Uncategorized | Dave Ursillo

Busy is Not a Story

Eliminating this one word from your vocabulary is all you may require to turn everyday minutia and boring exchanges into more meaningful, authentic connections.

Let’s Be Braver in the Stories We Share

Mundane catch-ups and socially-expected exchanges, be damned. Here’s why conversations may make you feel frustrated, bored, even lost. And, how to fix it.

This Is Why We Practice

Whenever he’s asked how people can cope or respond to tragedies, disasters and suffering, the Dalai Lama always replies: This is why we practice.

Confessions of a Young Republican

How an undocumented immigrant made me a better person.

Closet Monsters. Soul-Stuff. And, Healing Your Past While Moving Forward

I left “the world of politics,” but what I sought to escape was an incarnation of my Self in this lifetime that my Soul had outgrown, and clamored to transcend.

Keep Longing for the Longing: An Ode.

What did Rumi mean when he said, “I long for the longing?” On a familiar drive into the night with no destination, the poet’s words provide a lesson.

The only two near-confrontations I’ve had as a traveler happened 4 years and a few blocks away from one another in Waikiki, Hawaii. This is one story of how using a single word might have protected me.

Do Not Submit to the Demagogue

Lowest common denominator politics plays to the worst of our human nature, and an imaginary past of supposed glory will not save us. A co-created future can.

Before You Change the World, Change Yourself

Give-first personalities, change-makers and dream-big idealists have so much love to give. They want to save everyone. First, they have to save themselves.

Your Problems Don’t Matter

On the journey to wholeness within, your task is to intently challenge the problems you see. Because you see them as problems.

How to Be Easier On Yourself. Without Giving Up.

Become a conservationist for your giving-a-shitness. Stick a sign at your feet that reads, “PROTECTED GROUNDS. WILL PROSECUTE TRESPASSERS.”

You’re More Creative Than You Give Yourself Credit For

Creativity resides within. And the journey to cultivate creativity – creative energy, and the capacities to express it – is a just that, a journey within.

Costa Rica Yoga & Writing Retreat 2016: Slow Down, Flow and Find Yourself Again

Life today moves too fast for it to be experienced, let alone enjoyed. We yearn for ‘work-life balance’ but the only balance we’re seeking is to work less (and stress less) so we can live more.

17 Hours to Peru: A Miniature Travelogue

It doesn’t take much to feel at home in a new, strange place when traveling when your Airbnb host greets you warmly with, “We are family now.”

Be Unapologetically You

At the end of every yoga class I teach, I conclude with a prayer. It sounds a little different every time. But these 3 words seem to resonate the most loudly.

2015 Was the Last Year that I’ll Spend Alone

The last 7 years have revolved around a self-journey to heal my karma, and now I’m ready for the next iteration: no longer alone, now in communion with others.

Dear Dave (A Letter to Me, From Me, that You Might Read)

Dave, yes. I’m telling you to be better. Not better than anyone else. Just better than you yesterday. Better than who you were. Because you expect it of yourself.

How to Make Peace With Your Writing

If you don’t have a healthy relationship to writing, your writing might feel like a constant confrontation with your self-belief, instead of a bolster to it.

Are You a Conscientious Creative? Here’s What Makes You Different.

Conscientious Creatives are highly self-aware individuals whose motivations reside within the heart realms. They care. They really, really care.

What I Learned Running a Writers’ Group for 20 Months

In 2014, I made a tough decision to shut down The Literati Writers. The plan was to reopen a few months later. But I couldn’t say for sure why I was closing my online writers’ group down.

Open the Door (Let Life Surprise You)

Realizing just how fine a line there was between staying behind that door and opening it was enough to make me wonder. Which doors haven’t I opened?

Anything is Possible, for Better or for Worse

The longer I go the less I remember why I made the big decisions that make up the story of my life. From now on, maybe I’ll borrow the words of George Mallory: Because it’s there.

How Do You Choose Where to Share Your Writing?

As you develop a relationship to your writing, you’ll ask yourself if the medium by which you share your words matches, magnifies, and honors your message.

Say It for You, or Say It for Them.

A common struggle that I witness in writers and self-starters is one that I still encounter myself: Figuring out who the writing is actually meant for.

So, I Poured onto the Page, Now How Do I Write to Explain?

Pouring is cathartic and emotional. ‘Writing to explain’ has outcome in mind: intention, knowledge, will-power and ownership. You’re expected to prove it.

How to Support Authors You Love (And Even Those You Only Kinda-Sorta Enjoy)

So you have an author whose work you particularly love. (Or even, kinda-sorta enjoy.) How do you go about supporting that author? Is it as simple as buying a book?

Art: Privilege or Right? Rethinking the Price of Things. Like Books.

After my first visit to a developing nation, the price of things has lingered on my mind. It’s why I’ve dropped the price of all my books to be their most affordable.

I Am We: Faces, Pieces, Incarnations, Under the Banner of One Soul. My New Book of Poems.

I Am We is a collection of poems that unearths the intricate faces, facades and incarnations that make up your soul, before knitting them into harmony.

There Will Always Be More… Of What? How to Live, Work and Create from Abundance.

My inner “There Will Always Be More” narrative leads me to feel anxious, tense, worried, overwhelmed. By shifting the narrative slightly, I’ve found abundance.

Email, Inboxes and Autoresponders, Oh My! How to Be Highly Efficient (and Stay Stellarly Polite) at Your Online Communication

In this age where self-expression happens via text, email, social media at a moments’ notice, it’s all the more important to be self-aware of how we communicate.