Believing that daily hardships build character might help to boost well-being and motivation, according to a new study published in Self & Identity.
What happens when people believe that life’s struggles are not only unavoidable but also transformative? The answer lies in a mindset called “difficulty-as-improvement”—the belief that hardships build character, purify one’s spirit, or lead to personal growth.
Existing frameworks like identity-based motivation theory suggest that how people interpret difficulty can shape their self-perception and behavioral choices, influencing whether they persist through challenges or give up. Building on earlier work demonstrating the construct’s validity across cultures and religious versus secular framings, Gülnaz Kiper and colleagues conducted four daily diary studies to test the dynamic nature of this mindset and its predictive power in real-world contexts.
The research involved a total of 382 university students. Each participant completed a nightly online survey sent at 9:00 P.M., intended to be filled out just before bedtime. These surveys measured participants’ daily endorsement of the “difficulty-as-improvement” belief—capturing whether they felt that the day’s struggles contributed to their personal growth—and tracked multiple aspects of daily well-being, including life satisfaction, self-esteem, coherence (the sense that life makes sense), and meaning.
Participants also reported the extent to which they engaged in effortful, goal-oriented behaviors and whether they experienced meaningful successes each day. Depending on the study, these beliefs were assessed using either a secular framing (e.g., “struggles make you stronger”) or a religious framing (e.g., “struggles purify the soul”).
Trait-level measures of difficulty-as-improvement were administered either before or after the diary period, using the secular or religious version depending on the study. The researchers also included trait-level assessments of participants’ overall well-being, enabling them to examine both stable individual differences and day-to-day fluctuations. Participant samples were ethnically diverse and primarily female. Across all four studies, participants completed over 4,600 daily entries, with most individuals submitting 12 or more reports. Entries that were duplicated, submitted too late, or failed attention checks were excluded from the analyses.
The findings showed robust and consistent associations between endorsing difficulty-as-improvement beliefs and various indicators of well-being and motivated action. Individuals who scored higher on the trait version of the scale—whether religious or secular—tended to report greater life satisfaction, a stronger sense of meaning, more coherent life narratives, and higher self-esteem.
These participants were also more likely to report engaging in effortful daily strategies and experiencing successes in identity-relevant areas such as school, health, or social life. This pattern was consistent across all four studies and supported the idea that people who view hardships as transformative are more motivated and psychologically resilient.
On days when participants believed more strongly than usual that their struggles were meaningful or character-building, they also reported enhanced daily well-being and engagement. These day-to-day fluctuations predicted increases in meaning, coherence, self-esteem, and satisfaction—regardless of whether the day itself was objectively positive or negative.
Moreover, participants were more likely to engage in demanding activities and report successful outcomes on days when they held stronger difficulty-as-improvement beliefs. There was also some evidence of a carryover effect: higher endorsement of this belief on one day modestly predicted greater meaning and self-esteem the following day, though these effects were smaller and less consistent than the same-day relationships.
Overall, the results suggest that this mindset not only reflects a stable orientation but also varies meaningfully from day to day in ways that shape people’s lived experience.
The authors note that while the diary method allows for rich, ecologically valid data, it does not establish causality.
The research, “Difficulty-as-improvement in daily life: believing that difficulties are character-building supports well-being, effortful engagement, and experiencing successes,” was authored by Gülnaz Kiper, David Newman, and Daphna Oyserman.