Why Inner Development Tools Can’t Fix Us (and What Actually Might)

Hello and welcome to rewilding philosophy.

We’ve all been there. Staring at the ceiling at 2am, scrolling through articles titled “10 Habits to Transform Your Life” or “The Ultimate Guide to Overcoming Procrastination.” You bookmark them, download the productivity app, buy the journal, and maybe even sign up for the online course. You tell yourself something along the lines of, ”This is it. This is the tool that will finally fix everything.” But weeks later, the app notifications are ignored, the journal collects dust, and the course remains unfinished. You’re still stuck in the same loop, wondering why the tools didn’t work.

What Tools Are Actually Good for

Here’s the thing: tools give us structure, but they don’t address the deeper, messier reasons we are where we are. They can’t tell us why we avoid hard conversations, why we’re so afraid of failure, or why we keep sabotaging our own progress.

They’re designed to provide structure, efficiency, or a step-by-step process - input X, and you’ll get Y.

But as anyone reading this knows, we’re not machines.

Our struggles - procrastination, fear, self-doubt, lack of motivation, even the desire to grow more compassionate - are rooted in complex emotional, psychological, spiritual, and cultural layers that no checklist or algorithm can untangle.

Tools promise us a way out, but they often keep us circling the same patterns. They offer a sense of control, a checklist to follow, but they rarely help us confront the underlying fears, beliefs, or emotions that keep us trapped.

Don’t get me wrong - tools can be useful. But they’re not the solution. And until we understand why, we’ll keep mistaking the map for the territory.

Solutions Aren’t the Answer (And Neither Are Tools)

As I wrote last week, solutions aren’t the answer. This week, I want to explore why tools aren’t either.

But before I go further, let me be clear: tools are not useless. We need them - not just hammers and saws, but also psychological and cultural tools.

The problem isn’t the tools themselves; it’s how we use them.

We’ve come to rely on them as if they hold the magic key to our transformation, when in reality, they’re just instruments. They can’t do the work for us.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, especially as we develop tools for the PhilosophyGyms. How do we create tools that stay true to the spirit of philosophy - open-ended inquiry and exploration - rather than reducing it to a set of prescriptive steps? Many of the tools I encounter in my work around inner transformation lack this openness. They’re rigid, formulaic, and ultimately, soulless.

And that’s the real issue: they lack soul.

Where Did the Soul Go?

The “soul” is inherently personal and contextual. It’s the part of us that craves meaning, connection, and understanding. Tools, by their nature, are impersonal and generic. They can’t engage with the nuances of our lived experiences, the weight of our histories, or the depth of our emotions. They can’t sit with us in our vulnerability or ask the hard questions that lead to real growth. And because of that, they often feel hollow.

This absence of soul points to a deeper flaw in our modern approach to self-improvement: the belief that we can engineer our own transformation entirely through our own efforts.

We’ve convinced ourselves that we have the power to construct ourselves from the inside out, as if we’re the sole architects of our being. But if we pause to reflect, we realize that our intelligence, our consciousness, and even our self-awareness aren’t of our own making. They’re the result of a vast web of influences - cultural, historical, relational - that stretches far beyond our individual selves.

For most of human history - and still for many people today - true transformation wasn’t achieved through isolated techniques or checklists. It emerged from practices steeped in reverence and openness: acts of worship, moments of deep devotion, divination, sacrifice, offerings, faith, prayer, and expressions of unconditional love.

These practices had soul.

They reminded us that there’s something larger at work than our individual will. They pulled us out of the confines of cold rationality and connected us to the mysteries of existence.

“The body is far more than a vessel for the soul. It is the karmic field where the soul’s lessons are harvested. It is the alchemical chamber for our soulular transformation. To “cell your soul” is to make your essence alive and real - at a cellular level - by embodying it fully, here in this life. When we do the work of healing the emotional body, our other bodies transform simultaneously. The soul and the emotional and physical bodies align as they were intended - as intertwined threads of the same sacred weave. Again, emotional maturation and spiritual maturation are synonymous.” Jeff Brown

Take the term “contemplation,” for example. It originally referred to the building of cities with the temple at the center - ”con-templum”. Contemplation was a relational practice, a communal act where people gathered to connect with the divine. Over time, that outward, shared experience was reduced to an inward, solitary exercise. Today, we contemplate in isolation. And in our quest for self-improvement, we’ve lost sight of the communal, soulful aspects that truly nurture growth.

Returning to Open-Endings & Attunement to the Soul

“Soul is not a thing, but a perspective. It’s the slow courtship of an event that turns it into a meaningful experience. It’s the practice of trusting that if we sit silently and long enough with the absence of magic, the miraculous will reveal itself.” Toko-pa Turner

So, instead of obsessively pursuing self-salvation and inner development through tools and techniques, we might consider that real transformation happens when we open ourselves to something far greater than our isolated selves. Tools have their place, but they’re just that: tools. They’re helpful, yes, but only when paired with an open, questioning heart - one that recognizes our place within something much larger.

This beautifully shows what that means:

“The magical practise of manifestation is so very misunderstood. I myself have misunderstood it. Whenever I watch my dreams unfold before me, I almost never feel as though I did something to make them happen. I think it's because of having a very skewed view of what it means to do something. It's not just me-this skewed perspective is culture-wide. My very existence is an event, but l often judge the act of simply existing as a lack of doing, or as being not enough.

Practicing manifestation is as much about surrendering as it is about action. In alchemy, we harmonise opposites. Or rather, we train ourselves to witness how all opposites are expressions of the same one thing. So with manifesting something, I train myself to recognise how the thing that I want already exists.

Only then can I create that thing.

It is like how we first learn to regulate our emotions by observing our caretakers. We learn to speak through listening. We learn to breathe by being breathed by air and gravity.

We learn to create by observing creation.

My dreams come to me from somewhere far beyond me, from somewhere mysterious. 1 participate in their unfolding, I don't "make them happen."

I follow them, and I see where they take me.” Scout Rainer Wiley

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