Difficulty-as-improvement in Daily Live: Believing That Difficulties are Character-building Supports Well-being, Effortful Engagement, and Experiencing Successes

People vary in how much they believe suffering unbidden life difficulties can strengthen their character; these “difficulty-as-improvement” beliefs carry over to differing preferences for more effortful means of attaining possible self-goals. We conducted four two-week diary studies (N=382), finding that on average people reported experiencing difficulty on 88.16% of the days they filled in a diary. Multilevel analyses document that on these days, within-person daily variability in endorsing difficulty-as-improvement is associated with daily action, outcomes, and self-judgments, controlling for the positivity-negativity of daily events. Lagged analyses suggest small-sized effects of yesterday’s difficulty-as-improvement on today’s self-esteem and sense of life as meaningful. We infer that endorsing difficulty-as-improvement supports meaning (difficulties happen for a reason) and worth (you are good enough).