Character Growth

In many stories, daresay most, the protagonist isn't perfect. Most good, complex characters have flaws and strive to overcome them, and they usually succeed by the end of the story. Those who enjoy these stories may be inspired by the growth of the protagonists and may seek to overcome their own flaws and achieve their own character growth. This is good and possible and important, but it's also harder than fiction makes it look.

In stories, characters tend to change quickly, sometimes changing the entire direction of their lives over the course of a two-hour movie. That's partly because movies skip over (or make montages out of) the long periods of time over which change really happens. In fiction, characters can change overnight or over the course of a few days, and that can happen in real life as well, on rare occasions, but most of the time, change is slow enough and gradual enough that we don't even notice it.

So, don't get frustrated if you feel you aren't changing quickly enough. Change takes time, time that most fictional stories don't have. Fictional stories make character growth happen quickly. We usually can't. Instead, we should focus on making slow but steady progress. We grow more like trees than like weeds. Fictional stories tend to complete character growth in hours, but don't hold yourself to that standard. We are eternal beings. Our character growth is a process of eternity.