I’ve been partially avoiding learning whilst mostly living in Spanish speaking countries for the last 6 years. Concerted effort is key but don’t beat yourself up about having difficulties listening, native speakers have the whole dictionary to pull from whereas you only have a few words and phrases with basic grammar.

It helps to be around other people that are learning or have learned as there’s a lot of cracks to fall into between a direct literal translation. These are obvious for bilinguals but can’t be appreciated by native monolinguals. Try asking someone to go on a fecha with you to the movies.

And don’t worry about being slow, find good people with patience.