Among the guidelines to follow is that which tells you to give your protagonist major difficulties to overcome. The warning runs roughly that the strength and the values of your hero are shown only in the challenges that he/she overcomes. Small challenges, easy path, no stretching to the very limit equals shallow character, story with little power or meaning. Intense challenges, loss, pain, fear that must be overcome, even close to despair, equals courage, strength, faith, integrity, power, story with deep meaning. Test to the limit equals giant hero/heroine, and good book.
No major test, comfortable all the way equals mediocre life, opportunities wasted, mortality frittered away...Pretty often an easy ride seems a very welcome idea. We all get frightened, lonely, discouraged, and pretty often too tired to want to make the effort. But it's then that the effort counts.
What stops us from achieving that goal? Thousands of small things which can all be lumped together as forgetting the goal and how much it matters, how infinitely much it is worth.
Surviving through that darkest hour and coming out into the light again when we look back and see what the journey was, with an infinite joy and gratitude that we did not choose the easy path, because we can now see that it led to the lower ground, the smaller reward.