Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Roa.
Hi Adam, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
While it’s difficult to synthesize an entire journey into only a few moments, there are two that I feel were the most pivotal turning points for me. Interestingly, they were born from two very different experiences: one came from success and the other through failure.
The first was when I “won” high school. I say that jokingly, but as someone who started my Freshmen year at 5’0 tall and weighing 73lbs, I thought high school was going to be terrible for me. I didn’t feel confident, received no attention from girls, and was not able to compete athletically with peers who had become so much bigger and stronger than me over the years. I decided that I was going to use my intellect and social savvy to achieve as much as I could. And that’s exactly what I did.
By my senior year, I had secured an Academic scholarship to college, became president of DECA, was elected to Student Council, made Varsity in multiple sports, and the cherry on top: I won Homecoming King. Winning this “award”, which is really just a giant popularity contest, had been my metaphorical mountaintop through high school. The movies all told me that once I won this, every girl in school would want to date me and life would be handed to me on a silver platter. What a rude awakening.
I woke up the following morning and nothing had changed. I still felt insecure. I still felt angry and confused about what to do with my life. To make matters worse, I had lost my mountaintop. I didn’t have anything external that I thought would make it all go away. I’d reached the place I thought would be different and it was worse than before. Now what?
This moment would begin my journey of questioning everything. I started to doubt that the traditional life path that I had been sold, a career, family, and white-picket fence, would actually make me happy. I didn’t want to risk being 45 years old and standing on top of that mountaintop feeling empty. So I began to prioritize my heart. I started to follow the inner calling and that led me to Los Angeles in pursuit of an acting career.
This would ultimately become one of the most deflating periods of my life. I had so many rejections and deflating close calls that my self-esteem plummeted. I couldn’t seem to crack the code on how to be successful as an actor and it was exhausting. I was trying so hard that even my small wins were not enough to raise my vibe. It had gotten so bad that at one point, I had allowed myself to sign with an acting manager who was verbally abusive. He would literally tell me I was a moron and insult my appearance. Crazy to think about that now, but it shows how low I was.
Eventually, though, being this low for this long humbled me to the point that I acknowledged I might not actually know what I was doing. I might not have this life thing figured out after all. This surrender, and a series of powerful synchronicities including a car accident that required surgery, led me to Ayahuasca and what I consider to be my Spiritual Awakening. From there, I would eventually become the man I am today.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I feel that life is a series of challenges and obstacles. It’s a giant, cosmic obstacle course. It’s been designed this way because it’s through overcoming and navigating it all that we develop our strengths and superpowers. I don’t know a single person who gets through life without challenges. I don’t know a single successful person who gets there without figuring out how to navigate all the obstacles.
But that’s why we all came here. That’s what being human actually is. We signed up for this obstacle course. There’s no point to get upset about any of it, just enjoy the journey. I don’t get mad at the weight at the gym because it’s heavy, I intentionally put it there so I can get strong. That’s my view on what shows up as a challenge in my life.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve been coaching high-performing individuals in a one-on-one capacity for nearly a decade now. CEO’s, actors, and individuals with big visions. What became clear to me was that the support I was providing to these people was powerful in the intimacy of the 1:1 container, but how would that scale? How could it shift someone who had never actually met me or developed trust with me over time?
I believe that the answer is art.
I believe that art is the highest leverage way we can shift human consciousness because art is a permission slip into someone’s emotions. All lasting change will happen at the emotional level. In order to heal, we must be willing to FEEL. And art is the gateway. So I create at the intersection point of art and personal development.
I love to figure out how to put the lessons and wisdom of personal development into artistic delivery. My background as a filmmaker has really helped that, with the greatest example being my Youtube reality show “The Art of Choosing Love” that I made to highlight the journey of my breakup process after 10 years with someone. What I’m most known for, though, would be my spoken word poetry.
In 2018, I had my poem “You Are Who You’ve Been Looking For” go viral. Massively viral. To date, it has been viewed over 220 Million times and was listed as one of the 3 most viral motivational Facebook videos of all time. This understandably blew up my social media and created opportunities for me to speak and perform all across the world at places like the Human Rights Foundation.
I love this journey. I get to create so much content for a living. I have two different podcasts, “The Deep Dive with Adam Roa” and “You’re Too Much with Adam & Taylor”. I have an online community call CREATE, helping people tap into their creative expression on a monthly basis. I get to release tools that help people through tough times, like my online course “The Art of Breaking Up”.
I do a lot of different things and all of them are designed at helping others see life through a different lens, hopefully more creatively, so they can be happier. Simple, but not necessarily easy. I feel truly blessed to be able to do what I do for a living and it’s so cool to see how much impact it’s able to make for others.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
The speed of technological innovation is so rapid that anything we are doing now may look completely different in 10 years. My spiritual awakening happened through Ayahuasca, can that be simulated in Virtual Reality? How much will the personal development industry shift knowing that psychedelic therapies are going to be legalized very soon?
I think that the biggest shift I see is that more and more people are open to the idea that they can heal themselves. I see a growing wave of humans who are inquiring about how to elevate their consciousness, prioritize their mental health, and live happier lives. Just this intention alone will shift the entire trajectory of where we are headed as a human family.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.adamroa.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adam.roa/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IAmAdamRoa/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/adam_roa
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoyY9JIaE0Uf08RfjGG0Kow
- Other: https://my.community.com/adamroa
Image Credits
Robby Klein MindValley Shawna Stanley Justin Lutsky
