In Part 2 of her series, Amber Hollingsworth moves beyond simply walking away from addiction and focuses on what to walk toward. She frames recovery as constructing a fulfilling, values‑driven life that naturally diminishes the pull of old habits. The video outlines a step‑by‑step blueprint: (1) identify core personal values to serve as a compass; (2) map high‑risk times of day and replace addictive routines with planned, value‑aligned activities; (3) develop a daily gratitude/joy practice to reinforce positive thinking; (4) enroll in her free 30‑Day Jumpstart program, which delivers short daily videos teaching craving management, social‑situation strategies, and gratitude techniques; and (5) create a vivid future vision—using visualization or a vision board—to focus intention and guide long‑term goals. Throughout, Amber emphasizes concrete planning over “game‑time” decisions, likening the process to building a house: a solid foundation (values) must precede decoration (new habits). The video ends with a teaser for Part 3 (staying strong during setbacks) and standard YouTube calls to action.
Chapters
So in part 1 of our series on how to walk away from an addiction and never look back, we talked about focusing your attention on what you do have instead of focusing on what you're leaving behind. But today we're taking it a step further because the thing is, walking away is just the beginning. The real question is, what are you walking toward? In this video, we're going to talk about how to build a life so full, so meaningful that you don't even feel the pull to look back. Because recovery is not just about staying sober. It's about creating a life that you're genuinely excited to wake up to. For those of you who are new here, my name is Amber Hollingsworth, and I've been helping people and families overcome addiction for more than 20 years now. And I made this YouTube channel to help make sure that you are always 5 steps ahead of addiction. Whether you're trying to overcome an addiction yourself or help a loved one overcome an addiction, you are not powerless. You can beat addiction. It just requires strategy, and I'm here to share that strategy with you. So if you're not already subscribed, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. And if you are already subscribed, go ahead and hit the like button because today's video is going to be a good one because there's going to be a part 3 to this series, which is going to be all about how to stay strong when life throws you curveballs. But before we get there, let's get back to the topic at hand, how to build a life that you absolutely love. And the whole process is pretty similar to building a house. For example, if you were building a house, you wouldn't start by decorating the walls in the living room. You would naturally start by laying a good, strong, durable foundation, digging deep, pouring concrete to make sure that your house is solid enough to hold everything else. Because without that strong base, your will crumble the minute a storm rolls in, and we're not going to let that happen to you. So the core to building that strong foundation, that sturdy base for your recovery, is to start by identifying your core values. You see, addiction takes us away from who we are. It makes us act in ways that don't fit with our value system, which ultimately makes us feel really bad about ourselves. And when we feel really bad about ourselves, we tend to feel bad about other people. It's not a great place to be. We don't like ourselves. We don't like anybody else. And in the end, Life pretty much just sucks. So we're going to reverse all that. We're going to reconnect to what is really important to you. What are your values? Your core values are those deeply held beliefs that help guide you through life. It's like a compass that aligns us with who we truly want to be, because we're never going to feel good about ourselves until we're in alignment with those values. Examples of those values could be family, integrity, health, growth, responsibility, freedom, faith or spirituality, contribution, authenticity, creativity. When you're clear on your values, it becomes a lot easier to make choices that align with the person you truly want to be. And when your actions match those values, you start to feel a real sense of peace and purposefulness. And isn't that what we're all looking for? And hey, who doesn't want that? Peace and purposefulness sounds like a good recipe to me. Now, it can be easy to get sucked away from acting in accordance to your values. For example, if you say family is your top value, then that's the reference point that you have to use to make all of those small daily choices. Like, do I go to the family event or stay home and binge my favorite Netflix series? Do I get up and engage with my kids and play with them outside or sit in my office and kill time making a spreadsheet? Do I join the conversation at family dinner or do I just scroll mindlessly through my phone? It's all these small, tiny little decisions that add up. So take some time and really ask yourself what's important to you. Who do you want to be as a human being and what do you want to prioritize in life? Because we already know it's not alcohol or marijuana or other drugs or pornography or gambling. I can pretty much promise because prioritizing those things is out of alignment with pretty much everyone's values. So we can definitely settle on the fact that those addictive behaviors aren't the priority anymore. Once you have your compass set, building new habits to replace the old ones. In the early days of addiction, we talk about a lot of my recovery coaching clients are in those early days of sobriety. And a lot of what you have to do in those early days of sobriety is decide what you're going to do instead. For most people, their addictive behavior tends to happen at a certain time of day. And so one of the things I teach my clients to do is let's decide what that really difficult time of day is for you. Is it after work? Is it in the morning? Is it late at night after your family's asleep? Because when you can narrow it down to sometimes it's like a few, 2 or 3 hour period, then you realize all I got to do is get through this short period of time. And the key to getting through that period of time is deciding what you are going to do. You definitely don't want to leave this up to a game time decision because if you don't have a plan, chances are you're just going to fall back into your old routines and patterns at a Or like, for example, let's say you have to go to some kind of social event where there's going to be drugs and alcohol and you don't want to fall into that. You need to have a plan for what you're going to do instead, who you're going to talk to. Are you going to hold a drink in your hand? What are you going to say if someone offers you something? All of these things have to do with creating those new patterns and habits for yourself, deciding what you're going to do to replace those old habits and patterns. And the next step in the path of building a life that you absolutely love is actually a skill. And this skill is learning to find joy In the journey, you've got to intentionally look for what's going right in your life. You've got to intentionally count your blessings every day. It goes back to what we talked about in part 1, which is focusing on what you do have instead of what you don't have. And this is just another habit that you have to train yourself into. A lot of people actually make themselves write it down every single day for so many days to train this habit into them. Some people have to text it to their counselor or to their sponsor as a way to train this new habit in. Maybe you want to write it on your bathroom mirror. If you have tendency to fall into worry or negativity or catastrophe thinking, this might be a little bit of a challenge, but man, life is going to feel so much better when you can shift out of it. It's just a habit and a pattern like everything else, and habits and patterns can be broken. All you got to do is build a new habit and pattern. Now, if you are new in this whole recovery journey or you're thinking about getting into this recovery journey, I got a free resource for you. It's my 30-Day Jumpstart Program, which is just a series of little short, like 3 to 5 minute videos That come to your inbox every day that give you these small skills and help you build these patterns. Things like overcoming cravings, how to deal with social situations, the best way to practice gratitude. All these small little skills and habits are included in the 30-Day Jumpstart. It's totally free. I've got a link in the description, so just pop in there and sign yourself up because the 30-Day Jumpstart program is designed to help you stay on focus every day. It sends you out a short video every single day to help you retrain that thinking. And the The last step of building a life that you love, that you never want to look back on, that makes you never want to look back to addiction, is creating a vision for your future. I want you to visualize what you do want in your life. What do you want your days to look like? Who do you want to be as a person? How do you want to show up for the people that you love? How do you want to contribute to the world, the people, the community outside of yourself? The more specifically you can envision it, the more likely it is to happen. In fact, there's even some research that says if you will literally draw it out and It doesn't have to be pretty, but draw it out or cut pictures out of magazines if you want to build your vision board. The more clearly you can get that view of what you want in life, the more likely you are to get it because intention follows focus. Now, keep your eye out for part 3 of this video series, which is all about how to stay strong during the really tough times. And of course, don't forget to hit the like button if this video was helpful for you.
