If you are in the helping/coaching/guidance/perspective/development business as I am, one of the most difficult things to NOT do, is make decisions for people, or pressure them into a certain path. While you may find that you are far more objective and experienced and aware than your client may be, you still cannot do this for them.
If you do, you will find invariably, that you also become responsible for the success or failure of what you pushed them toward. Even if they only partially follow your directives, you still will (in their minds and in reality, truthfully) bear the burden of responsibility for future events and results (or lack of them). In other words, you have to provide clarity, ask questions to help them discern, paint verbal pictures of what the futures might hold, tell the story in effective ways, to help them see and decide their destination or next steps. You can only be non-directive, no matter how certain you may be in your conclusions of a matter.
It is their life. It is their future. It is their decision. You will never have the freedom to push too much or too hard for a certain path. If you can't restraint yourself from doing so, then you need to find a different career. You can freely say what you "think" will happen down each possible path, and you can describe what often happens when people chose or don't chose a particular course of action, but no one, no matter how wise and no matter how experienced can accurately calculate the human factor. It is the unknown wildcard. It is the beauty of this one wild beautiful life that we have been given, that we chose our paths and courses in life, and we have to live with the consequences, be they good or bad . . . and that perception too, is probably unknowable as well.
