The Strange Thing That Keeps Happening Once You Start Building Something Real
It started with a book.
I was thinking about a specific topic – the kind of thinking that happens in the car, half-formed, not quite a plan yet – and I mentioned it to someone the same afternoon. They had just ordered a book on exactly that subject. Not a famous book. A book I had never heard of. They passed it to me the next day.
Coincidence. Obviously.
But then it kept happening. The right person saying the right thing at the right moment. The email arriving the same week as the thought. The solution appearing from an entirely unexpected direction, days after I had stopped trying to find it directly.
I mentioned this to someone and they said the word synchronicity. I had heard it before — a concept from Carl Jung, something about meaningful coincidence – and filed it away as the kind of thing that sounds nice but is difficult to defend in a conversation with a rational person.
Then I listened to David Bayer’s episode 180 of A Changed Mind: “Synchronicity Explained.” And the rational person in me found a framework she could actually use.
Table of Contents
What David Bayer Means by Synchronicity
Bayer is not asking you to believe in magic. He is asking you to consider that consciousness – specifically, the quality of your dominant thoughts and beliefs – has an effect on what you notice and what you attract.
Synchronicity, in his framework, is not random good luck. It is the world reflecting back the frequency of your inner state. When your foundational beliefs – your deepest assumptions about what is possible for you, what you deserve, what the future holds – begin to shift toward what you are building, the external world begins to offer you matching information, people, and opportunities.
Not because the universe is rewarding you. Because your perception has changed. Because you are now looking for, resonating with, and recognising things that were always there but previously invisible to you.
Tara Swart would call this value tagging and the reticular activating system. The mechanism is the same – what you direct consistent attention toward, your brain begins to notice and flag. Bayer and Swart are describing the same phenomenon: one in spiritual language, one in neuroscience. Both are accurate.
The Foundation Underneath It
The reason this episode belongs in the Roots section of this blog – not in Soul, not in Mind, though it touches both – is that synchronicity, in Bayer’s framework, is a symptom of your foundational beliefs.
The word “Roots” on this blog is about foundations. The deep structures that hold everything else up. And your belief system is the deepest root there is. What you believe at the level below conscious thought – about money, about your own worth, about whether good things happen to people like you – determines what you attract, what you notice, and what you build.
When those foundational beliefs begin to shift – when you start to genuinely believe, not just hope, that what you are building is possible – the synchronicities increase. Not as a reward. As a signal. A sign that the foundation is moving.
This is why I include it here, alongside the practical structures and daily routines that make up Roots. The morning practice, the habits, the financial foundations – all of it sits on this deeper layer of belief. Tend the beliefs, and the structures become easier to maintain. Let the beliefs stay stuck, and the best routine in the world will keep hitting the same ceiling.
Why It Increases When You Are Building Something
Bayer makes a specific observation in this episode that I found very useful: synchronicities tend to cluster around new beginnings. When you are starting something – a project, a change, a direction – and you are aligned with it at the belief level, not just the action level, the coincidences multiply.
This is not because the universe is especially interested in your new project. It is because you are. Your attention is intensely focused. Your reticular activating system is tagging everything related to this domain as significant. And when you are genuinely excited and committed at a deep level – when the commitment is real rather than conditional – you bring a quality of energy to every interaction that tends to attract what you need.
I started building Notes from Soph in late 2025. And I can say, without embarrassment, that there has been an unusual concentration of exactly-right things happening since. The right people saying the right thing. The article appearing the week I needed it. The comment on a post that gave me precisely the permission I needed to keep going.
Coincidence. Maybe. But I notice it more than I used to. And the noticing itself – the expectation that things will line up – is, Bayer argues, part of what makes them line up more.
The Difference Between Synchronicity and Wishful Thinking
This is worth addressing directly, because the rational objection is real.
Wishful thinking says: if I want it enough, it will come to me. I do not need to do the work, build the thing, develop the skills. I just need to believe.
Synchronicity, as Bayer describes it, is not that. It happens alongside the work, not instead of it. The committed action and the aligned belief work together. The action demonstrates that the belief is real. The belief makes the action sustainable.
If you are building nothing, synchronicities for that nothing will not arrive. The universe is not a catalogue you order from. It is, Bayer argues, more like a mirror – it reflects back the quality and direction of what you are genuinely doing and genuinely believing.
The practical test is this: are you working? Are you building? Are you making real decisions and following them with real action? If yes, and your beliefs are shifting to match your actions – that is when the coincidences start to feel meaningful.
What I Have Noticed
I am slightly embarrassed to list specifics, which tells me something about the fear of being dismissed.
But: the right podcasts appearing on the exact theme I was processing. The message from someone I had not spoken to in years, on a day I needed to hear something specific. The idea arriving in the shower at 5am – fully formed, with the exact solution to the problem I had been circling for a week.
These feel different from random events. They feel like the world catching up with a decision that has already been made internally.
Bayer would say: that is exactly what they are.
Practical Takeaways
- Take your foundational beliefs seriously. The ceiling on your actions is often your beliefs about what is possible. Address those directly – through journaling, through coaching, through the kind of work David Bayer does.
- Pay attention to meaningful coincidences. Not as proof, but as feedback. An increase in synchronicities is a sign that your inner alignment is shifting.
- Do the work AND tend the beliefs. Action without belief hits the ceiling. Belief without action is wishful thinking. Both are required.
- Notice what you have been overlooking. Before deciding that the right opportunity doesn’t exist, ask whether you have simply been filtering it out as irrelevant. The reticular activating system only flags what it has been told to look for.
- Trust the signal. When several things line up in a short period of time, that is not nothing. It is your foundations shifting. Keep going.
Why This Belongs in Roots
Roots on this blog is about foundations – the deep structures that hold everything up. Not the exciting stuff, not the goals and the dreams themselves, but what is beneath them.
Your belief system is the root beneath all the roots. The quality of what you believe about yourself, about what is possible, about whether you deserve what you are building – this is the foundational layer that synchronicity signals are responding to.
Alongside the Delete Money Blocks work and the Breaking Free from Money Blocks practices, this episode completes a trilogy of root-level belief work from David Bayer’s catalogue. All of them are asking the same question: what do you believe, at the deepest level, about what you are allowed to have?
When the answer starts to change, the world reflects it back. That is synchronicity.
I have learned to notice, rather than dismiss, the moments when things line up. Not to treat them as evidence that I have figured it out, or that everything will be easy from here. Just as a quiet signal that the foundations are shifting.
Keep building. The coincidences are a compass, not a guarantee.
Et toi? Have you noticed an increase in meaningful coincidences around something you are building or a direction you are moving in? Come and share in the Notes from Soph community on Skool or leave a comment below – I would love to hear what is lining up for you right now.
Notes from Soph | Learning, not perfection.
Source Details:
A Changed Mind – Episode 180: Synchronicity Explained
David Bayer | 2025
🎙 Listen on achangedmind.com or search “A Changed Mind” on Apple Podcasts / Spotify
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