How To Start Living The BEST Life With Sober Lifestyle

Now, initially, the idea of living a sober lifestyle can feel pretty scary, quite intimidating, actually, because our brains immediately start to think about what we're going to miss out on and events that won't be the same anymore without alcohol. And for some of us, it even feels like giving up alcohol means giving up the idea of ever having fun again. But luckily, none of that is true. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite of the truth. I want to explain to you in this video what a sober lifestyle is really like. And, and keep watching, because I'm also going to give you some pointers about how to take your sober lifestyle to the next level. Best Life for those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth. I'm a master addiction counselor. I've been helping people overcome addiction for more than 20 years now. I've seen people get sober every which kind of way you can imagine. And I can wholeheartedly tell you that once people get sober, they are much, much happier than they are when they are drinking. And it's not until you get a good distance from drinking that you can even see how much the Alcoh has been impacting you. You don't even realize that it's making your anxiety worse, that it's making you feel depressed when you're not drinking, that it's messing up your sleep, it's zapping your motivation, your energy, it's making you irritable. And eventually you get to the point where you pretty much can't enjoy life activities without alcohol, which is a very crappy place to be. And once we start to get to this point, that's what gives us the idea that being sober means no more fun ever. But it actually means the opposite of that. Being sober means your brain can heal enough to have the neurochemical ability to experience fun and joy and pleasure in regular, everyday stuff. Now, if you're just thinking about getting sober or you're early in the process, you're probably going to have a hard time believing that, because your experience with being sober is probably synonymous with what it's like to be in withdrawal. You got to wait a few weeks for those brain chemicals to restabilize and things start to change. Whereas you initially think that being sober means you're going to be giving up, you're going to be missing out. You're going to have all these restrictions on what you can and can't do. You're going to find that the sober lifestyle is the opposite of that. You are going to have the freedom and flexibility to go where you want to go, when you want to go, who you want to go with. You don't have to plan anything around alcohol. For some of us, we don't even realize how much we're planning our life around alcohol. We plan the restaurants we're going to go to, the events we attend, our vacations, and not. Not even just the big things like that, like our everyday route home from work, what we're going to do on the weekends. So easy for drinking to become our norm that we don't even realize that we're planning our whole life around alcohol. And once we can let go of having to do that, life is actually so much more simple. That's the thing that I hear most. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Amber Hollingsworth. I am a master addiction counselor, and I've been helping people overcome addictions for more than 20 years now, which means I've helped thousands of people get rid of their addictions. And pretty much every one of those people is a much happier person once they get sober. It's really interesting because, you know, I have people showing up in my office telling me, you know, they have a drinking problem, but they don't want to stop. They want to keep drinking. But when I'm talking to them about what's going on in their life, they're miserable, they're unhappy, they're unhappy in their relationship, they're unhappy in their job. They don't like themselves. They feel crummy, their sleep's not good, they feel anxious and irritable. When you're in that position, it's really hard to see that it's the alcohol doing that to you, because the only time you feel better from all that is when you drink. The sneaky little part is, is that the thing that's making you feel that way to begin with is the fact that you're drinking. That's the whole cycle of how you get stuck. And that's the crux of the matter. That's how we get stuck in this drinking cycle. If you do nothing in recovery other than just literally quit drinking, and you're going to feel like 75% better in six weeks. You're going to feel 80% better in three months. In a out, you're gonna feel like you are not even the same person anymore. You're gonna find that when you're around other people drinking, you're gonna be looking at them, feeling sorry for them. That's right. I said it. You're gonna be feeling sorry for the people that are drinking, because you're gonna be thinking, God, I know what they're going through. I know how they're gonna feel. Tomorrow, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna feel great and I'm gonna go do what I want to do with my day. I'm gonna be on the top of my game in my career. I'm gonna be a great parent. I'm gonna actually enjoy all those little joyful moments that life gives us. If you're new in this process, or maybe you haven't even about it, you're probably looking at me thinking, whatever, I don't believe you. You are a crazy lady. But you don't have to believe me. Go out and ask some people who are in recovery. Ask them if they're happier now than they used to be when they were drinking or using or whatever it is that they were doing. And if that doesn't work, ask yourself. Ask yourself how happy you are right now in the drinking cycle that you're stuck in. It's probably not that great. Now I want to give you a few little tips on how to take an already really good sober lifestyle up a notch or two to fantast. One of the things I think that helps a lot is actually doing what I call coming out of the recovery closet. That's right. Telling other people that you don't drink anymore. At first, that seems scarier than actually giving up the alcohol because we're so worried about what other people are going to think about the fact that we're not drinking. Yeah, it's a stigma. Not drinking is a stigma. People talk about the stigma of worrying if someone thinks you're an alcoholic. But the truth of it is, is we worry what our friends and family and co workers are going to think that we don'. Drink. Once you get over that and you come out of the recovery closet and you're open with it, it's going to feel like a giant burden off your shoulders. You're going to get a lot of positive reinforcement instead of judgment and crooked side looks. You're going to get a lot of like, wow, that's impressive, or what's that like? And you'll get quite a few people that want to open up to you about their own drinking or someone they know and who needs help, because you're going to be surprised when this happens. But there's a lot of people that you talk to and deal with on a daily basis that actually want to stop drinking, and they're going to want to know what your secret is. Now the next thing you can do to take it up another notch is surround yourself with good people. Now I mean this more than just in the typical recovery people, places and things, right? Specifically, surround yourself with positive influences because we are affected by the mood, thoughts and feelings of the people that we surround ourselves with. If you continue to surround yourself with people who drink heavily a lot, regularly, you're going to find that they're anxious, depressed, mad at the world, resentful, feeling sorry for themselves. And guess what? That's going to rub off on you. Maybe it might not make you want to drink, but it might make you a more miserable person. And who wants that? Surround yourself with motivated good human beings and you'll go up another 10%. And if you want to go up even one more notch, then, then put a focus in your life on serving others. Now that can be volunteer work, but there's a lot of ways to serve others. That's not necessarily volunteer work. You can serve the people in your house and in your community. You can serve the people that you work with by being a good human being, by bringing that good energy to someone else. Of course you could do it the old fashioned way. You can go to the soup kitchen, you can volunteer, that definitely counts. But there are a lot of ways to do that just in how we interact with people and an everyday basis. When we can let go of being so self consumed and self conscious, we can actually start to focus on other people, which makes our energy change. And doing that will actually draw those good people to you. Now I want to know, what's your experience with getting sober? Have you ever been sober for more than three months? If so, what is that like? So tell us what it's really like in the comments below. And if you want more videos like this, make sure and subscribe. And then I want you to watch this video titled what's it really like to be Sober?