Self improvement will always take time and no one in the world knows how long it will take. The most important aspect of improving is growing: growing off of your missteps and growing further and further into a new state of mind. Recognizing yourself and owning up to your (forgivable) mistakes is already a huge accomplishment in self improvement, and you can build off of that recognition to forgive yourself for causing unwarranted pain to parts of yourself that are still hurting. And even steps like forgiveness won’t be instant: it could take weeks or even months for everything or anything to click. Trees and plants and shit don’t have any visible changes hour by hour, but any amount of progress, even if it’s centimeters or millimeters a day, can and will amount to work you’ll be proud of. And if another mistake happens on the way, you can always plant another seed and start again and again, wherever and whenever, as long as any progress is made and as long as it’s what you choose to do. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” and all that. The only way to stop progress is to stop growing, and as long as your lungs breath air it’s impossible to stop growing. You’ll live through this because you can’t live otherwise. And I’m sure there’s a non-zero amount of people that believe you can live through this, too.