One first sign of whether one’s needs are being satisfied is whether people consider their
lives to be easy or difficult. Finding one’s life to be relatively easy was linked to more happiness.
Finding life difficult (a separate item) was linked to lower happiness. Neither variable correlated
significantly with meaning, and in fact the trends were in the opposite direction for meaning as
compared with happiness. Considering life a struggle was negatively correlated with happiness but
approached a significant positive relationship with meaningfulness (consistent with the view that
some people live highly meaningful but not very pleasant lives, perhaps because their meaningful
activities require strenuous and unpleasant activities). Thus, finding one’s life easy or difficult is a
matter of happiness and not of meaning.