After three decades on the mat and a master’s in wellbeing education, Raeder is done watching people settle for bubble baths when the science offers something better
POTTERSVILLE, N.Y., June 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Jan Raeder, known as the SelfCare Sensei, has spent 35 years watching people figure out who they are. She watched four-year-olds discover which hand goes where. She watched 84-year-olds discover they could still surprise themselves. She watched burned-out professionals, grieving spouses and parents of children with special needs all arrive at the same crossroad and ask the same question: what do I do now?
Her answer is Strive for M.O.R.E.: What Wellbeing Really Means and How You Can Achieve It, a 139-page book rooted in peer-reviewed positive psychology research that Raeder is officially launching in June. It is, she is quick to clarify, not a self-care book. Not in the way that term has come to mean anything that smells like lavender.
“The relationship you have with yourself is the longest relationship you are ever going to have,” Raeder said. “If you do not build that one, everything else suffers. That is not a wellness tip. That is just true.”
The book centers on Raeder’s M.O.R.E. framework, an adaptation of Martin Seligman’s widely studied PERMA theory of human flourishing, restructured around four pillars: Meaning, Optimism, Relationships and Engagement. Seligman, the former president of the American Psychological Association, has spent more than 30 years building the research base that Raeder spent years reading, cross-referencing and eventually translating into something a person can actually use on a Tuesday morning.
The framework is not a checklist. Each pillar reinforces the others. Work on meaning and optimism tends to follow. Build a real relationship and engagement rises with it. Raeder learned this the same way she learned most things, by watching it happen in front of her.
Before Strive for M.O.R.E. had a publicist or a launch campaign, it had readers. More than 400 copies sold on word of mouth alone. Over 50 reviews accumulated on Amazon and Goodreads. At some point a physician who also holds a PhD picked it up, read it and left a public note saying it worked for him the same way it would work for someone who had never set foot in a lecture hall. That, Raeder said, was the whole idea.
Raeder is a national AAU gold medalist in karate who spent more than three decades teaching Okinawan and Japanese martial arts before going back to school at 48. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in wellbeing education in four years while running two martial arts locations. She designed a certificate program for higher education, taught a university well-being theory course and converted that curriculum into the book during the pandemic when in-person teaching disappeared and she decided the material was too important to lose. In 2025, she delivered an 18-minute keynote at MIT.
At 139 pages, the book was built short by design. Raeder wanted something a high school student could read and a researcher could respect. She included eight exercises, all of them free, all of them grounded in published science. The one she talks about most is called What Went Well, a daily practice developed by Seligman’s team that asks not just what was good about the day but why. In studies on depressed patients who practiced it consistently, participants reported feeling meaningfully better within six months. The side effects, Raeder notes, are that you feel better.
“There is no finish line,” she said. “People do not want to hear that. But you do not turn 65 and decide you have brushed your teeth enough. You do it because it matters. This is the same.”
Strive for M.O.R.E. is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and SelfCareSensei.com.
About SelfCare Sensei LLC
SelfCare Sensei LLC was founded by Jan Raeder to bring evidence-based wellbeing education to people who are done being sold quick fixes. Through speaking, workshops and her book, Raeder delivers the science of positive psychology in language anyone can use and exercises anyone can start today, without a gym membership, a coach or a candle.
Media Contact:
Jan Raeder
SelfCare Sensei, LLC
jraeder@nycap.rr.com
+1 (518) 225-3301
SelfCareSensei.com
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