Before explaining human behaviour, we have already made assumptions about what a human being is and what improvement should look like. This article examines those assumptions through the philosophy of psychology, while also considering how a philosopher’s own experiences and attachments influence their thinking. Drawing on an established intellectual conversation, it introduces the Reconstructive School’s distinctive approach through the five crises of participation: sense-making, Being, sus...

Before We Explain the Human Being

Changing Our Minds and the Ontology of Withdrawal

We reserve the right to change our minds. What happens when we also use that freedom to disown the person who made the earlier choice? This article examines how we turn against previous versions of ourselves, punish ourselves or project responsibility onto others for participation we no longer wish to own. Grounded in the Reconstructive School, it approaches the self as a community of individuals distributed across time and follows the consequ...

The Self We Disown

How Identity and Authority Shape What People Hear, and What It Takes to Stay Open When a Considered Position Is Challenged

People often begin judging a person or an idea before they realise an argument has begun. Assumptions about identity, expertise and authority shape what they hear and whose contribution they take seriously. When an unfamiliar idea questions the very standards by which it is judged, the encounter can unsettle a person’s sense of who they are, what they know and where the...

When the Ground Beneath Us Is Questioned

Spectator or participant? Withdrawal, responsibility and the reality we share

Our choices influence a reality that other people also inhabit. That remains true when we decline to engage, change our minds or walk away. We may experience withdrawal as the end of a matter, while someone else continues living with what our departure has left unresolved.

Grounded in the Reconstructive School, this article explores the choice to see ourselves as participants in life and take ownership of how we ...

Choosing to Participate

Understanding Capacity, Threshold and the Possibility of Expansion

There are moments when life seems to ask more of us than we currently have available to give. Pressure builds, patience thins, clarity narrows and we can find ourselves reacting in ways that do not feel like us. These moments can feel like failure, but they may be revealing something more useful: the edge of our current capacity.

Being at the Edge explores the idea of threshold, the point at which the demands of reality beg...

Being at the Edge: When Life Asks More Than You Currently Have to Give

Why We Sometimes Reject What We Say We Want

Why do people sometimes reject, distrust or undermine the very relationships, commitments or forms of care they say they want?

The Unfamiliar Good explores the paradox of encountering something objectively valuable yet finding ourselves unable to fully receive, trust or sustain it. Drawing on research into attachment, self-verification, maladaptive schemas, psychological reactance, relationship sabotage and revictimisation, the article examines h...

The Unfamiliar Good

How We Came to Demand the Certainty Produced by Other People’s Commitment While Preserving Our Own Optionality and Letting Ourselves Off the Hook

In a culture increasingly organised around optionality, we have begun to expect the certainty created by other people’s commitment while preserving our own right to withdraw whenever our feelings, preferences or circumstances change. The problem is not that people change their minds. It is that commitments create social and material realities lo...

The Certainty We Consume, the Commitment We Avoid

Meaning Discovery, meaning-making and the Distractions That Borrow Significance From What is Real

Chasing a Shade of Meaning examines how we can devote ourselves to things that resemble significance without remaining connected to what makes them genuinely meaningful. Drawing on Rumi’s image of a hunter exhausting his arrows by shooting at the shadow of a flying bird, the article distinguishes ontological significance, personally experienced meaning and the deceptive substitutes that borrow ...

Chasing a Shade of Meaning

Sense-Making, Being, Sustainability, Meaning and Capacity May Appear to Be Separate Concerns. Reconstruction Reveals Them as Five Interrelated Crises of Human Participation.

As the global launch of Reconstruction on Friday, 25 September 2026 approaches, the questions, foundations and bodies of work that have given rise to the Reconstructive School are being introduced. In preparation for the launch, an accessible entry into the School’s central concern is offered through this article: what ...

RECONSTRUCTIVE SCHOOL: The Five Crises Beneath the Problems We Keep Trying to Solve

What Human-Made Law Already Assumes About Reality, Sense-Making and Being

“One is expected to conform their behaviour to the requirements of the law.” Yet human-made laws change across times, societies and jurisdictions, and what was once lawful may later be recognised as profoundly unjust. The Laws Above the Law examines what enacted law already assumes but cannot itself create. It distinguishes human-made law from physical laws and from the deeper ontological conditions that make action...

The Laws Above the Law

The Freedom to Withdraw and the Cost Others Carry

Signatures in Pencil examines the growing normalisation of entering consequential commitments while privately retaining the option to withdraw whenever pressure, discomfort or inconvenience arises. Across relationships, leadership, business, politics and geopolitics, people often accept the benefits of commitment while treating its obligations as provisional.
The article argues that changing one’s mind can be legitimate, but it does not era...

Signatures in Pencil

As an emerging leader with aspirations to climb the corporate ladder or transition to a more fulfilling career, do you believe you have to pretend to be someone you’re not to be accepted? Do you sometimes doubt yourself or feel unheard, unseen and undervalued? If so, you’re not alone. Putting on a fake persona in the workplace is more common than many people realise. However, there are significant costs in doing so. In this article, Jeanette Mundy explains why the adage that you have to ‘f...

Sick of changing who you are to fit in?

There are many reasons for startup failure, but up to 42% of failures result from a single cause. In this article, Director at Engenesis Ventures and startup advisor Ariya Chittasy discusses the three most common pitfalls that lead to this one cause of failure and what you can do to avoid making the same mistakes, giving your startup the best possible chance of success.

One reason why up to 42% of startups fail

You need to work on your business, not in your business. As a business owner, you’ve probably heard this line multiple times, be it from business advisors or well-meaning people trying to help. But does the thought of delegating some of the operational tasks you currently do yourself to make your business a success seem too far from your reach? In this article, business consultant Anthea Stevanovic reveals seven steps to gradually remove yourself from your business' operational functions and e...

Get yourself out of your business' operations: The 7 steps

When we are at the receiving end of obstacles and unexpected detours, it’s easy to get stuck in the trap of victimhood. If you manage a team with members who are constantly locked in complaint mode and find it difficult to turn the situation around, team morale can be impacted, slowing productivity. In this article, Jacqueline Hofste, an ontological leadership coach with a background in senior leadership roles in the corporate environment and archetypal consulting, explains how and what we can...

Is your team stuck in Victimhood mentality

Most of us know somebody who is transactional in their relationships with others, whether it be someone at work, at home or in our social circle. It might even be you. Some might argue that being transactional is the only way to meet targets at work or protect yourself from being taken advantage of. In this article, leadership and confidence coach Helen Robinett explains why any relationship that focuses on getting rather than giving is toxic and how to build authentic, transformative relationsh...

From transactional to transformative: how to build authentic relationships

Modern society has provided an opportunity to redefine the traditional male and female roles that have been passed down from father to son and mother to daughter for millennia. However, rather than treat each other as humans and appoint the best person for the job, we seem to be caught up in the need to balance the power between the sexes, for example, by electing women just because there are too many men at the top. In this article, John Williams discusses why healthy masculinity is no threat t...

Why healthy masculinity is no threat to feminine empowerment, and “real men” are not afraid of women having power

It is natural to want to understand why you are the way you are. But once you have that insight, what can you do about it if you discover areas that aren’t serving you? Traditional theories and approaches suggest that you learn how to manage your fixed traits or set short-term action plans to change certain habits or behaviours. In this article, Lucy Faulconer, General Manager – Being Profile®, a leadership coach and an organisational psychologist, reveals how she and many other coaches, le...

How the Being Profile facilitates our ability to transform

Many people like the idea of becoming a coach and dive in without considering why they want to pursue professional coaching and what it takes to create a successful coaching business. Many also don’t have an authentic understanding of what it means to be a professional coach. As General Manager of the Being Profile®, Lucy Faulconer leads a global community of coaches and has the opportunity to hear the stories behind why they chose to become a coach. In this article, she shares some of those ...

Are you thinking of becoming a coach?

It's easy to feel isolated, different, alone and excluded when dealing with a disbaility that impacts you 24/7. While some disabilities are visible because they are obvious, there are a vast number of hidden or invisible conditions that affect people's daily lives just as significantly. Many people choose to keep their hidden disability a secret, often not realising the toll that decision can take until things start spiralling out of control. In this article, Wayne Stickel, a wellbeing and effec...

The role of a community in supporting people with hidden disabilities to flourish

Have you ever completed a profiling questionnaire or test and wondered why you bothered? If so, you’re not alone. That’s because most tests today attempt to categorise us, slotting us into neat little ‘boxes’ as though we are fixed objects, not human beings with the capacity to transform. Is it any wonder people are left disillusioned with such tools? In this article, Lucy Faulconer, who is the General Manager – Being Profile®, a leadership coach and an organisational psychologist, sh...

Why do people choose to become Being Profile Accredited Practitioners?

Are you a business owner who feels overwhelmed and frustrated because you are constantly putting out fires? Is addressing whatever issue pops up on any given day preventing you from being the proactive, strategic and productive leader you want to be who is working towards achieving a clearly defined set of goals? If so, you are not alone. Anthea Stevanovic explains why this issue is so common and the steps she uses to successfully support her clients to elevate themselves from firefighters to fu...

Are you a firefighter or a business owner?

It is often in the most challenging situations that we learn what we are truly made of. They also teach us the most valuable lessons. But that does not make them easy. And it can be tempting to run away or turn a blind eye to a situation we would prefer not to deal with. In this article, leadership and confidence coach Helen Robinett shares a personal case study when tough leadership decisions had to be made and she was the only one who could make them. She also explains the factors that allowed...

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Before We Explain th

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Featured Articles

Before We Explain th

The Self We Disown

When the Ground Bene

Choosing to Particip

Being at the Edge: W

The Unfamiliar Good

The Certainty We Con

Chasing a Shade of M

RECONSTRUCTIVE SCHOO

The Laws Above the L

Signatures in Pencil

Most Visited

Browse Articles

Before We Explain th

The Self We Disown

When the Ground Bene

Choosing to Particip

Clap For Them

You Should Leave Hom

Just One More

Being at the Edge: W

The Unfamiliar Good

What Is Your Fear Pr

The Certainty We Con

Eyes Wide Shut

Search and browse articles