In our life after loss, we lose sight of the stars for the darkness. I want to encourage you today to begin looking for the positives in your life. I even challenge you to find gold stars in your day.

I think the sacred beginning of the gold star goes all the way back to the ancient times of… kindergarten.

Do you remember getting a piece of work back from the teacher with a gold star? Do you remember completing a task and getting to put a gold star on a chore or behavior chart? Do you remember the little white and red box full of gold stars that made you feel like Indiana Jones when he finally finds the treasure?

Fast forward many years and into a new century, and I began to notice that we could “star” or “heart” our most important things. One journaling app allows you to add a gold star to a wonderful day, and that got me thinking, “what exactly makes a gold star day?”

For me, a gold star day is a day where things seem to flow. I thought that it was the actions that occurred during that day, but later I realized that it was actually my thoughts and feelings that determined my day. When I was in a good mental space, the little things didn’t bother me as much. When I was feeling lost, it seemed that nothing went right.

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”

Martin Luther King

That’s how it is for us in our life after loss. We begin to focus on the darkness, and we forget that there are actually stars. When we focus on the darkness, we are experiencing negativity bias in our lives and it’s just too easy to stay down that protective rabbit hole of darkness.

When we begin looking for stars, we begin seeking the positive; the win’s. We need to see what’s going right in our lives. Our brain will fight us, but it’s an important step in finding our way forward after our loss.

Finding the positive is a skill. Skills are like a muscle. The more you flex the muscle, the stronger it gets. It’s time to go look for gold stars in our day. It’s time to create some positivity bias that acknowledges the struggle yet celebrates the accomplishments. 

It’s not about the star. It’s about the strategic byproducts that occur while you are retraining your brain to look for the wins. Learning to find the positive in life is learning to embrace the sweet.  It’s learning to look for stars in the darkness.

Julie Martella

When you’re feeling broken, sometimes getting out of bed takes everything you’ve got because you’re stuck in the darkness. Did you do it anyway?  Guess what?  You get a gold star!  Did you take your kids to school? Keep your cool? Make dinner and clean the kitchen when you were tired?  YOU get a gold star!

Do you know what happens when you find gold stars day after day?  You change your mind!  You literally change how your mind perceives the world and that is powerful stuff! You create a life based on intentionality.

You, my friend, CAN learn to find gold stars in your day, and the habits you learn along the way will help you create a life that can create feelings of pride, accomplishment, groundedness or peace. 

You can do this, and I’m here to help.

Julie