Everything You Need To Know About The 2022 Global Wellness Day

If you don't already celebrate #selfcaresaturday, you'll have an extra reason to this weekend. Saturday, June 11, 2022, is Global Wellness Day, and consider this permission to spend the day taking care of you.

Started in 2012 in Turkey, Global Wellness Day is an internationally-recognized day set aside to shed a spotlight on the importance of living a healthy, balanced life (via Global Wellness Day). Anne Dimon, founder, and editor of Travel To Wellness explained to Forbes that when Global Wellness Day first started, self-care was still something that was seen as selfish, accessible only to privileged people. Global Wellness Day is all about breaking that stigma. Like the campaign's slogan says, "[o]ne day can change your whole life," and you can use this Saturday to make that change.

Wellness, Pfizer explains, isn't just about not being sick: it's about taking care of your whole self: mind, body, and social life. This means prioritizing things like taking self-care days, eating well, going for a walk, and catching up with friends. Wellness, like love, is a verb: it's committing to taking better care of your body, your mind, and the connections you have outside yourself. Yes, your weekly brunch with your bestie is actually an important part of achieving wellness — but it's not, and can't be, the only thing you do that's for you.

Like with many global awareness campaigners, Global Wellness Day has a theme each year and for 2022, they want you to "Think Magenta."

The Global Wellness Day website explains that "Think Magenta," to them, means to think positively — something that can feel increasingly difficult thanks to major tragic events and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. What Global Wellness Day 2022's focus on is "adding color" to your thoughts, rather than letting the "dark clouds" settle in.

But don't mistake this as an endorsement of toxic positivity. "#ThinkMagenta is not about being optimistic," explains Belgin Askoy, the founder of Global Wellness Day, "it's about being realistic. Things happen in our lives and we have the choice to call them good or bad things" (via Spa Opportunities). Even during tough moments when we're feeling shame or failure, Askoy says there's still something to learn. Being able to reframe bad moments and looking at them from the perspective of what these moments are teaching us is a free, powerful mental health tool, one Aksoy believes is the foundation for total body wellness. 

Aksoy isn't the only person who believes in the power of positive thinking either. According to the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking and approaching problems in a productive way, rather than focusing on the negative, is not just a great way to manage stress but provides physical health benefits as well.

Positive thinking, the Mayo Clinic explains, isn't about ignoring the bad; ignorance does not equal bliss in this equation. Ignoring problems only makes them build up, creating more stress, more tension, and other unhealthy physical and psychological side effects.

Studies show approaching problems and setbacks in a positive, productive way actually have physical and mental benefits, like a stronger immune system and better resiliency for handling stressful situations, per VeryWell Mind. Johns Hopkins expert Lisa R. Yanek, M.P.H., and her colleagues also found that patients who practiced positive thinking were 13% less likely to experience coronary artery disease and it lowered the chances of having a cardiac event, like a heart attack, by one-third (via Johns Hopkins).

Mayo Clinic also reports that living life optimistically can also decrease depression, help with pain management, and lower your risk of death from cancer, infections, and respiratory conditions.

To live more positively, it all comes down to creating positive, healthy habits. Consider areas of your life that bring you to stress, shame, or other negative feelings and, if you can, look at them from a new perspective, per Johns Hopkins. Ask yourself what you've learned, even if it's a lesson on what not to do again.

Balance, too, is key. Eating healthy, having a set sleep routine, and incorporating exercise into your days, the Mayo Clinic says, are going to help support positive thinking and better overall wellness.