What the data actually shows
A well-known study by Roy Baumeister and colleagues (2013) separated happiness from meaningfulness and found they don't always move together. Things that made people happier in the moment — feeling good, getting what you want, ease — were often distinct from what made life feel meaningful, which was more associated with giving to others, expressing yourself, and connecting present effort to past and future. Notably, a meaningful life was linked with more stress and struggle, not less.
This fits the broader distinction between hedonic wellbeing (pleasure and comfort) and eudaimonic wellbeing (growth, purpose, doing things that stretch and develop you). Eudaimonic accounts of a good life consistently involve challenge and effort rather than the absence of them — meaning tends to be a byproduct of engaging with something demanding and worthwhile, not of avoiding difficulty.
Research on post-traumatic growth, associated with Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, documents that some people report positive changes — deeper relationships, clearer priorities, a stronger sense of meaning — in the wake of serious adversity. This must be stated carefully: growth is one possible outcome, not a guaranteed or required one, suffering also causes lasting harm, and the finding is not a case for seeking out hardship.
Why this feels different from how it actually is
Most of the messaging around us equates the good life with comfort, ease and pleasure — fewer hassles, more relaxation, smoother experiences. So the idea that difficulty contributes to meaning runs against a strong cultural current, and it can feel counterintuitive that the harder paths are often the more meaningful ones.
We also tend to evaluate effort while we're in the middle of it, when it mostly just feels unpleasant. The meaning attached to a hard endeavour often becomes visible only in hindsight, once it's connected to an outcome or to who you became — so in the moment, difficulty feels like a cost rather than a source of meaning, and the link is easy to miss.
And happiness and meaning get conflated. Because we use 'a good life' to mean both 'a pleasant life' and 'a meaningful life', it's natural to assume the route to one is the route to the other. The research suggests they partly diverge: some of what makes life meaningful is, in the moment, more stressful and less pleasant than the alternatives.
A meaningful life was linked with more stress and struggle, not less.
What the research says to do about it
Where the evidence points is toward choosing some worthwhile difficulty on purpose — demanding goals you care about, contributing to others, building skills, taking on responsibility — rather than optimising purely for comfort. These are the activities most consistently associated with a sense of meaning, even though they involve more effort and stress.
Connect present effort to something beyond the moment. The Baumeister findings linked meaning to integrating past, present and future and to expressing or giving of yourself. Framing hard work as part of a larger purpose, or in service of people or things you value, is part of what turns effort into meaning rather than just strain.
Hold the balance honestly: meaning and momentary happiness are both worth having, and they don't have to be traded off completely. The aim isn't to maximise difficulty but to accept that a meaningful life will include real challenge, and to choose challenges that are worth it — while still making room for rest, pleasure and connection.
What the research says does not help
Pursuing comfort and ease as the main goal tends not to build meaning. Pleasure and the absence of hassle can raise momentary happiness, but the research suggests they do little for the sense that life is meaningful — which is one reason a frictionless life can still feel empty.
Romanticizing suffering doesn't help and isn't supported by the evidence. The link is to voluntary, purposeful effort, not to pain for its own sake; imposed hardship frequently causes lasting harm, and post-traumatic growth is one possible outcome, not a reason to court adversity. Deliberately seeking suffering is a misreading of this research.
Treating any hardship as automatically 'meaningful' can also be a way to avoid changing a genuinely bad situation. Difficulty contributes to meaning when it's in service of something worthwhile; pointless or harmful struggle, or staying in damaging circumstances on the theory that suffering ennobles you, is not what the research supports.
Worthwhile difficulty tends to deepen meaning — which is different from romanticizing pain.
What this looks like in real life
The frictionless life that still feels empty
Someone who has optimised for ease — fewer hassles, more relaxation, smoother days — can be genuinely more comfortable and still feel like something is missing. In the research, comfort raises momentary happiness but does little for the sense that life is meaningful, because the ingredients of meaning usually involve some worthwhile difficulty that ease removes.
Hard work that becomes meaningful in hindsight
In the middle of a demanding, self-chosen project, the effort mostly just feels unpleasant — evaluated moment to moment, difficulty registers as a cost. The meaning often becomes visible only later, once the work is connected to an outcome, to people it served, or to who you became. Framing the effort as part of a larger purpose while you're in it is part of what turns strain into meaning rather than just hardship.
Real numbers in context
This is an area where mechanisms matter more than precise numbers, and any single statistic about meaning should be treated cautiously. The core finding from Baumeister and colleagues (2013) is directional: happiness and meaningfulness overlap but diverge, and the meaningful life was associated with more stress and struggle rather than less — effort and difficulty track meaning in a way pure pleasure does not.
Post-traumatic growth research adds an important caveat in the same spirit: some people report meaning and growth after serious adversity, but this is one outcome among several, sits alongside real and lasting harm, and is not a prescription. The defensible summary is that voluntary, worthwhile difficulty tends to deepen meaning, comfort alone rarely does, and none of this implies that suffering is required or good.