Eudaimonic well-being, focusing on self-realization, comprises six dimensions: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. Despite these distinct, noninterchangeable aspects of self-realization, existing studies often treat eudaimonic well-being as a holistic construct, overlooking how its dimensions may resonate differently with various entrepreneurial activities. To address this theoretically significant and practically meaningful question, we draw on the three forms of entrepreneurial passion—inventing, founding, and developing—to explore how the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial passion shapes the heterogeneity of eudaimonic well-being, uncovering the psychological trajectories of entrepreneurs with diverse pursuits. This approach also addresses the limitations of prior studies that commonly use self-employed individuals as proxies for entrepreneurs, although they are not a homogenous group. Using a two-stage survey involving 437 entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Australia, we investigate the impacts of varied entrepreneurial passion on overall eudaimonic well-being and its six dimensions. Our study contributes to the literature on eudaimonic well-being, entrepreneurial passion, and the psychology of entrepreneurship by positioning entrepreneurship as a dynamic eudaimonic process—an upward spiral of positive, self-reinforcing growth from passion to self-realization.
