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Websites & Articles For Mastery & Wisdom

 

1. Listicles for Achievement

The internet is flooded with 3 to 20 ways to be your best-self in both article and youtube-channel forms. Lots of good advice, but!

 

Listicle exhortations and all “self-help” gurus typically ignore:

1. The need for each person to choose their one, best skill at a time to “passionately” pursue. (Many of us take to our mid-life transition/crisis to “find our bliss”)
2. The need for a well-designed, customized, mastery-process plan.
3. That most folks can’t persist on their own along a path to get to some respectable, new level of excellence. Most must instead:

1. First, get mindful to work on releasing their, negative, emotional brakes;
2. To then begin their planned path with a sufficient support group.
3. While in parallel tuning up their sustainable motivational forces

4.  “Just suck it up and do/go for it” doesn’t suffice. Otherwise, the eat-less-and-better, while exercising-more, and suffering diet-plan would be a winner.    

 
 

2. Integrated, Mastering-Mastery Sites.

 There are plenty of infomercial sites that address some of the specifics of the mastery process. They range on a continuum from: more-helpful-content with less selling – to- blatant click-bait teasers to land you and funnel you into buying products and courses. Remember, for most, getting more knowledgeable about the mastery of anything is not the same as embracing and loving the grind of a path - perhaps for a lifetime.

With those caveats, here are a few examples:

1. About - The Growth Equation  Stulberg + Magness. These guys walk the talk and have written solid books. They balance wanting to help the world with buying their books and hiring them for speeches.

 

2. The Process of Mastery   Stefan James certainly has mastered the art of landing eyeballs, offering simple, motivational prose and selling all sorts of things. There is some helpful content here, but this site exemplifies the importance of having judgment to find what’s truly helpful for you v. recycled - “dare to be great”, self-help - prose.

 
 

3. The Meaning of Fearless Mastery - Zen Habits Website

  This site is mostly selling, but curiously it does touch on the biggest upfront problem that keeps most folks from achieving what they would like: FEAR! Typical, “automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) include:

1. “I don’t have the mental and/or physical aptitudes to be any good at pursuing my dream”.
2. “I will initially look like a hopeless loser and will never be as good as other folks that I compare myself too”.
3. “The people around me will laugh and undermine my pursuit of X”.  
4. “I won’t be able to persist and likely quit early like I have done before”.

 
 

3. RE: Mindfulness, Self-Reflection: a foundational, mastery skill

All mastery paths must start with personal awareness of what exactly you want to achieve and to what level of excellence.  This “awakening” step is then followed by mindfully defusing negative thoughts and releasing emotional brakes;’ etc. (see #1 oversights).

There are overlapping terms like: Self-Reflection, Mindfulness, daily Self-Awareness, and meditation. Without getting into semantics, here are a few applicable quotes:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

(Will Durant. The Story of Philosophy (1926). Often attributed to Aristotle.)

 

“Between the stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our responses. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”     

(Falsely attributed to Viktor Frankl. Best paraphrased by Stephen Covey)

The “space” is expanded by self-awareness which allows negative, habitual behaviors to be caught and defused and better behaviors, habits, skills to form with repetitive practice.

 

Here are some web sites that are trying to help k-12 schools incorporate learning how to learn. The acceptable phrase for these skills is: “social emotional learning” (SEL)

1. Mindfulness First
2. MindUP – The Goldie Hawn Foundation
3. 25 Self-Reflection Questions: Why Introspection Is Important 

This is a blog entry at a website promoting “positive psychology” courses. Because self-reflection is the first chronological step to getting ready to embrace a mastery path, it’s good info. Aside from some of this site’s blogs, the rest of the site is selling courses.

 

“Positive Psychology” got coined back in ’98 and has repackaged a lot of traditional philosophical wisdom and positive-mental attitude guidelines into new  “scientific, academic, research discoveries”.

Wikipedia “positive psychology”. Skim the subheadings down to the “three waves” and criticisms. A cluster of academic, psychology professors and their PhD proteges have (since ’98): written pop books; gotten agents to push their high (motivational) speaking fees; and have blended into the self-help industry, but with white lab coats.

Again, there is a big gap between what we should do and being able to do it at a high level on a habitual and spontaneous basis.  

 
 

4. A few good articles.

1. “Mastery” Commentary & Summary. From Apprentice to Master | by Angel Mondragon | Medium 

This is a summary of an original definition of the (skill) “mastery process”. George Leonard first published a wildly successful article on the mastery process in the 5/1/87 issue of Esquire magazine. The article demanded a gem of a book, “Mastery” (’92) by Leonard. I have gifted many copies to friends and proteges.

Re: Embracing and loving the grind of your chosen path  

2. (6) Leadership Reminder: Embrace the Pursuit of Mastery | LinkedIn
3. (4) The process of mastery | LinkedIn  James Warrick guidelines for path

Re: Science of some key elements for mastery

4. Can Practice Alone Create Mastery? | Psychology Today (2013)

A study of chess and music stars. They all: had aptitude; started early; and had (most importantly) voracious, sustainable passion. Most “naturally gifted” kids start out fast, but typically don’t have the passion to love the slog. Many of the stars have good, not great aptitude, but got great due to sustainable passion and effective mastery-path practices.  

 
 

5. Soft-Skill Habit Sites for Pro-social and Wisdom Skills

1. Greater Good Science Center. An excellent outfit, which in turn created the “Greater Good” magazine. Lots of good content on the “science of – emotions, thoughts, moods, happiness, etc.
2. Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. The magazine’s site.
3. Dacher Keltner | Profile | Greater Good Prof. Keltner is a founding, driving force behind the: Greater Good center; magazine; and ongoing science of Homo Sapiens’ innate, pro-social skills. See his on-going research site link Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory

Keltner has written several books. I value two of them: “Born to Be Good” (’09) and “Awe” (’24) for which I wrote a review that has been helpful for 164 (on 1/20/25) and counting.

4. Wisdom Test: SD-WISE

To be wise has been prized and pursued by both philosophers and spiritual leaders since recorded time. (Read my blog on “What is Wisdom?”). We can’t measure “wisdom” precisely, but for a rough start go to this site and take the test. Be honest and retake it periodically. One objective of this site is to help more people get wiser faster!  

The science of wisdom has become a space over the past 40+ years. Both neurobiology and the identification of “cognitive biases” have contributed to the effort. Here are a few sites that are supporting the “get wiser faster” cause.

5. evidence-based wisdom

This site was run by Charles Cassidy and does not seem to have any new content since about 2017. However, Cassidy has in parallel been doing podcasts since then at:

6. On Wisdom

This continues Cassidy’s podcasts with an impressive guest list: On Wisdom - Guests

7. About — Wisdom 2.0  This site promotes a big-tent gathering by an impresario, (6) Soren Gordhamer | LinkedIn . It’s more in the self-help, money-making vein.
8. Welcome! | Wisdom and Culture Lab | University of Waterloo.  This is one of the few university-based sites working on the science of wisdom. Content is living edge, but academically wonky.  
9. University of Chicago Center for Practical Wisdom | Center for Practical Wisdom | The University of Chicago.  This site like UCSD and Waterloo. Wonky latest academic research.  
10. A new startup site is: Wisdom From the Top of the World : A Source of Wisdom.

I’m involved in supporting this new platform site. Our local angle is “spiritual wisdom” which has a near perfect overlap with secular, scientific wisdom discoveries.

 
 

6. Mastering different sports

There is no shortage of both sites and youtube channels that focus on different semi-to-hard skills of all kinds. My on-going, kinesthetic, hard-skill, mastery paths are tennis and skiing.

1. Ski Carving School | gocarv.com

I’ve lived in Snowmass Village, CO (Aspen) for the past 7+ years. I arrived as an advanced beginner skier and had not skied in over 30 years. But, I now have Carv gadgets on my boots and have hit an overall SKI IQ of 136 with hopes of further improvement.

This type of interesting hardware/cloud service is emerging in many sports if you have the curiosity to look around.

2. Tennis

There are many tennis sites and youtube channels. I can’t pick one best. I will boast that even though my mobility is fading, my stroke production continues to be refined.

IF ANY VISITORS HAVE OTHER MOST HELPFUL ON-LINE RESOURCES TO LIST IN THIS SECTION OF MY SITE, PLEASE BE IN TOUCH. THANKS, DBM