Welcome to Yay Well, our new wellness category focused on improving the state of Oklahoma City’s overall wellness including mindful movement, outdoor adventure, and mental health and stress management. We’ll be hearing from professionals and resources in each of those areas throughout the year and each week in our social media. As part of that, we are pleased to introduce our Yay Dude Life Coach Julie Reising, a mindset and empowerment coach with twenty years of experience as a licensed marriage and family counselor and play therapist. Each month she will be sharing ways to work on our personal wellness. Let’s dive in with Julie…

 January is winding down and with it the burst of adrenaline we felt on January 1 as we

Meet Julie Reising, our official Yay Dude Life Coach.

welcomed a new year, bought a blank calendar or fresh journal and made a slew of resolutions. So much pressure (not to mention a sense of impending failure, amiright??)

In fact, the sense of failure and waning excitement that hits us before the first month of the year is even finished is exactly why I no longer make New Year’s resolutions – they just don’t last. Instead, I have a different process for rediscovering myself for the New Year; I feel into my year. I look back at the year just concluding, and use that info to help me design how I want my new year to look and feel and the experiences I want to embody.

Here’s a simple 3-step process for rediscovering who you are and what you really want in 2022:

1. Review the previous year (or two). Make a quick note of what you loved and what you didn’t about it. Here’s a helpful hint from Brand Strategist/YayDude Leader Malena Putnam: pull out any notes you’ve taken at conferences/workshops, review your calendar or journals that you’ve written in – even if you only did so sporadically- to help refresh your memory. You’re looking back over at least 12 months and it’s hard to remember sometimes). Remember, you’re making two lists: I Want More of This and I Want Less of This.

2. Take a look at the notes you’ve made and quickly jot down some ideas on ways you can manifest more of what you want and less of what you don’t going forward Don’t get bogged down in the details of how you’ll do so – just make some quick brainstorm-y (yes, that’s a word – well, now it is!) notes and don’t overthink it. For example, one thing I want more of in 2022 is what we runners call “destination races” (planning a vacay/trip around a race that’s happening in that area of the world). For my brainstorm of how to get more of this, I might identify two places I’ve never visited (I’ll look later to see if they have a race I want to run and how it fits in my calendar…for now, I’ll just make note of the two places as possibilities).

DONE! A half-marathon in Key West in January.



3. Choose no more than two items from each list and here’s the absolutely essential – and kinda “woo woo” – part: breathe deeply and slowly as you allow yourself to feel how each accomplished or failed goal or experience helped you feel (a quick trick to help you “get back there” is to use your five senses to identify one thing you tasted, felt, heard, saw and smelled in each situation). Explore your no more than four selected More/Less experiences and imagine how your life might be different if you make room for more of it (or less). Continue breathing deeply as you write down how to make these experiences happen more in the new year such as putting a race in your calendar and designating savings monthly to pay for the trip, as I’ve done from my example in Step 2. If it’s something you want less of, explore the circumstances that led to you feeling/experiencing what you did and examine what you had control of and what you can change in the future. For instance, can you spend less time around someone who gives you backhanded compliments and leaves you feeling like crap?? Note to self: only choose thoughts and actions that you can control.

One of many destination runs in the books!


Walking through these three simple steps will help you rediscover who you are and manifest more of what you love in your life and perhaps even more significantly, less of what you don’t for 2022.

To reach Julie for more about rediscovering your passions in 2022, email her at julie@juliereising.com and learn more about her services at JulieReising.com. 

Cheers to wellness in 2022 from our Yay Dude Team Edmond Family Eyecare, Citizens Bank of Edmond, and Tin Lizzie’s Boutique.