I present findings from a 4-month Martin Seligman-inspired wellbeing intervention of keeping a diary of 1) at least one positive emotion experienced, 2) personally enacting and 3) socially modelled at least one of Christopher Peterson and Seligman’s 24 character strengths daily as a New Zealend intermediate school teacher aide. Strengths enacted were mainly my greater ones as measured by Seligman’s Values In Action test and my judgement. Strengths modelled were informed mainly by the VIA test, professional education resources, counselling theory, and Michelle Borba’s moral education research. I engage with Carol Ryff’s critiques of Seligman’s positive psychology, but Seligman’s character strength research resonates with my main previous wellbeing practice, spirituality especially meditation, and Aristotle’s eudaimonian ethics. Interpreting Aristotle, the good life comprises a contemplative and an active element, the contemplative leading to eudaimonia, and the active centrally involving cultivation of virtue. Some philosophers argue Aristotle’s social praxis surpasses his contemplative Theoria in goodness. My meditation maintains “high-quality wellbeing,” “flourishing,” according to Edward Diener and Katherine Ryan’s subjective wellbeing criteria: positive affect, limiting negative affect, increasing mental engagement and meaning in life. I observe whether TA work as social contribution, less contemplative, equals meditation in sustaining eudaimonic wellbeing.
