it completely sincerely now.
What I’m Building Now
Notes from Soph is my rewritten life purpose. It is not finished, not polished, not yet what I want it to be. There is no turning back, though. The question has been asked. I cannot un-ask it.
I write here because writing helps me think. I share because I know I am not the only person who woke up in their mid-forties wondering if the life they had built was actually theirs. I want to build something online that can one day support us financially and give me the independence I crave – but more than that, I want to be someone who creates, who thinks out loud, who is genuinely useful to people in the same messy middle.
That is the honest answer. Still figuring it out. Still very much in progress.
Practical Takeaways
- Ask the question without intercepting it. What do you want – not what is sensible, not what would impress anyone, not what is realistic given your circumstances. What do you actually want? Write the first answer that comes, however embarrassing or too-big it feels.
- Trace the origin of your purpose. Where did your current life direction come from? Who handed it to you? Did you choose it consciously, or did you simply not question it?
- Check whether fear is the architect. Ask: if I knew I could not fail, if money were not a concern, if no one was watching – would I still be building this? If the answer is uncertain, dig there.
- Shift the identity statement. Replace “I want to achieve X” with “I am someone who…” and see how it feels. Identity sticks to you and resonates better than goals.
- Start expressing your purpose now. You do not have to wait until you have arrived. One post, one conversation, one small act of building is already an expression. Begin today.
Why This Belongs in Purpose
I have a category on this blog specifically for work, meaning, and building something real – because I believe those three things are inseparable, and because most of what gets written about careers completely separates them.
This episode belongs here because it asks the foundational question that all the productivity advice, the time-blocking, the side-hustle guides skip entirely: what are you actually building toward, and is it yours?
If you have not answered that yet, start there. Everything else follows.
This is not an arrival post. I have not figured it out. I am, as always, learning, not perfection – trying to live more deliberately, building something that feels like mine, doing it with three children in the background and a village life that bears no resemblance to the CV I spent two decades constructing.
Et toi? Are you living someone else’s version of purpose – or your own? I would genuinely love to know where you are with this. Leave a comment below or come and find me in the Notes from Soph community on Skool – sit with the question for a day first if you need to. That is where it starts.
Notes from Soph | Learning, not perfection.
Have you ever stopped to ask whether your life purpose is truly yours? Drop your thoughts below – I read every comment.
Source Details:
A Changed Mind – Episode 142: How to Rewrite Your Life Purpose
David Bayer | 2025
🎙 Listen on achangedmind.com or search “A Changed Mind” on Apple Podcasts / Spotify
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