In clinical psychology the technique is called motivational interviewing, and the purpose is to help the person feel ready to make the change they need to by helping them plan out what they will need to change in their environment to make it happen. The trick is to avoid pressuring them in the exact moment and instead help them start imagining a more positive future as a very first baby step. You can do this by yourself right now if you want to, even if you know you're not ready to do what you need to.
Examples:
- to quit drinking you might need to try to find a less stressful job or leave a shitty partner
- to start exercising you might need to lower the energy required to start by leaving your workout clothes next to your bed, or you might need to get a brace for a joint so you can exercise more comfortably.
You don't actually have to be ready to do those things to admit to yourself that they're factors holding you back. Step one will always be learning to be honest with yourself, even if you're not ready to do better just yet. So, what do you need to happen in your life to be able to do that thing you know you need to do?
Honestly I was just reflecting on the lack of self-forgiveness being a lot of what's wrong with sobriety culture. I quit booze cold turkey 6 months ago (it was easy when I stopped talking to my fundie parents) but I've had people try to get me to personally identify with the label of "alcoholic." It's actually really important to some people that I do so, even internet strangers! They will literally argue for entire ten or more comment long threads that I need to call myself an alcoholic.
I honestly just don't find dwelling on it to be a useful sobriety strategy. I've gotten significantly more mileage out of just thinking about why I feel the need to drink sometimes and how I can arrange my life to lessen that. For instance in addition to cutting off my shitty family it also helped for the first couple months to temporarily not help my fiance with walking the dog because walking the dog to the corner store had become part of that ritual. It's not an issue now, but just not doing it for a little while was a big help. But to believe some of these people I should have needed to self-flagellate a lot more to have accomplished what I did.
I agree, the rhetoric feels pretty iffy.
The framing of "you are an alcoholic, and that's what you will always be, even long after you no longer have a drinking problem" always sat poorly with me. I generally have a super addictive personality, so whilst I've never had substance use issues that have required me quitting something entirely, but I do have to always be mindful because moderation just isn't something that comes naturally to me. I've seen a lot of people like me who have issues with alcohol or other drugs who cycle round onto a new substance to abuse, and I think that the hard binary that sobriety culture presents exacerbates that.
Congrats on your progress. What you describe about the little disruptions (like not walking the dog) really resonates with me. Sometimes giving the arrangement of one's life a little jiggle can be invaluable for solving inertia