by Dave Ursillo | Mar 30, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
I didn’t aspire to become a writer someday only to offer condensed, CliffsNotes versions of meaningful stories that I had spent days writing. Then again, I myself heavily relied upon condensed, CliffsNotes versions of literature to scrape through my academic...
by Dave Ursillo | Mar 25, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
We left off with Part One of my “reintroduction story,” a fresh, honest, up-to-date, and personal version of how I understand you and I have come to connect today. I prioritize sharing my personal stories, beliefs, and professional experiences with you because...
by Dave Ursillo | Mar 23, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Thank you for being here. No, really. Thank you! I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity to connect with you, wherever you are in the world. Some of you have been readers of my newsletter for 8 or 9 years. Some of you are brand new (welcome!). I am honored to...
by Dave Ursillo | Mar 16, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
When my great friend and soul-sister Coral Brown, who is a psychologist, yoga teacher, and life-trainer, asked the question, “What have you been taking for granted lately?” to me and a class of virtual yoga students last Thanksgiving, it prompted me to reflect upon...
by Dave Ursillo | Mar 9, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring some beliefs and philosophy around storying and re-storying our outlook through practices and experiences. The question that sparked this exploration for me was this: How do we maintain our sense of personal freedom in our...
by Dave Ursillo | Mar 2, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
The stories that we tell ourselves largely shape, and sometimes dictate, our perceptions of reality. When last we spoke, I summed it up a little like this: “A story told is a story written.” But here is another equally powerful idea that I also believe is true: A...
by Dave Ursillo | Feb 23, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
In some shamanic traditions, there is a concept that stories recreate reality as soon as they are spoken aloud. Taken to its most literal extreme, this idea would (wrongly) imply that every word spoken holds the power to create or destroy reality, perhaps instantly,...
by Dave Ursillo | Jan 27, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Let’s talk about this curious — and rather unsettling — experience that tends to happen whenever we choose to follow our dreams. If you’re called to lead — remember, I define “leadership” to include writing a book, exploring more meaningful and purpose-driven...
by Dave Ursillo | Jan 26, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
I am fired up for life these days. I’ve been teeming with ideas, overflowing with stories and reflections, and feeling totally energized to do the work before me. In so few words, I am remembering, now: “This is how life can feel when you are in the flow of claiming...
by Dave Ursillo | Jan 24, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
When I quit my job in politics 12 years ago this May, my dream was to become an author and speaker and to take up a mission of helping people reclaim the meaning of leadership for themselves. In our society, “leadership” is an exclusionary term. The word “leadership”...
by Dave Ursillo | Jan 19, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Late last summer, I quietly began to analyze the quality of my coaching work and questioned what outcomes and goals I most wanted for my clients, moving forward. I also asked this big, uncomfortable question: “No matter how I think I’m doing in my business, do I feel...
by Dave Ursillo | Jan 12, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
The violent events at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. last week felt personal for me. I was heartbroken, angered, disgusted, outraged, and deeply saddened in a way that I cannot recall beyond September 11, 2001, when I was 15 years old and thought I was...
by Dave Ursillo | Jan 12, 2021 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
After a quiet couple of weeks around the holidays, I’m eager to be reconnecting with you. I’m excited and hopeful for the year ahead — for vaccine rollouts, for new leadership in Washington, and for the daylight hours to keep getting longer and longer — here in the...
by Dave Ursillo | Dec 8, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Imagine with me, if you will, what it must be like to be a bridge. The purpose of a bridge is noble. A bridge unites two distant land masses; it brings people together. A bridge grants people safe passage and helps them to get wherever they are going. Bridges could...
by Dave Ursillo | Dec 1, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
I’ve been coaching clients — including creative entrepreneurs, service-minded professionals, healer-teachers, authors-speakers, change-makers, and philosophers — since 2012. What unites the broad range of clients with whom I have worked is that they have all existed...
by Dave Ursillo | Nov 27, 2020 | Uncategorized
So… what is coaching? What are some of the many benefits of being a recipient of coaching, and why is coaching so popular today? Does coaching really offer so many great benefits, which is why it’s so popular today? Or is coaching really just a trend or a fad...
by Dave Ursillo | Nov 24, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
In the part of the world in which I live, we are journeying further and further into a season that calls for rest, reprieve, reflection, slowness, and inward excavation. The tree leaves in Southern New England have all transitioned from their summer greens to a...
by Dave Ursillo | Nov 17, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Do you feel like you need to slow down and catch your breath this week? If so, you certainly wouldn’t be alone! Over the last week, I’ve noticed a general atmosphere of fatigue, exhaustion, and burn-out in my many conversations with coaching clients, peers, and...
by Dave Ursillo | Nov 10, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
We made it onto NPR! In case you missed last week, a condensed version of a recent story that I shared with you made it onto my local NPR station, The Public’s Radio 89.3 FM! The story is a part of a national storytelling initiative called This I Believe, which...
by Dave Ursillo | Nov 3, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
There is a question to which we can return again and again that brings us back to a place of instinctive and effortless personal authority, even when circumstances and events greater than us make us feel powerless or small. When we ask this simple question, we invite...
by Dave Ursillo | Oct 27, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
2020 is not over yet. And given what the year has already entailed, just acknowledging that there is more time left in this calendar year may well have filled you with a twinge of stress or outright existential dread. You wouldn’t be totally unjustified. In a year in...
by Dave Ursillo | Oct 20, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
My holiday season for the year 2020 is already over. But it’s not for reasons that you might rightly assume, given what this year has been for so many of us: It’s not that the celebrations have already been called off by a governing body due to continuing pandemic...
by Dave Ursillo | Oct 13, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
The only way some people know how to feel heard is through the sound of their car horn. And I’m not just being facetious when I say that. That’s what I told myself when a “rolling Trump rally” disrupted my Sunday morning last week and paraded down the street, horns...
by Dave Ursillo | Oct 6, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Despite being no stranger to awkward and embarrassing childhood photos in my time, last Thursday, to my surprise, another embarrassing photo arrived on my phone from an unsuspecting source. A text message had come on Thursday from a former college classmate of mine —...
by Dave Ursillo | Sep 29, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Dear friend, There are powerful people, even in democratic nations, who do not want you to vote. The reason why some powerful people do not want you to vote is that they are afraid that you will take their power away from them. They will go to great lengths to...
by Dave Ursillo | Sep 22, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
How do we live a self-storied life? Before we can really live the stories that we want to be telling, we have to begin by pausing to reflect on the stories that we’ve already been living lately. Why? Because making any change in our lives depends first on inquiring...
by Dave Ursillo | Sep 15, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Over the last four months, Andrew in San Fransisco, a Writer’s Group of Two client of mine, has been writing a short story. Since April, we’ve met on Zoom every other week for our coaching sessions, workshopping his storyline, developing character arcs, discussing...
by Dave Ursillo | Sep 1, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
AD : Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Bear, a focused, flexible writing app that’s used by everyone from bloggers and web developers to aspiring authors and professional writers — including yours truly! — for cloud-based word-processing and easy-to-organize...
by Dave Ursillo | Aug 18, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
*Author’s note, 1/7/21: Earlier versions of this article incorrectly attributed these words to the Sufi mystic poet, Rumi; they are historically attributed to the Persian poet, Hafiz, another favorite Islamic poet of mine. I apologize for my confusion. When I...
by Dave Ursillo | Aug 10, 2020 | Chronicles of a Self-Storied Life
Back in January, I invited you to begin 2020 with me alongside some of the words of one of my favorite poets, Hafiz, who said: “The words we speak become the house we live in.” I love that saying and find myself reminded of it often. The phrase evokes an image in my...