Why Feeling Hopeful Is Most Important For Living A Meaningful Life

New research reveals why feeling hopeful about the future matters more than being happy in the moment

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Forget chasing happiness. If you want your life to feel meaningful, you should focus on hope instead.

New research that followed more than 2,300 people across six different studies found that feeling hopeful about the future was better at making life feel worthwhile than being happy, excited, or confident in the moment. Even more striking: hope was the only positive emotion that predicted whether people would feel their lives had meaning weeks later.

The culture’s obsession with happiness might be misguided. The emotion we should really be cultivating is hope, or the forward-looking feeling that good things are possible, even when times are tough.

As the researchers noted in their study published in the journal Emotion, hope stood out from other positive emotions in its ability to predict future meaning.

Why Hope Works Differently Than Happiness

Happiness comes and goes depending on what’s happening right now. But hope keeps you going when your job is stressful, when relationships hit rough patches, or when the news feels overwhelming. It’s the feeling that whispers, “Better days are coming.”

Megan Edwards and Laura King, the study’s lead authors, and their team from the University of Missouri wanted to understand whether hope was just another form of positive thinking or something entirely different. Previous research had focused mostly on hope as a mental strategy, which involves having clear goals and believing you can achieve them. But Edwards, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University, suspected that the feeling of hope was special in its own right.

“Our research shifts the perspective on hope from merely a cognitive process related to goal attainment to recognizing it as a vital emotional experience that enriches life’s meaning,” Edwards explains in a statement. “This insight opens new avenues for enhancing psychological well-being.”

The research team conducted six separate studies using different approaches. Some studies surveyed people at a single point in time, while others followed the same people for weeks or months. One study had participants fill out daily questionnaires for three weeks. Two studies tried to experimentally change people’s emotions to see what happened to their sense of meaning.

Across all these studies, one pattern emerged consistently: when people reported feeling hopeful, they were more likely to say their lives felt meaningful. This held true even when researchers accounted for other positive emotions like happiness and excitement, and even when they controlled for goal-directed thinking.

The Science Behind Hope’s Power

In one daily diary study involving 132 adults in China, participants rated their emotions and sense of meaning every day for three weeks. On days when people felt more hopeful than usual, they also rated their lives as more meaningful. Importantly, hope was the only emotion that predicted meaning on future days; feeling hopeful today actually helps your life feel more worthwhile tomorrow.

Another study followed 301 American college students across five time points during a semester. While other positive emotions came and went without lasting impact, hope consistently predicted whether students would find their lives meaningful weeks later.

As the researchers observed, hope’s benefits couldn’t be explained simply by general good feelings.

Most positive emotions focus on the present moment: happiness about something good happening now, excitement about an immediate opportunity. Hope, however, is inherently about the future. It connects where you are today with where you could be tomorrow.

Hope keeps you connected to your long-term goals and values, even when daily life feels mundane or difficult. A parent struggling with sleepless nights can find meaning in hope for their child’s future. A student grinding through difficult coursework can find purpose in hope for their career.

Hope also provides what psychologists call “coherence,” or a sense that your life story makes sense as a unified whole. When you feel hopeful, you can see how today’s struggles might lead to tomorrow’s successes. Your current chapter connects to the larger narrative of your life.

Perhaps most importantly, hope fills uncertainty with possibility. Life is unpredictable, and that uncertainty can feel threatening. But hope transforms the unknown future from something to fear into something to anticipate.

When Life Gets Difficult, Hope Matters Most

Unlike happiness or excitement, which can be hard to access during tough times, hope remains available even in dark moments. Someone who loses their job can’t feel excited about unemployment, but they can hope for new opportunities. A parent with a sick child can’t feel happy about the situation, but they can hope for recovery.

The researchers tested their theory with experiments designed to make people feel more or less hopeful. In one study, 941 participants watched short videos intended to induce either cheerful, sad, or neutral moods. In another, 678 people read articles about climate change that were either hopeful or hopeless.

While these experiments didn’t directly increase people’s sense of meaning (the researchers note this as a limitation), they revealed something important: when people did feel hopeful, either naturally or because of the experimental conditions, their lives felt more meaningful.

The research wasn’t perfect. Most participants were White Americans, limiting how broadly results might apply. All studies relied on people reporting their own emotions and sense of meaning, which can be subjective. The experiments designed to manipulate hope also had mixed success.

Still, the consistency across different types of studies and different groups of people makes the results compelling. Whether looking at college students in Missouri or adults in China, whether examining single moments or long-term patterns, hope consistently emerged as uniquely important for meaning.

“Experiencing life as meaningful is crucial for just about every good thing you can imagine in a person’s life,” says King, a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at the university. “This cornerstone of psychological functioning is not a rare experience — it is available to people in their everyday lives and hope is one of the things that make life feel meaningful.”

A Simple Shift in Perspective

In a time when surveys show rising rates of depression and anxiety, particularly among young people, these results suggest that efforts to promote mental health might benefit from focusing specifically on hope rather than happiness more generally.

Companies, schools, and mental health professionals might consider how to cultivate hope in their communities. This could mean helping people identify long-term goals that excite them, sharing stories of others who overcame similar challenges, or simply encouraging people to explore positive future possibilities.

For individuals, the research points to a simple but powerful shift in perspective. Instead of asking “What would make me happy right now?” try asking “What can I hope for?” Instead of trying to feel good about your current situation, focus on feeling hopeful about where you’re headed.

After all, happiness depends on circumstances, but hope depends on possibilities. And as long as the future remains unwritten, there’s always something to hope for. In a world that often feels uncertain and overwhelming, that perspective might be exactly what we need—not the fleeting pleasure of momentary happiness, but the enduring strength that comes from believing tomorrow can be better than today.