The Cost of Fulfilment: A Dynamic Model of Well-Being

Abstract Contemporary well-being frameworks increasingly emphasise meaning, purpose, and value-aligned engagement as central to flourishing. However, lived experience and emerging empirical evidence suggest a more complex reality: activities and goals that are meaningful and identity-defining are not always energising and may involve short-term experiential costs. Existing well-being theories struggle to account for experiences in which fulfilment and exhaustion coexist, in part because short-term affective energy and longer-term meaning are often collapsed into unitary well-being outcomes. This paper introduces the Sparkle–Depth Dynamic Model , a theory-driven framework that conceptualises well-being as a system of partially independent experiential resources: short-term affective energy, vitality, and enjoyment ( sparkle ), and longer-term meaning, identity coherence, and fulfilment ( depth ). The model proposes that these resources follow distinct temporal dynamics, such that engagement in meaningful or effortful activities may deplete sparkle in the short term while contributing to depth over longer time horizons. Rather than introducing a new well-being taxonomy, the framework reorganises existing constructs into a dynamic, resource-based account that foregrounds trade-offs, recovery, and sustainability as central features of well-being. The paper situates the model within established hedonic, eudaimonic, self-regulatory, and recovery literatures, clarifies points of conceptual overlap and distinction, and specifies falsifiable predictions suitable for intensive longitudinal research designs. Implications for well-being theory, measurement, and the design of sustainable well-being interventions are discussed. By offering a temporally explicit account of how fulfilment and energetic cost interact, the Sparkle–Depth Dynamic Model provides a foundation for more realistic and sustainable approaches to understanding happiness and well-being over time.