How To Quit The Comparison Game

If you want to be thoroughly dissatisfied with your life, you can do it quickly in one easy step:

Compare yourself to others.

There will always be someone who is more successful or talented or good-looking or clever or confident or has more of whatever it is you want. Guaranteed. You might measure up pretty well against some people (as long as you’re careful to measure the right things), but eventually you’re bound to find someone who surpasses you at the very strengths you take pride in. The world is a big place. That’s how it goes.

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Dream Small Audiobook Is Now Available

I’m happy to announce that the audiobook version of Dream Small is now available, read by yours truly. It’s only three and a half hours long, less than 25 minutes a chapter. Put me in your ears—I’d like to talk with you about what really matters in life.

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Writing Roundup

Dream Small was released four weeks ago, and I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has gotten the book and interacted with it. For this week’s blog post, I’d like to share with you some links that relate to the book–some from myself, and some from others. First, a couple of articles I’ve written recently for other sites on themes relating to the book:

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The Story Behind “Dream Small”

Dream Small officially releases tomorrow. Finally. The process felt quite long. Probably because it was. The idea for the book started while our family was on a plan B staycation in the craziness of 2020. Sitting in a little Airbnb in the Irish countryside, I decided to look back over my posts on this blog to identify any common themes in my writing. If you’d asked me back in 2018 (when I started the blog) what threads would come out most in it, I’m sure I would have given you the wrong answer. Maybe that means I don’t know myself as well as I think I do, or maybe I’m changing. Probably both. Anyway, some of the themes I found were the basic ideas of what would become Dream Small. Over the next several months, with the help and good advice of others, these ideas crystallised into an outline and became a book proposal. In June 2021, I signed a contract with The Good Book Company. I’ve been a fan of TGBC for a long time, but my respect has only grown as I’ve seen their gospel-focused priorities in action in everything they do. The writing and preparing of Dream Small has taken two years, but we’re finally there—tomorrow! I’m excited to finally share this book with you!

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Dream Small Is Now Available For Preorder

Most of you already know that I have written a book, titled Dream Small. I know the title sounds odd in a world obsessed with bigger and better, but the truth is that the things the world typically measures as bigger really aren’t better. There are better dreams to live for right in front of you, wherever you are. This book is about finding and living for those dreams, even if the world considers them small. I’m happy to let you know that Dream Small will release on the 1st of September (earlier than expected!), and that it is now available for preorder. Here a few of the places you can preorder it from:

The Good Book Company UK / USA

Teach Solas (Cork) / The Evangelical Bookshop (Belfast)

Amazon.com / .co.uk

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A Personal Update

When I put up the first post on this blog in June 2018, I was writing for my local community in Ireland—the friends and neighbours that I see and interact with in my daily life. (This article by Laura Lundergren casts a great vision for this, and this one by Tim Challies helped me commit to keep going regularly). I still write for those same friends and neighbours, but last year people visited this site from 124 countries and I have to admit that this thing called the internet is still surprising me. All I can say is that whoever you are and wherever you are, thank you for coming to this little corner of the world wide web. Your visits and comments have been encouraging and motivating. I hope you’ve been encouraged as well. This is my 200th blog post, so I’d like to take the opportunity to share a personal update:

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