The person who understands the cost can support a decision without pretending it is easy.

Encouragement that skips the difficulty leaves a person alone with it. Someone who tells you it will be fine has usually not counted what the decision takes, and their confidence can arrive as a request to stop mentioning the hard part. Support from a person who has done the counting sounds different, because it can hold both that the choice is right and that it will cost you something. That combination is rarer and worth a great deal more.

When you back someone this week, say what you think it will cost them before you say you believe in them.