Episode 5: Junk Journal Meets Wellness with My Book of Delights
Description: A book of delights might be the most joyful wellness practice you try this season. Tina shares how a planner turned into a journal where she records the small things that delighted her each day. It's a screen-free, creative way to notice and hold onto joy, no rules required.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Everyday Wellness with Dr. Tina H. Boogren. I am your host, Tina Boogren, and I'm just so stinking happy you're here. I hope you are doing so well. I hope you are taking really good care of yourself as we move into fall, and I hope that you have found these episodes for this season to be helpful. I'm loving, loving all of the activity over in the Facebook group. I just, ugh, you guys are the best. You are the absolute best. I hope that last week you were able to play around with the phone fast or digital detox, and that you felt some benefits from that, that maybe is a nice boost to keep that going.
So this week, I want to share with you, gosh, a project that I've been working on that is bringing me so much joy that may appeal to some of you, I hope. I realize this may not appeal to everyone, but isn't that the case with all invitations, right? We know different strategies work for different people, but I'm just going to explain how I fell backwards into this thing that I'm working on every single day that I'm loving. I mentioned it very briefly last week, and I'm calling it my Book of Delights. My Book of Delights.
So here's what this is. I am a paper planner person, as many of you know. I've tried and used a gazillion different planners, and I saw one online that, ugh, I just thought, "This is it. This is going to be the planner," as we all know, that makes the biggest difference, right? I'm just one perfect planner away from my life coming together in all areas. And I ordered this planner, and it's beautiful and I love it, but it is not what I need for my calendar planner. And so I had this moment of like, "Ugh, what do I do with this?" Because it's gorgeous. It's beautiful. It's red. It's actually, Hunter is the brand. And it's sturdy. I just, the appeal of it is great. It just wasn't working for me for my actual calendar because it didn't have tabs, blah, blah, blah. So I, I just kind of moved away from it and it was just sitting on my desk for a while.
And then I don't know if I was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest or something when I was scrolling, but I just got the idea of like, "Huh, let me make this into something completely different." I have always loved the idea of doing a junk journal. You can look those up. They're just kind of, you collect things and glue them in. But I've never started one. I've just always had this idea of doing that. I love school supplies. I've got markers and crayons, and I have a gazillion stickers. I buy a lot of stickers. I love stickers. I'm obsessed with stickers. And there's just only so many places that I can put them. I put them on my computer and different water bottles, but I invariably have this huge stack of stickers in a desk drawer, and I just don't know what to do with them. But they make me happy. It's a relatively cheap thing to buy. I buy them as souvenirs for sure, and then I just pick up other ones along the way. Man, I love a good sticker.
So all of this to say, I had all these ideas and things and materials swirling around, and I don't know, it just kind of hit me. I picked up this book, and in the first couple of pages, I just took out my pile of stickers, and I just put stickers all over these pages. Stickers that I probably wouldn't use on other things that I'd just been piling up. So it was like a sticker book. And then I decorated it. I got my markers out and, like, made borders around the different stickers, did all sorts of, oh, I don't know, just like decorations, if you will. So I have like four full pages that are just stickers that make me happy. And then there's like this beginning page where I think the original purpose was to keep track of like habits, but I just started a list of my favorite things for 2026-2027.
So I have a list of the music that I love right now, my favorite authors and books of the year, the podcasts that I love right now, my current favorite food, my favorite TV shows. Just kind of started a list, and again, I went back, decorated it with my markers. I have a list of podcast ideas. And then I created this whole like goal-setting page. So, at the top it says, "Goals." This is from the actual planner, and then I added, "But make them delightful." So I have things like, you know, consume less, create more, decorate it. I want to be pain-free. I have been really struggling with some sciatic pain, and so I have a goal to be pain-free. My three big words that I come back to again and again and again lately are ease and joy and abundance, so I have that written and decorated. And so I, yeah, just wrote these goals out, again, decorated them with my markers.
And then here's the really fun part. So where the calendar is, what I record on those calendar pages are the daily delights. This is not where I write my to-do list. This is very, very separate from my actual paper planner. It's not a list of appointments. Instead, I think back on the day, and I write down the things that delighted me that particular day. And you guys, this is bringing me so much joy. So I started this on August 17th, and I've just had multiple daily delights, and then I decorate the pages. I color it in with marker. I add more stickers. I cut things out of magazines. I visited an independent bookstore in Denver, and I got a bookmark, and I put that in there because that was a delightful day spent at the bookstore. I got a card from a really good friend, and I cut that out and put it in here because it's this great card, and it is bringing me so much joy, and I just call it my book of delights. And like I said, I get to, it's like my childhood dreams. I get to get out my markers and my stickers, and I am just leaning into it, and it's making me so happy, not only to create it but then to look back at, like, what were my delights last week? I went to lunch with my mom and dad, and my dad got this great fortune. We went to P.F. Chang's, and so I said, "Can I keep that?" The fortune out of the fortune cookie. I have it glued in, and it was a delight from being able to have lunch with my mom and dad and to see his fortune on his birthday.
In the back, there's a bunch of blank pages, and so that's where I kind of play around with my artwork. I love to draw happy birds. I've drawn a lot of happy birds. I got a thank you card from a colleague at work, and I stuck that in there because it makes me happy. I have a daily tear-off page-a-day calendar. It's the You Are a Badass from Jen Sincero, and every once in a while, there is a day that whatever it says really speaks to me, so I cut that out, and I'll stick it in here with a little glue stick.
And it's just my book of delights, and this is, when I said last week about taking time in the evening as my phone fast or digital detox, what I have been doing is just digging into my book of delights. It makes me feel like, I don't know, a young girl again with all my art supplies. I just lay it all out. I'm usually listening to music in my room, away from the phone, away from the screen, away from the TV, and it's bringing me such joy.
So, the delight that my book of delights is bringing to me is wonderful. So, maybe that inspires you to start your own book of delights, or maybe you already do something like this, and you're going to show me pictures of it. Or it sparks another idea, something else that you might be interested in. I know so many educators listen to this podcast, and as a whole, we tend to be pretty obsessed with, I don't know, markers and crayons and stickers and all of that. So, have you figured out a way to tap into utilizing some of that fun stuff? So, maybe that sparks something with you. Of course, I'm going to be over in the Facebook group, and I'll have questions related to this topic, and I can't wait to hear from all of you if this sparks anything for you or if you do something similar. And I'm just going to dig back into my book of delights this week. It's making me so happy.
As always, we're so grateful, so, so grateful to Adrienne, Solution Tree, Marzano Resources. We are so grateful for the listeners. Oh my goodness. Thank you for coming back each week. Thank you for sharing this podcast with others. Just thank you for the joy and the delight that you bring to me and to those around you. I hope you have an amazing week. I'm cheering so stinking hard for you. Ah, I love you
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