Eudaimonic and hedonic wellbeing play qualitatively distinct roles in the relationship between personal goals and subjective wellbeing. Eudaimonia, defined by engagement, curiosity, and personal development, serves as a psychological resource that initiates and sustains the pursuit of effortful, meaningful goals. It reflects an orientation toward challenge and growth, and is positively associated with the energy and persistence required for self-concordant goal striving. In contrast, hedonia—associated with pleasure, comfort, and life satisfaction—does not motivate goal initiation, but functions more as a psychological reward following goal achievement. In a longitudinal intervention with participants engaging in goal-directed tasks supported by different mental strategies, only eudaimonic wellbeing predicted sustained effort and, through that, eventual success. While successful goal completion did increase hedonic wellbeing, it had no causal impact on eudaimonia, indicating that pleasure follows from accomplishment but does not generate the striving that leads to it. Interestingly, participants who engaged in positive fantasizing (typically seen as less effective) unexpectedly showed an increase in eudaimonic wellbeing, suggesting that even passive forms of imagining success may activate deeper motivational structures in some contexts. The findings underscore a central tenet of the Functional Wellbeing Approach: hedonia and eudaimonia reflect not only different dimensions of experience, but also different temporal and functional roles in the architecture of human flourishing. Wellbeing, then, is not merely the passive result of good outcomes but is actively constituted through the way individuals relate to challenge, purpose, and self-realization.
