Build Your Habits Like You Build Your Relationships

If we gave our habits half the care that we give our relationships, we’d all be better humans

Steven R. Durgin
Forge
Published in
8 min readOct 16, 2021

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Photo by Andres Ayrton from Pexels

“I built an amazing marriage overnight,” said nobody ever. That would make for an enticing headline, but we’d be rightly suspicious of the contents. We know that our relationships take a lot. On the other hand, in a toxically fast, get-it-done world, we exercise far less patience for our own growth.

At bottom, I’ve always known that self-development is messy, but who has time to slow down?

I want “life hacks.”
Quick fixes.
2-steps to my best life now.

I’ve come to dislike phrases that take the mess out of things. (Yes, I still end up clicking the bait too often.) But a preoccupation with overnight change can only hurt us. As Matt Orth once put it,

“There are no Thanksgiving Hot Pockets. The good stuff takes time.”

Speed and quality have always been in tension.

But I believe that human connection is one of the anchors in our fast-paced world, a sanctuary from the tyranny of the urgent that refuses to be rushed.

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Steven R. Durgin
Forge
Writer for

Writes about personal growth. Figuring out what it means to be human.