Answer:
1. Recognize that This is Not Your Decision
Accept and honor the agency of the person you love. Ultimately, the decision to change rests in their hands, not yours. You can open the door, but you cannot force anyone to walk through it.
2. Accept Imperfections
Resist the urge to ignore or deny your loved one’s human frailties. You may not be able to condone specific choices that they’ve made, but you can learn to talk about those choices in a matter-of-fact way, as events that have happened.
If your loved one expresses the conviction that they are broken, damaged, or that something is otherwise wrong with them, don’t respond by insisting that everything is fine. Acknowledging that there is a problem creates the possibility that, someday, perhaps it can be fixed.
3. Modulate your Own Emotions
When we feel the expectations of others too keenly, they sometimes drown out our own impulses. A person on the crux of change requires enough emotional space to consider his options – without being weighed down by the shock, sorrow, and anger of the people who love him.
4. Listen
If your loved one’s choices are completely unintelligible to you — if the things she is doing seem to make no sense at all — then you are not yet properly equipped to help. Learn to understand your loved one’s perspective. Listen, ask questions, and refrain from interjecting your own opinions. You may not agree with their reasoning, but you must learn to understand it.
5. Change Yourself First
Relationships are like a teeter-totter. They settle into balanced states, with each person providing counterweight to the other. Imagine two children who have settled to equilibrium: they sit motionless in mid-air, perfectly balanced on opposite ends of the beam. If they wish to reach a new equilibrium, both children must move. If only one of them shifts position, the balance will be broken and one side of the teeter-totter will drop to the ground.
6. Be an Example
People tend to emulate the behaviors, attitudes, and life outlooks they see around them. Exemplify the lifestyle you hope your loved one will choose. Hold yourself to the same standards you expect her to fulfill. Become living proof that the path you believe in is possible.
