We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Roxana Popet a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Roxana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

What a privilege to be here, thank you so much for this great opportunity.

As a young adult, I would often find myself in deep torment. My mental health was declining each day, as I felt I lacked direction, guidance and understanding of who I was. Growing up in the communist era in Romania, I was always told to shut up, to keep quiet and to not upset anyone with my opinions. In my early twenties, I felt I had no personality. No opinions and no values.

What I did build up inside was awful rage, anger and too much fear for my system to handle. By my mid-twenties, without finding any healthy coping mechanisms to deal with my emotions, I developed serious health issues: lumps in my breasts, a nodule in my throat and the most severe condition of them all, heart disease.

While all of these things happened pretty much at once for me, I was extremely uncoachable and my ego would skyrocket each month. Although I was in pain and I was struggling a lot, you could not tell me anything! I knew it all.
The situation that was most disturbing for me at that time was that I began to loathe my job. Although at first, I really enjoyed it and most especially the benefits I had there, I was not making an impact in this world, which was my utmost desire. Deep down I always wanted to help my community, to make a strong imprint in society and to be creative.

The moment when I realized that this would not happen at my job, I felt devastated. I felt like I would slowly die each day and I would literally force myself to go to the office. I was beyond stuck: I couldn’t make any decisions, as I was too afraid, too stressed, too overwhelmed and too concerned with what other people would say if I quit that job. Having a job was such a safety net! I would even be thinking that so many would want to be in my shoes. How ungrateful must I be to be thinking that I don’t want to be there anymore.

I would question myself and my needs often, literally refusing to accept and to embrace who I was and my real needs. I began to push my needs deep down, as I would “try” to find a solution to my health conditions, which would scare me tremendously. And I say “try”, because I didn’t really do anything about it!

I never slowed down the pace and I felt like I was living a life that had nothing to do with who I was deep down. I felt controlled by life and the ultimate victim, but I had no solution and only the thought of making change, which would equal to making mistakes, would scare me even more.

At one point, after insisting many times, a friend from work introduced me to the science of neuro-linguistic programming. I had no idea what hit me, but it felt amazing! All of a sudden I understood how so many undealt-with emotions created many of my health conditions. I had severe anxiety, body dysmorphia, panic attacks and addictions that translated to a really tormented system, causing my heart to be overly excited, thus creating tachycardia.

A really tough journey began in transforming and transmuting all my emotions and patterns into supportive ones that slowly, but surely got to heal my body too. I was ecstatic! I couldn’t believe it! Although I had much to work on, and still do, as this journey is never-ending and there is still so much to unfold about my being and who I am becoming, I realized that there’s no greater project than the work that I’m putting in me and in my ego.

The more I studied NLP and I began working with people that had great fears, stress and anxiety in business, the more I realized that the “secret” is to embrace your fears. As fear is the strongest emotion of them all, being a part of us and doing so much good for our system, as it protects us, we just need to learn how to use it to our advantage and take lessons from it.

Fear comes with great messages and lessons and in order to conquer it, you actually need to accept it. To embrace it all, along with all your mistakes, which are the most natural part of your journey. It’s who you are. Avoid resisting your nature and start learning from all the things that come your way, as there is much wisdom and growth to unfold there.

And this, my fearless friends, is how Step On Your Fears got created. A safe space and community where you learn to communicate with yourself through easy-to-put-in-practice techniques and questions.

The more I ventured into the realm of fear, the more vulnerable, confident and full of gratitude I became. However, something was still missing. I didn’t quite know it back then, but being a mom, having a business and doing my best to take care of everything and everyone around me, got me to burn out quite often, with an ego that became a real problem. I was mostly dissatisfied with my life, in my failed attempt to find business answers. I felt everything was too overwhelming.

A very important part of my story is the encounter with Glenn Marsden from the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign, my spiritual mentor, the only person that truly got through to my ego. Leading by his imperfections, Glenn offered so much wisdom through his content and mentoring, that I got to conquer one of my greatest fears: going out in public makeup free! Body dysmorphia, finally cured. Many more a-ha moments followed and many breakthroughs, as the more I understood how to work on my ego and be humble, the more I realized that I never know what’s truly behind the scenes. There’s always a story behind it all that I simply don’t have access to, so I should do my due diligence and always be kind, by helping others and serving our community through my mission.

The cherry on top that got me to feel on cloud seven is being a part of the co-authoring blessed project run by Glenn in the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign Book Series, Volume 1. What healing, fulfillment and joy I feel as I have finally processed my past, took the lessons and the wisdom and am now sharing it with our public audience! Although I have done coaching and mentoring in the past, nothing was even as close as cathartic as using my voice, story and experiences to inspire others and make an impact. I did not expect this process to be this healing. It reminded me which is the strongest need that we have: to give. As I am navigating all these wonderful emotions, I can honestly say that I have not been happier with myself, enjoying my family and daughter.

Being a part of this blessed community got me to realize that only together we can thrive. When we share our stories, use our voices and let our personalities shine, as imperfect as they may be, we become more vulnerable, thus stronger. And only then can we truly conquer our fears, when we embrace them and accept them as being the most normal feelings. Mental health needs to be our priority and sharing our stories should be a daily habit.

This wonderful book, that gave me the opportunity to express sides of my story that I have even forgotten about, but that needed my attention so much, has been the cherry on top of my personal development and business. We are surrounded by many celebrities that both share their life stories and struggles, and endorse us, as they believe in the magic of inspiring our communities. They believe in the safe space that Glenn Marsden has created for all of us through the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign. Glenn’s mentoring has forever changed my life and saved my mind from narcissism and has shown me the way of being humble.

Whatever you do, never let fear stop you. Step On Your Fears!

Roxana, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Of course, it’s my pleasure. Step On Your Fears is a very simple and easy-to-put-in-practice method for keeping the fears and stress of entrepreneurs and their teams under control. In the height of our emotions and fears, especially when we’re at the office and we need to deliver something fast, anxiety may get the best of us, so we need something very user-friendly to put in practice on the spot, to calm our nervous system.

One of the best practices that you can ever put in practice to keep your fears under control, my fearless friends, is forcing a smile when you feel anxious. What this does is to translate to your mind that you are safe, as your brain is wired to think that when you smile, you are happy and that things are OK. You would not be smiling if you were in danger, as your mind would believe. The way to use this method is to actually use your fingers to lift the corners of your mouth, until your mind is wired to produce excitement for you, instead of anxiety. The same hormone operates both when we fear and when we are excited. Your mind will then start producing more happy moments for you to focus on.

I grew up full of fears and anxiety in a communist era in Romania. The most pregnant fears that I had were in business. I could barely even envision making any decisions to leave my job and start my own activity. I was too scared and too stressed to do anything. I was in an awful mental state, feeling overwhelmed by the thought of making mistakes. It took me 8 years to move from a job that I began to loathe and start my own business. As I had such a hard time and so much mental pain around making decisions in business, despite fear, I began to niche down to fear and stress conquering in the professional life of entrepreneurs and their teams. I don’t want anyone else to go through what I did. It was horrible. That feeling of being completely powerless and dying emotionally day after day, not seeing a way out.

Since mental pain is strong when it comes to business, and fear and stress take many brilliant minds to anxiety, I make things the simplest for my corporate clients. I simplify their mindset and boil it down to very simple and easy-to-put-in-practice questions that take your focus from the emotional mind, the subconscious, and put it on your rational mind. In business, you want to avoid making emotional decisions.

What sets me apart is the fact that my clients don’t know when and if coaching and therapy have started. It all feels very casual and friendly, so that my clients open up completely. I put a lot of play and relaxing activities into one hour, that their resistance is down to zero, solving one issue and one limiting belief after the other, with no effort on their side. This brings my clients tremendous fulfillment and a feeling of safety throughout the whole process, not needing more than one session to solve their problems. We focus on finding 10 solutions for every problem.

Step On Your Fears’ values are: fun, simple, progress and action. I focus on creating the most wonderful, relaxing and full-of-accomplishment environment for my clients and collaborators. A safe place where we focus on mental health and on prioritizing ourselves. Unless you put yourself first, my fearless friend, no one will. And it’s more than people pleasing and ego, it’s about you being with your batteries fully charged every single time, as otherwise, you can’t take care of anything and anyone.

One of my mottos is to never stop because of fear. Always know that your fears come with a great message and your role is to decode them. To give them a different meaning than the emotional, primal reaction that you tend to give them on the spot.

Step On Your Fears, my fearless friends, by knowing that you are always in control of your emotions. You just need to accept them and embrace them fully.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I thought I knew it all and that no one could tell me anything! As a narcissist, both in my romantic partnerships and in my professional life, I would get defensive if someone would even dare to tell me how to do anything. I would shut down completely.

My ego was not helping me at all, on the contrary, and I lost plenty of time doing things “my way”, thinking that “I know it better anyway”. But there was one big problem: my bank account would beg to differ.

Along with Glenn Marsden’s help, my spiritual mentor, I started to slowly understand that there’s no clear picture of the behind the scenes for anyone. People only show highlights and what they want others to see from them, but the reality is that we have no idea of what story the person is living their life by. Therefore, making judgement on others’ decisions and life choices is pointless, as you never know… what you don’t know.

I was blessed to be mentored by Glenn in a really intense humbling exercise, where I realized what’s truly important for me: my family, my daughter. That exercise changed me in many ways and it got me to connect more to who I really am, in my heart.

Ever since, I kept healing more and more, and having my story out as a co-author in the Imperfectly Perfect Campaign Book Series, Volume 1, has been the most cathartic experience so far. My ego has been put in a place of service for my community, being now fed with the gratitude for all the amazing opportunities and people that have been placed on my journey.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

There are two major pivots in my professional life that I am truly proud of, as through all the adversity and challenges, these shaped me tremendously, got me to be resilient and more than anything, they got me to be who I am today. Talk about great lessons learned the hard way. For someone with a huge ego, I struggled being guided in my twenties.

The first pivot was at the very beginning stages of my professional life, where as an enthusiast foreign language passionate as a translator, I decided after a few months that I can’t be the slave of my work, so I got employed at a marketing multinational company. Nothing major so far.

I was enjoying this job! The first six months… but things got very repetitive and unfulfilling fast. My goal was to make an impact in this world, to be creative, to help my community. And being employed there, although the benefits were great, was not it. Compromising for the sake of the fixed and safe income and for the fear of what other people think, I remained in that position for 8 extra years!

My body kept giving me signs that it’s time to move on and fulfill who I am deep down, but did I listen? Not at all… Until my health began failing. A heart condition got me to understand that I had severe anxiety and that I needed to make some changes fast. I was too afraid to make any move. Failing would create panic attacks, so I kept lying to myself that I’m fine. Although deep down, I was actually dying emotionally each and every day.

I didn’t do anything concrete for the following months. Not until a friend from work insisted so much that I test out neuro-linguistic programming, as it helped her cure her breast cancer. The first workshop that I attended was mind-blowing: I understood how emotions work and how undealt-with feelings create disease in our system. I then gradually realized how life is in my hands fully and that I am in charge of everything. People pleasing began to slowly fade.

An amazing and revelatory journey began and I got so passionate about how our mind works and how we can keep our emotions under control, that I specialized as a neuro-linguistic programming trainer and niched down as a fear specialist in business. Thanks to my experience with fear, frustration and anxiety, my mission is to make sure that no one goes through the very tough journey that I went through, feeling stuck and with so much mental pain, powerless. The mental pain of wanting to do so much, but then feeling how my mind would be against all my plans, keeping me stuck, fearful and frustrated was awful.

As a fear specialist, I now help entrepreneurs and their teams keep their fears and stress under control, through very simple techniques that show them how to simplify their mindset and decision-making, finding 10 solutions to every problem.

I would always envision myself working in a big company, having an important name and job, referring to myself mostly as a profession-oriented person. However, I truly am thankful that I got to see what’s really important for me: to make a difference and to teach and inspire people how to be accepting of their fears and emotions fully.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.roxanpopet.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roxanapopet/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3328076057235851/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxanapopet/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/RoxanaPopet
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCULVr_lnafUh-r1M1peSi1A
• Other: https://www.imperfectlyperfectcampaign.org/

Image Credits
Lucia Gaggero (for the professional studio photo only, the first one)