The Observe Approach To Dealing With Stress with Christian Modjaiso

 

Stress kills. According to the American Psychological Association, it is linked to the six leading causes of death which are heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide. Are you extremely stressed and needing a solution that works? In this episode, Rodney Flowers talks with XtremeStress coach Christian Modjaiso about The Observe Approach to dealing with stress. Christian is the Founder and CEO of OBSERVE which helps clients find permanent solutions to their problems that is customized to fit their situation. Having struggled with severe depression and feelings of inferiority, Christian opens up about how he got through the challenges growing up and adjust to the American culture and how he was able to change his approach to stress that enabled him to take control of his life. Don’t miss this episode to discover how you can free yourself from the bondage of stress and anxiety in your life.

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The Observe Approach To Dealing With Stress with Christian Modjaiso

I have Christian Modjaiso with me. I’m excited about this. He is the Founder and CEO of Observe. He is an extreme stress coach. We all have dealt with stress, some of us more extreme than others, but we’re going to be talking about how to deal with stress, how to observe it for yourself. Christian is going to help us come up with solutions perfectly designed for us to help us fix the situation permanently. We are excited about our guest. We’re excited about game changers changing the game in our lives and our business. I want to make you feel welcome. I’m excited to have you here. That’s what that’s for. I’m glad you feel good about it. 

I’m feeling very welcome now. 

Mission accomplished. Tell us about your company, Observe, and you as an extreme stress coach. What is this all about? What are you into? 

The company, Observe, is a company that’s designed to help extremely stressed people to deal with their stress. The difference is that we’re dealing with stress by observing it for ourselves. Let’s say you came to me. I work as an extreme stress coach. What this means is that I’m particularly working with extremely stressed people and the tool I’m using is observation. Let’s say you came to me with a problem that is stressing you out. It could be anything, maybe a relationship that’s not working or you’re trying to make it in your career and things are not working out. You’re under so much pressure. Usually, the approach would have been taught from childhood is to read a book on how to deal with your situation or maybe watch a video, listen to an expert, do what other people do. This may work, but this is not the approach I use. My approach is that the solution to the problem is contained within the problem.  

What I’ll get you to do is to observe the particular situation you’re in and to deal with the facts of your situation. When I’m saying what I’m doing, when I say facts is when dealing with not your interpretations, not what you think is happening but what is happening. What have you observed? We deal with those observations. One of the deep realizations I had is that automatically when you look at the reality of the situation, the right course of action is a natural consequence. What I do is we’ll observe, we’ll look at the facts of your situation. We’ll use those facts to come up with a solution. The beauty of such solutions, which is something that I’ve observed for instance in my own situation with the problems I’ve had to deal with. When I use this Observe Approach, the solution always perfectly fits my situation. It’s not something that’s read in a book. It comes from the reality of what is happening to me.  

Let me dive into this a little bit because I know some people reading this may be like, “What is this dude talking about?” To get clear on this, what are you saying is that if we can take a step back in whatever situation that we’re in and look at the reality of what’s happened, what’s going on? Is that what you’re saying is that the action steps, the solution to the problem will reveal itself? Is that what you’re trying to say? 

Yes. What I’m saying is that in life we have actions and then we have consequences. Actions are in our control, consequences are not. You’d take an action and then whatever it is that takes over takes charge of consequences. A simple one is let’s say a friend cooked a meal. You put the ingredients together, you put the fire on, but you’re not in charge of cooking the food. You take the action. Maybe a better explanation would be like let’s say you’re trying to grow a plant. You’re a farmer. Let’s say you’re a farmer. You’re trying to grow corn. You’re not in charge of how the corn plant grows. What you’re in charge of is the initial conditions, setting the land, planting the right seed, watering it, getting rid of the weeds.  

If you take the right actions, the consequences take care of themselves. Click To Tweet

You take those actions and if you take the right actions, the consequences take care of themselves. This is the same with observation as well. If you have a problem, we’ve been taught to focus on the solution orientation. The thing is if you’re focused on the solution, you’re not looking at the problem and yet the solution is contained in the problem. If I’m having a bad relationship with Rodney, I focus on solutions. I have to look at our relationship. If I look at what’s going on in our relationship, the right thing to do about it will become obvious. It’s a consequence. The solution comes as a bonus when you look and observe the reality. 

I want to challenge you on this, Christian, because in my personal development experience and journey, the recommendation is that you don’t focus on the problem. We have a lot of people focusing on problems these days. Let’s say, for example, cancer. When you focus on cancer, you get more cancer. We want to focus on what can we do to prevent cancer? What can we do to promote healing? Wholeness. We don’t need to focus on cancer because cancer is the problem. It doesn’t need more energy in and of itself because it exists. If we can focus on the solution, then perhaps we can get more of what we want, which is solutions. You probably heard the saying energy flows where focus goes. Wherever you’re putting your focus, that’s where your energy is going to go and that’s what you’re going to produce. Your philosophy is a little bit different than that.  

One thing is people say they are focusing on the problem, but they’re not. They’re not looking at the problem. They like complaining, “Look at me. Poor me, I don’t have any money. My business is not working out. I’ll probably never succeed. My mother was right about me.” This is not looking at the problem. We’re talking about looking at what’s happening. Let’s say, a good example, something that I tried, I used to have a lot of difficulty before because I used to quit a lot of things. I’d start things and then quit and then become depressed. I had to solve that problem. I realized that I never looked at it. I decided to pay attention to what happens in the moment before I quit. Let me look at the facts of the situation. What thoughts are running through my mind at that time? How am I feeling about it? In the moment when I quit, what happens then after I quit? What happens then? Let’s say I admit the resolution that I’m not going to over eat anymore. I’m going to only what’s enough and stuff because I don’t want to grow fat, and then I quit that resolution. What happens at the moment after I quit? Do I overeat and do I overeat more than I used to eat in the past?  

Let’s record the facts and not my interpretations of them. You see, so it’s got to be, “I’m a loser. I’m a failure.” None of that stuff. That is not looking at the problem. That’s simply whining and complaining. We’re looking at the facts. What’s happening? Not my interpretation. What I’ll tell you is that in my own observations, most people don’t do that. They never look at the facts of what’s happening. They’re usually complaining, lost in their own interpretations, their own story. As a result, they don’t have a solution. If you say something right now that pisses me off, I don’t look at the anger. I focus on what you said, what I should have said, maybe similar situations like that. What I will do next time you say this. It’s very rare to find someone who focuses on the problem itself, not complaining. Let’s look at it. Let’s look at the feeling in my body. How am I feeling? Let’s look at the thoughts in my mind. When you do that, the solution becomes a natural consequence. One thing I’d question is whether people ever look at problems.  

We talk about stress. Under your philosophy, we have to take accountability for the stress that we’re experiencing. I think that‘s the first and foremost thing. You’re advocating we take responsibility of the stress. We’re saying we are because of the stress, not nothing out there. Nothing in the environment, regardless of what it is, you have to take accountability for it. Once you are at that place where you can say, “I’m accountable for the stress that I’m under.” What am I doing to cause this? What am I doing that is allowing me to be stressed out? I’m trying to get very clear on what your philosophy is. Let me finish this. Under your philosophy, when we look at a stressful situation, the stress that is causing us, under your philosophy, you’re saying that there are things that you can do when you look at the reality of what’s causing the stress within that is maybe some solutions that we can take, some activities that we can implement that will reduce the stress. The ultimate goal is to stop the stress or to reduce the stress. That’s why I’m digging into this.  

What we want to do is eliminate it totally. If we are not able to eliminate it, then we focus on making use of it. If you had the choice of never being stressed at all costs, you’re going to pick that. You’re not reducing stress. You’re going to get rid of it. At the moment we use it, we don’t know how to eliminate it.  

 

Is that a reality though, Christian? I’m enjoying this conversation because exercise in itself is a stressful activity. This is good stress because it breaks down your muscles, it stresses your muscles and then you have the recovery period that builds the muscles back up. They come back stronger than they were before. In that essence, stress, you use it to be a benefit. Life in itself is going to apply some level of stress to a human being. You’re saying you can eliminate stress. Some stresses are good. It’s depending on how you deal with the stress. I’m not discrediting anything that you’re saying here, Christian. I want you to know that. I am trying to get into the understanding of how your philosophy works as it relates to stress.  

First of all, when I’m talking stress, I’m not talking about the stress and the muscle, not that kind of stress. When I’m talking about stress, I’m talking about mental, emotional, psychological pain. I’m not talking about pain in the physical body. I differentiate between stress or suffering and physical pain. For me, I’m putting those in different categories. Most people are suffering from the stress that caused by their thoughts and emotions. These are pieces of it as if people are suffering from physical pain. For the vast majority of people, that’s not the case. They have these thoughts running in in their minds. They don’t know what to do with them. They don’t know how to handle situations. We’re talking about here the stress that you generate for yourself. You’re not like going to the gym and lifting weights. That won’t make sense. You’re going to the gym and you’re lifting weights. You need to put some stress on the muscle in order for it to grow. That is not the issue.  

I was using that as an example. Whereas let’s say the leadership position. When you’re first getting to a leadership position, you may be stressed out beyond measure because it’s new, unfamiliar. You haven’t done it before. Give you a couple of years and you wanted a top leader in the organization because you’ve learned how to deal with the situation. That stress, although seemed overwhelming at first, has built up a muscle of resilience and ability for you to become a better leader. Without that experience, then perhaps you wouldn’t have developed the mental muscle in order to be that leader. That’s why I was using that as an analogy of explanation. The only reason I brought that up is because we were talking about eliminating stress and I don’t know if that’s a reality of eliminating stress.  

I wasn’t saying that we are going to eliminate stress. What I’m saying was that if we could, we’d rather not be sad and not suffer emotional or psychological pain. Let me ask you a question. If you could choose between being joyful and miserable, what would you pick?  

It’s simple. I would rather be joyful.  

There’s no human being who’s going to say, “I’d rather be miserable.” They don’t like misery. What we’re saying here is that I’m not talking about eliminating stress because I don’t know how to do that. I’m saying the next best thing from eliminating stress in terms of emotional and psychological pain. The next step other than eliminating it is going to be to reduce it as much as possible. If you pay attention to a given situation, so let’s say you’ve to a new job. Your fear, you’re feeling on a lot of pressure, you’re afraid with these coworkers like me, will I be able to rise in this career? All this stuff. The question is this. Is this stuff generated by the job or is it generated by you? Pay attention to it. Is it the traffic that’s making you angry or is it you that’s making yourself angry? The first observation is that the stress and suffering is generated by me.  

Your own misery and your own stress is created by you and no one else. Click To Tweet

The situation, the triggers, they don’t have to create stress at all. For instance, two people under the same situation will react differently. That tells you that the situation is not the source of the stress. An example I like to use, I made a statement. Some of the people in the room burst out into laughter. Someone else became angry and annoyed by what I said. Clearly, it’s not what I said. If what I said was annoying, everybody should have been annoyed. If what I said was funny, everybody should have been laughing. I simply made a statement. Everybody created their own experience. This is the first of the vision for me is that the first thing I realized was my own misery, my own stress, it’s created by me and no one else. 

That’s a level of emotional intelligence or mental intelligence towards the experience that we experienced. 

It’s a natural consequence of observing. If you pay a little attention, it’s obvious. You don’t need to be super smart, anybody paying attention to an emotional state there and eventually will realize I’m causing this stuff. 

What would you say? You say paying attention and I notice it’s a very simplistic thing to do. You may have some readers here that are stressed out. Maybe that’s why they’re reading because they’re trying to change the game in their life and they are in a stressful situation. I don’t know if I would want to say, observe. Maybe that’s the answer. I’m not saying that it isn’t. What is your recommendation? What is your recommendation to someone who’s stressed out? I believe if they’re reading this, they’re starting to take an internal look that themselves and say, “Am I stressed out because of what I’m thinking or believing or the emotions that I’m feeling, what I experience that I’m creating for myself?” If they’re in that place, what’s your recommendation for them? 

I’m not saying look within. What I’m saying is wherever the problem is, look there. If you feel that the traffic is what’s pissing you off, look at the traffic. Maybe you’re right. You see, I don’t let claim to have the answers to things. This is one of the key things about the Observe Approach is you don’t have to believe me at all. You look at your own observations tell you what is true and how to act. All I’m saying is that if you do this, you realize it’s internal, but you may find something different or I may look to it more and find out it’s not true. I’m not claiming to know anything. That’s also the beginning.  

What caused you to take this approach towards stress?  

It’s not one event. It had been many events in my life. I talk about a lot on podcasts, so I’m not going to talk about that. The obvious thing that started it all was I found that I was suffering emotionally, psychologically, and I didn’t want to stop it. Every approach I’ve been given never work. I was told to think positive, but thinking positive helped me temporarily and then I’d be back. Eventually, I had to realize that the reason I’m stressed is that I am incompetent. I do not know how to handle my own thoughts and emotions. The more competent I am with handling my own thoughts and emotions, the better I am, the less stressed I will be. This is an issue of incompetence. It took a while for me to learn that observation is the way to increase my competence at handling my own thoughts and emotion. What triggered me to look for a solution was I was suffering and I had different forms of them. One of the events that marked me strongly was an event, maybe in 2018. I’m from Congo, but I went to university in the US.  

 

When I was in the US, I used to live with a second couple, like a host family. There was one lady I used to live with, she was older, on the 60s. She’d taken me in like a host son thing. We’ve grown close. We’ve spent a lot of time together. This lady was great. She helped me a lot, but she was in her 60s and she’d never mastered the basics. Almost every dimension of her life was a failure. She was obese. Completely overweight. She had a cabinet full of medicine. She had relationships that were horrible. In fact, I was surprised that we had a good relationship because I was an exception. With everyone, there was all this fighting with everyone, fighting with the dogs, fighting with the cats. It was terrible. At some point, it became so miserable she was being on herself. I realize that wisdom doesn’t come with age. This lady was in her 60s and she’d never mastered the basics. She kept thinking that everybody else was the cause of her problems. Everybody but herself.  

What tipped things for me with regards to her is that one day me and one of her relatives came back to the house and we found her dead on the toilet seat. Deaths do something too. It’s weird. It’s not clear. It’s hard to see, to know what the full impact of a death is. I knew something shifted in me. One of her prized possession was the house that she lived in. This was the one thing saved for 30 years working for the government. She had been able to buy that house. She was proud of it. She was very protective of it.  

That very day when she died on the toilet, the guys from the funeral services, they carried her out of the toilet, put on a stretcher and dragged her out of the house. She left the car and the house behind. This was one experience that got me to think about what matters. She spent a long time worrying about the house, her entire life and yet the house didn’t matter. It never belonged to her in the first place. She was dragged out of the house and the house remained. This was one event that got me to look at what matters and what is the source of my suffering. I loved her, but I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to end up 60 years old and never mastered the basics about where’s my suffering coming? That was one trigger event and many others did it for me.  

Eventually, there’s another event that helped a lot. In the past, I would be very stressed. In the past, let’s say you could say something that pissed me off and I’d remain angry for the entire day. What you said to me in the morning is going to affect me for the entire day tomorrow, even an entire week. I never knew what to do with these intense emotions. All I knew was suppression. Don’t feel the emotion or go and watch a movie, talk to friends, think positive, read a book, never dealing with the problem. There was one day when I took a test to apply for graduate school. I took a test and I did particularly horrible on this test. It was a terrible performance back in the thirteenth percentile. I screwed up this one. That event before would have taken me two weeks or more to recover from.  

One day I decided, “I’ve failed this test. I’ve received the news. There’s nothing to do. Let me sit down, close my eyes and allow the thoughts to run through my mind and feel the feeling in my body.” I did that. After an hour or two, I didn’t become ecstatic, but the strong feeling of like being a loser, being a failure subsided completely. I was sane again. I was able to recover in about two hours. Nobody in the house even noticed that I received devastating news. We did some that never happened before. Before, there would have been moping all over the place for at least a week or a couple of months. This was one of the triggers for me because I realized by essentially doing nothing, just looking, I was able to deal with the situation better than I’ve ever done before. This was one of the beginnings of the Observe Approach for me. 

That allowed you to take control over your thoughts and emotions just being still and in sitting with it for a while? 

Observation is a way to increase your competence at handling your own thoughts and emotions. Click To Tweet

At first, I did it. At first, I adopted the method because it was a way to return me to a child-like state. Remember when you were a kid? You could do something that you don’t like and make you sad. Thirty minutes later, you’re playing with people. You let go of the events. Now as adults, you could hold up with the same hurt for a year or more. At the very least, the start of this was I had the tool that could enable me to recover like a kid. I had that tool. Now, I have the tool where if you do something that makes me go ballistic, after an hour or two, I’ve recovered. That was the beginning of it. It was helping me to do something I’ve never been able to do before. 

What are some of the tools that you recommend to your clients for them to take control of their thoughts? 

There’s one I call the Observe Approach. I’ll mention two. The first one is when you’re taken over by a strong emotional state. It could be anything. Mine is anger. That’s the emotion that is the strongest in me. It’s the greatest teacher. Someone else might be sadness, someone else might be fear. Fear is the mother of anger. Fear and anger are relatives. If you’re in a strong emotional state, what do you do? It’s going to be a weird recommendation, but that’s what I do. Sit down, back straight. You’ll be as alert as possible. Eyes closed to shut out distractions and let whatever happens happen. Let the thoughts run, let the feelings run, just let it happen. This tool will, within an hour, half an hour, depending on the intensity of the emotion, when you’re in a very intense emotion, your intelligence goes down tremendously. For instance, if you’re afraid, you’re going to overestimate risks and underestimate possibilities. If you’re in an intense emotion of confidence, excitement, you’re going to overestimate possibilities, underestimate risks. This is stupid. You’re not looking at things as they are.  

At the very least, this method, what it does is it allows the emotional state to subside enough so that intelligence can return, come online again. That’s the beginning. It has way more benefits than that. The other approach is it might not be an intense emotional state. It might be a problem externally in your life. Maybe a relationship that’s not working or maybe there’s the possibility of you getting fired from a job. You’re a leader, you have employees and there’s a problem and you don’t know what to do. In this case, the approach I use is they call it the Observe Approach. Three steps. Step one, observe. Step two, record facts. Step three is to act. To make it clearer, let’s pick a specific problem. Pick any, it could be a minor problem that you have. Let’s use that as an example. 

A minor problem that I’m having?  

Any problem.  

 

Let’s say, rebellious employee. 

The first thing if we’re going to apply the Observe Approach is we are going to first observe the employee and then we are going to record the facts, step two, which is not my interpretation. I can’t record something, “This guy is a pain in the neck.” That is your interpretation. It’s not the fact. The fact might be he came late again this week. He has been late three times this week. That’s a fact. We can record it. We can record more facts. Maybe on Fridays, he’s a very nice employee. Record that. It might have some significance. We record everything we can about this person and what I’ve learned is that every fact that you record begins to present solutions to your mind because you have more information, more data for your system to work with. Sometimes you have to resist the impulse to jump up on the solution that comes about when you take, and let’s say one or two facts. It’s an art form to know how many to collect.  

When you collected a couple of facts, this will no longer be a problem. I’ll give you specific examples similar to yours. Part of my job, in addition to running the business out of home, I also have the job of managing maids in the house. The maids, two ladies, I’ve learned everything about leadership. I’ve learned from these two ladies. These two maids, there was a while back they were always late. Late as in going home, so that go home like after 5:00 PM always around 6:00 PM, 6:30, and this was a recurring problem. It was causing a lot of trouble. They were not happy about it. What I did was the Observe Approach. Record the facts of the situation. I recorded a couple of facts and what I learned was something counterintuitive. What I ended up realizing was that the reason they were late was because they were helping each other and they weren’t first finishing their priorities. One maid would go and help the other without first finishing her top priorities.  

The maid would help the other without finishing her priority. A solution came to me after looking at the situation. I set a rule. Maid one, first of all, finish your priorities. When you finish your priorities, then help the other main. Tell the other maid to finish her priorities first, then help the other one. You’re supposed to finish your priorities by such and such a time. When I did that for like the time that followed, the lateness was no longer an issue. That’s a solution that I never heard at the beginning when they told me. Looking at the fact made it clear that it was a problem of prioritizing. I didn’t need to read a book or listen to an expert. It came from observing the problem. 

What is your passion for helping people with this? Why choose this as a vehicle of service, being an extreme stress coach? 

I don’t want to suffer and I also don’t want others to suffer. It’s an avoidance of emotional, psychological pain. If it was totally up to me, I’d like to be in three states all the time. Am I calm? These are the states. There are many states one can be in and different states have different advantages. For instance, you could be in an angry state, a sad state, depressed state. Curious, a little anxious. You could be in a joyful state, ecstatic state, con state, confidence state. Different states allow you to do different things. The states I like to be in a calm because I can see things clearly, but I prefer joyful and ecstatic. If it were up to me, I’d be joyful and ecstatic all the time. This is my goal. 

Very intense emotions can cause your intelligence to go down. Click To Tweet 

At the moment, I don’t know how to do that, but I don’t have full mastery of my thoughts and emotions. At least I have a tool that returns me to calm. What I’m doing with Observe and this business is to figure out how to create those states predominantly or all the time. In the meantime, even what I’ve learned is of value to others, but it eradicates my own suffering, eradicates the suffering of others. I’m focusing on reduce because I don’t yet know how to eradicate.  

What do you feel is the root cause of human stress and suffering? 

The root cause of human stress and suffering is the inability to manage our thoughts and emotions. Look at any stressful situation you’re in. Ask yourself when the stress is coming from. We covered a bit of this. It’s coming from your own thoughts and emotions. A good example I like to use is consider a car. If never seen a car before, everything about it is stressful. Imagine I put you on the driver’s seat of a car without any training on how to drive a car. This is a stressful situation. Why is it stressful? It’s not the car. The car is not stressing me out. I don’t understand how the call works. This is the cause of the problem. The more I learn about how the car works, the less stressful that situation becomes. If I learn enough, driving becomes a joyful experience. This is the same with thoughts and emotions. When you observe your thoughts and emotions, you learn more about them. Every new piece of information you learn makes you better at handling your thoughts and emotions. It becomes less likely that they’re going to hijack you and make you stressed.  

Which means to me that every stressful or suffering-type situation is an opportunity.  

It’s a demonstrator of your incompetence. You haven’t fully mastered your thoughts and emotions. Because if you had, you’d never be stressed.  

This goes back to the question that you asked earlier in the interview. Would you rather choose joy or misery? Trick question. Most people would choose joy, but in the case of understanding that whenever we are experiencing a suffering or stress-like situation, I think we have a choice. It could be an opportunity and it could be that we haven’t matched that our thoughts and emotions around the experience that we’re experiencing, which is an opportunity to do so. In an instant, you can change. If you come to that realization or that presence that if you would have to observe, you would observe the weak. In my mind, you’re observing everything for what it is but then there’s the observation of a weakness as it relates to how we’re feeling about it. In that instant, when you realize the thing. It’s nothing out there. It’s all in here. What are you going to do? The change can’t come from out there. Because it is what it is out there, but you have control within to change their lasting opportunity. That’s the Game Changer Mentality. That is fine. It’s right there. That’s how you change the game. You change your mental, emotional state towards it.  

 

I’m only choosing misery because it’s normally the only path I know to what I want to get, which is joy. Every human is speaking, “I want to be joyful.” The only reason I’m not joyful all the time is not because I don’t want joy. I don’t know how to create joy. Joy happens in my life accidentally. A good example is imagine you don’t know how to use a keyboard on your computer. What you’re looking for is the letter J for joy, but you don’t know how to use it. You randomly move your fingers on the keyboard. Sometimes I accidentally hit J and I’m like, “Yay.” Since it’s accidental, you can’t deliberately hit J. Sometimes you’ll hit S, sadness. Sometimes you’ll hit A, angry, etc. The more you learn about the keyboard, the more you can deliberately hit maybe things closer to J. This is the same with what we’re talking about here, which is the only reason the person is not joyful it is because they don’t know how to consistently create joy.  

The question becomes, “How can I consistently create it?” My own observation, which is the same thing you say, the Game Changer Mentality, is that the path is there and the past is your misery and your suffering and your stress. If you use those opportunities, then you can create joy deliberately. You could more and more become the kind of person who can control your state regardless of what is happening. When everyone is panicking, you’re still calm because it’s not triggered accidentally by external events. You know how to create it for yourself. 

Suffering, anger, whenever you hit those key notes could be training grounds for you to produce the joy in spite of hitting the anger, hitting the stress. It’s got to be built up. You’ve got to exercise it. You’ve got to build those shadow those mental muscles and emotional muscles to produce that result on a consistent basis. 

It’s only a training ground if you attend the class. If you attend the class and you don’t pay attention, don’t listen to the professor, might as well not be in class. 

Hence, observe.  

Most people are like, “I’m suffering.” Instead of looking at this, let’s say the pressure, you don’t want to look at it. They’re avoiding it. Complaining, blaming the boss, blaming the situation, recalling previous moments in the past. They’re doing everything but paying attention to the lessons. There’s nothing to do. You look at the stress and the stress tell you how to get rid of it. It’s the beginning of the end once you start to look. 

The root cause of human stress and suffering is the inability to manage our thoughts and emotions. Click To Tweet

Christian, how can people connect with you, learn more about you? 

How you contact to me depends on why you’re contacting me. If for instance, you want to ask a question, you have a particular question you’d like me to reply to or maybe want to recommend that I speak somewhere like on a podcast. In that case, go to Observe. One thing you could do is go to my website, Observe.host and click on Contact. If you like the ideas I’m sharing and you want to learn more about the Observe Approach, then go to Observe.host and click on The Observe Approach. This will give you free and instant access to a simple but very powerful method that you can apply immediately to deal with any problem that is stressing you out. The final one is this. If you are at a low point right now and you’re feeling extreme distress, in particular you feel that your life sucks. For a limited time only, I’m offering a free My Life Sucks coaching session. In this coaching session, you get the crystal–clear vision of the life you want. We’ll figure out precisely what is stopping you from having that great life and you leave the session renewed, re-energized and competence in your ability to perform in life. To take advantage of this limited time only offer, go to Observe.host and click on Free Coaching. 

I wanted to say thank you. This has been a wonderful conversation with you. I’m exercising my muscles right now to produce joy in this moment, but I’m sad that our conversation has to come to an end right now. This has been a very thought–provoking and enlightening conversation with you. I appreciate what you’re doing and how your approach to stress is a little different, but you’re bringing such wholesome. What I love about it the most is you empowering the person who’s going through the stress to change the stressful experience with their own power. There are tools but the thought of Observe, it almost seems contrite like that’s not going to work. When you look and understand what you mean by observe, it makes a whole lot of sense because we make up stories about the things that exist and we experience in our lives. It could be because we’re allowing our thoughts and the emotions to control us during those times. If we can take a step back and observe by definition, based on your philosophy, we can clearly see the solution and I appreciate that. That’s good stuff right there. 

Rodney, this was fun. I like the fact that you challenged me because it got me to look at things. Usually people take things on face value, agree or disagree without asking questions. What I love is you asked questions to have a great conversation. 

I want people to understand and I think you do too with the clients that you serve. How do you use these tools and what we mean by the words that we speak and the philosophies that we’re putting out there in the world? People can take these things. If they don’t have the full understanding, they can misuse them, abuse them, hurt themselves and then we don’t produce the result that we want. I like to have absolute clarity around the philosophies and the ideas that we bring forward because we’re talking about people’s lives. There are people out here that read. They are stressed out for whatever reason and they’re looking for help. I think it’s a responsibility to make sure that we’re providing very clear and sound messages to those individuals in order for them to produce the results that they want. Thank you for your patience in answering those questions and providing that level of clarity for not only myself but for the readers as well. I appreciate that.  

Thanks a lot.  

Any final words, maybe a game–changing mentality message for the readers that you want to leave with us?  

I think you know precisely what my message is going to be. It’s going to be one word. 

Thanks again, Christian. I appreciate you. There you have it, everyone. Observe, that’s what I got from this. This was a very powerful message. I want thank you. As always, remember to remain resilient in pursuit for greatness. Thank you. 

Important Links: 

• Observe 
• Observe.host 
• Contact page  
• The Observe Approach 
• Free Coaching 
• http://Observe.host/contact/ 
• http://Observe.host/the-observe-approach-to-stress/ 
• http://Observe.host/free-coaching/  
• Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did… Here’s How! https://rodneyflowers.com/get-up-book/
• Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers https://rodneyflowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
• Get Access to Rodney’s Daily Inspiration in your Inbox Today https://rodneyflowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734

About Christian Modjaiso