Life Designer with Jingyu Chen

Conversation with Olga Naiman — Interior Therapist | Spatial Alchemy: Design Your Home to Transform Your Life

• Jingyu Chen

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 43:04

In this episode, Olga Naiman shares her journey from growing up as a refugee to becoming an interior therapist and creator of Spatial Alchemy — her signature design methodology, psychological framework, and eponymous book. Raised by parents who were both psychiatrists, Olga developed early sensitivity to the human mind, yet her homes lacked emotional connection and aesthetic grounding.Though encouraged to pursue psychiatry, she followed her intuition toward design, eventually moving to New York to work as an editor and stylist.

Yet Olga yearned for a deeper connection with design. She ultimately amalgamated psychology with design, creating Spatial Alchemy — a body of work and book that transforms home design into a pathway for life transformation. At its core lies a powerful invitation: design your home for the life you’re calling in.

The Four Layers of Design:
Olga explains that design operates on four layers — two visible: Beauty and Function, and two invisible:

  • Psychological layer: spaces shape our psyche. Even small items like dishes or cups help “weave a web” supporting the life you wish to embody.
  • Manifestational layer: as your psychological layer aligns, your external life mirrors internal change. This is the essence of Spatial Alchemy — bringing your future self into the present and embodying the energy you aspire to step into.

Olga highlights the difference between intention (visualizing) and active participation (living as if it has already manifested).

Working with Energy in the Home:
Olga expands the conversation into energy as a universal principle recognized across cultures . Objects carry energetic qualities, influencing how we feel and how others perceive us. She stresses, “Where attention goes, energy grows.”

Dissolving vs. Decluttering:
Decluttering asks, “Do I use this?” Dissolving asks, “Does this reflect who I am becoming?” Many people unknowingly hold onto objects tied to outdated identities.  Dissolving can be painful.  Olga encourages us to ask: What do I value more — the object, or the life I want to create?

Where to Begin with Spatial Alchemy:

See your home as a stranger: Walk through your space with fresh eyes, or ask a trusted friend to notice patterns that reflect an older version of you.

Begin dissolving: Identify ten objects misaligned with your future self and consciously release them. True transformation starts with removal before addition.

Upgrade daily touchpoints: Introduce meaningful items  to reinforce the emotional states and identity you wish to cultivate. Frequent daily use amplifies their subtle psychological influence

Olga emphasizes starting small and accumulating change gradually. Your home is a living relationship — a space that supports emotional safety, identity growth, and the unfolding of the life you are becoming.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00–16:00 Intro & Olga’s Journey, Early Influences & the Birth of Spatial Alchemy
  • 11:16–21:45 The Four Layers of Design
  • 21:45–29:20 Working with Energy in the Home
  • 29:20–36:37 Dissolving vs. Decluttering
  • 36:37–41:44 Where to Begin with Spatial Alchemy

Learn More:

lifedesignerwithjingyuchen

SPEAKER_01

Hello everyone, welcome to my podcast, Knife Designer. So today I am beyond thrilled to bring you the very special guest, the one and only the interior therapist, Olga Lemon. Based in New York City, Olga has featured her work in the major publication and television, including the House Beautiful, Domino, the Washington Post, the AD Mid Eastern, and Home Wednesday, and among others. She's constantly pushing the age of the design, approaching beauty in a way that is transcendent, mere aesthetic, and utility. She engages with spatial design and client work in a very holistic and intimate manner, creating an outcome that not only visually compelling, but also a life-transformative. Her design ethos is beautifully captured in her eponymous book, Spatial Alchemy, which I'm holding right now in my hand, that truly struck such a fresh chord within me the moment I encountered. As an interior enthusiast myself, spatial and alchemy are the two terms I just held such a strong innate affinity as the spatial experience and the journey of the transformation. A book that alchemized these two ideas together just immediately put me in. I feel compelled to share how this is a book can truly shift your mindset, awaken the new energy, and serve as your ultimate guide to crafting your elevated life. It beautifully mirrors what I call this journey from interior design to life design. And the core of the spatial alchemy is the idea of bringing the sense of the future into the present, embodying the energy we aspire to step into. This book goes far beyond a cook-cut design book or the simple visual guide. It is multidisciplinary, synthesizing the neurons, psychology, spirituality, and design into a rare and coherent philosophy of being. Rarely have I seen the work and explore so deeply how our inner world is reflected in our homes. While reading this book, I just feel constant with Whirlpool to reorder and refine my design choices, not impulsively, but in the service of my future self. When you step into the OGAS world, you are immersed in the dialogue between your future identity and your home design. It is such a profound journey, not just crafting the beauty in a physical world, but creating a two-way access where you and your space shape each other. These days, I think the world is calling for the attention movement. We are beginning to acknowledge how the external environments shape our behaviors. You know, the infrastructure around us, the system we operate within, yet our homes then, the tool that holds the key to unlock our potential future self still hasn't been fully entered many people's radar, it often remains dormant. So today, Olga will take you on the journey from designing your home to transforming your life. So if you are an interior enthusiast, this is the episode for you. If you are a manifestation practitioner, this is the episode for you. And if you are a life designer seeking the metamorphosis through the home design, this is the episode for you. But hello! Thank you so much for coming to my podcast. Hello, hello. Thank you. Alright, let's get started. So in this uh podcast, yeah, we'll kind of always start the clock back at the beginning of your story. Uh we are all kind of wired within certain, you know, participation, like very largely drawn into certain things with the primal kind of inclamation. So I'm wondering how, you know, like the designs, uh specifically interior, register within you, and how did you kind of further develop all the connection with it? Apart from GLED, also Ipagelade, yeah, you know, like uh your upbringing, education, like a culture, exposure, yeah, all those factors, how did that also have shaped your sensibility and your past, yeah, towards the you know, this kind of designer you are today?

SPEAKER_02

Okay, so uh thank you for letting me dive in. So I came a lot of my love for design was shaped because I was a refugee coming from Ukraine in um the late 70s from the Soviet Union. I was, you know, was born there in Ukraine. And um, I was taken away by my parents, you know, from my grandparents' home, which is where I was raised. And then we moved and we moved and we moved many, many, many times. So for me, there was this feeling, as I when I was a child, of being uprooted, uprooted, uprooted, like a plant. You know, you plant a plant, and the roots begin to grow, and then you take it out of the pot and you put it in a new pot. New pot begin to grow and then you put it in a new pot. So, so there was not this like root system that was created for me. You know, I had to learn, I had to teach myself how to make that for myself. And plus, my mother, she's um psychiatrist, she's a very educated woman, and my both of my parents are psychiatrists. So we kind of grew up in a very therapeutic way, but my mother is not like someone who really um is focused on the home. Our home, my home growing up, our my many homes growing up, there was never really a sense of like connection to the space or anything like that. So when I was in sixth grade, so I was 11, 12 years old, I would go to the library every single day. I loved books, and I there was no internet at that time, you know, and um I would start looking at design magazines and pictures and like books of interior design, and I was like, oh wow, people really live like that. You can live surrounded by this level of beauty. So that was really at around 11 or 12, that was really the the way the door opened for me into a passion that I've had my whole life, you know, where I would just look at pictures of these magazines like every day. Every day I would look at these books every day for hours and hours and hours in the library, and then I would come home and do little things to my room, you know, in the spirit of that as a child. And so, you know, I then I went to France when I was 14 and lived with a French family, and I saw the beauty and the architecture in Paris, and that opened up another artistic door. And so I um, and then I moved to Paris as a student, you know, later and I studied there. And um, I always loved design. And my parents would always say, No, you should be a doctor, you should be a psychiatrist like us. You're very good at psychology. And so, but I really loved design and I didn't know at that point how to bring them together. You know, that wasn't the conversation in the collective at that moment in time. I got, I said, no, I really I I love, you know, psychiatry or I love psychology, but I really want to try this design thing. So I moved to New York and became an editor. I was like, I got the job I was calling to try to get the job at the magazine that I looked at when I was a child. And I got that job. You know, I was 22 years old, and then that began my career in design. And so I was an editor at House Beautiful magazine. I was an editor at um, I was a stylist for other magazines, and I was a freelance stylist and kind of creative director. And I would, and I have a theater background, so I designed sets for theater. I got my master's degree in London. This is just a little bit of my history. And then I um brought that all together. I was working for clients like West Elm in the US and CB2, these are big brands, Target, these are big brands in the US. Um, Disney, Starbucks, IKEA. I would, they would hire me to do photo shoots and design the sets, the interiors for these photo shoots. So I would do that. And then I there was always this question of like, I want something deeper. I want to have a deeper conversation and design. I it's not about selling things, it's about really touching a deeper note. And so that's how I created spatial alchemy. I brought together my psychology and design. It it kind of came together for me. So that's a little bit about my history.

SPEAKER_01

But that was all of the trajectory. Yeah. So truly, all these layers, all these intricacies. Uh, I mean, yes, there's still mixed ways, the struggle, you know, unraveling, trying to figure that out in front of the fooding and the allergy or the kind of anchor that roots because kind of like missing absent, yeah, throughout your career and growing up. So that's what I say, like, you know, the object kind of has the produce and the story always has its genesis. Yeah, so now it's kind of you know clear to me why uh August's interior carries all this deep layer and also the meaning. Yeah, as you say, you don't want to just basic on that the thought of the visual, uh, you know, spectacle or yeah, I mean it's appealing or beautiful, yeah. Of course that's magic, but still, and you further integrated a neuroscience and psychology. I think that was the humidity embedded in there, into your design, into your that creative process. So that's why I said to you, there is like true magic in your book. Because when I read this book, I just feel that constant west report, you know, to kind of edit, you know, to kind of like self-uh-scrutinize like the mind to your choices. That's why I so much wanted to like invite everybody to experience it, you know, because like special alchemy, uh, for someone who probably first uh you know exposed to this concept, it can be a little bit, I mean, philosophic, a little bit a story, but it's just the story you shared with us. I know this book is deeply rooted in uh, you know, your personal experiences, introspection, you know, it's very empirical and it is yeah, just very grounded. Yeah. When you design your home, it's also the journey of the self-discovery. Yeah, there's so much intricacy like in that book, but I wanted to like gently begin because the core of special alchemy is bringing the future self into the current moment and embodied the energy yeah we wish to step into to actually further distill like the very tangible uh steps and connect us to the future self through the home design. So, yeah, let's start from there, like integrated how the home design can transfer your life, if you can walk us through that steps.

SPEAKER_02

So there are four levels to design. There's two visible layers to design and two invisible layers to design. So the visible ones are beauty, which is the first thing you see when you come into anybody's home, the the level of beauty, function, you can see the function, how it functions, um, and how easeful the flow is of the body through the home, you know, and that's what designers are trained to do. That's what designers, when you go to design school, they train you in beauty and function. Then there are these two invisible layers of design, which is the psychological layer and the manifestational layer. So the psychological layer, if you can begin to work with it with a sense of precision and self-knowledge, it begins to shift your psyche because our spaces shape us. We shape our spaces and they shape us. So when we program our spaces deliberately, you can begin to shift your psyche if if you have that awareness. So, for example, I'm I love concrete examples. Say that your life story is that you don't have stability in your life, right? Um, you you as a child you didn't have stability, and you know, as an adult, it's stability is hard to find. Do you know what I mean by that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So um so if you're lacking stability, if that's part of your life story, you want to start looking at your home with the eyes of a stranger. And if you can't see your home from that perspective, you can ask a friend. Um, you know, you want to start looking at your home through those eyes and begin to see where is my home not stable? Like, for example, what I notice is a lot of times we have these unground pieces of furniture, a lot of skinny legs. Like, for example, if you look at people's dining rooms, there's a table on very skinny legs and there's a lot of chairs on very skinny legs, you know, and there's nothing that's like grounded and rooted and earthy. Sometimes it's a metal table with glass on top of it, right? And if the person wants more stability and and they're working, say it's your desk, or they're working, they're eating at a table that is metal, which is cold, like it's not metal, it's not stability. Glass is about clarity, metal is about precision, right? In the Chinese, you know, in Feng Shui, which is a Chinese like lens for looking at some of this stuff. Metal and glass, those elements are not the things that make you rude and earthy, like a terracotta, like this cup, terracotta. This is why I drink out of a cup like this. It's like very simple. It's a very simple cup, it's not fancy. I I want more simplicity and stability in my life. So I start bringing those elements in. So when you, as the person who lives in your home who's wanting to shape your site, start looking at your home, start looking like what elements do I have in my home? Like if I want more stability and there's no like wood, there's very little wood, there's very little earth energy, terracotta, brown colors, deeper tones. You know, if all my colors are yellow, red, bright, and I have metal and glass, you're not designing for stability. And this is affecting your psychological layer. Can you see that?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So basically, when you and you, and I'm not saying to people you need to completely sell all your furniture, but you start bringing in little things like cups, like dishes, like um, where you put your salt and you where what you use for your salt salad, like little the dish where your sponge is sitting when you're washing the dishes. Like you start weaving touch points of stability into your home. And like this, you're telling the universe, I am ready. So that is how you start affecting your future self. Because oftentimes what we say to ourselves is, I want stability. Why do we want money? Why? Because we want to feel stable, right? Money gives us a feeling of stability, you know. When you don't have money, you don't feel stable. So when is so this is a very common thing that so many people want, you know. So you want to start saying to the universe, I am ready to receive it. So you start weaving rather than looking for stability in the outside world, start giving it to yourself with these little moves, many of them, like you're weaving a web, like a spider, yeah, right? You know, you're weaving a web because the first thing, if it's just a cup and nothing else, you're not gonna feel it. You know, just like a spider web. If you the spider weaves one strand, you it's not a web. But after two strands, three strands, four strands, and then when there's a circle connecting, you know, all the different strubs, then it starts feeling like a web. So what you're trying to do is weave a web, you know, of stability. Because when you start giving it to yourself, the universe starts saying, Oh, this person is ready because your body starts experiencing what it feels like to have it, not to want it, but to have it. And then imagine that's the psychological layer, how that begins to affect the fourth layer, which is the manifestational layer, right? Yeah, imagine if you're giving this to yourself and looking at your home and like all the little ways, all the little ways, and then maybe you buy a chair, one bigger purchase that feels stable, feels like a hug, you know, feels I call it the emotional regulation, you're giving yourself that thing, then you start to see things happening in your life on the outside world that mirror the work that you're doing in the inside world, and that is the heart of my process.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. Wow, that's fascinating. It's like, wow, I don't even know where to begin. Yeah. But I think what I heard under the choral bit, it's all started from that piece of the intentionality. Yeah, we kind of self-interrogate what do we want in our life, right? I think that's that inner psychic. Yeah, you can call it, you know, it's your vision, you know, it's like, you know, the clarity shaping our life. However, we often probably feel this almost constant talk of the all between, you know, sagacity mindset versus abundance mindset, and inner monologue, and versus like our reality. And then, yeah, we found ourselves in this uh stuck, right? Still or stagnant status. And then you are here to offer us almost like a very unique path out of that, you know, stagnant, right?

SPEAKER_02

It's the difference, Jing Yu. Am I pronouncing your name correctly?

SPEAKER_01

Precisity. Yeah, Jin Yu. Jing Yu, it's very precise, yes.

SPEAKER_02

So it's it's similar, it's the difference between intention and active participation. Yes. So intention is a beautiful process. So say I have an intention, I want love in my life, I want a partner. Say that you're 25 or 30 years old, and you do that, I was working, I was partying, I was having fun with my friends, and now I want love in my life. But then, like one year, two years, three years passes, and you're dating and there's no love, or there's love and it goes away and it comes, and you're like, hmm, I want love in my life. So that's the intention. What you want to do. The intention is deciding you want love. It's writing about love, it's putting pictures of love on Pinterest, of kissing and of um, like on Pinterest, and you look at your vision board and you're like, yes, love. That's what I want. But so that is intention, is deciding and feeling your longing. Active participation is designing your bedroom as if the partner was already there. So you're not designing for someone who wants love, you're designing for someone who has ready. So, like, what's their side of the bed look like? What books do they read? Do you want to put a little water glass for them to drink water? You know, like a little curve, like a clock, whatever. If you had a partner, imagine what it would feel like to walk in your bedroom, and there's the bedroom of a person who is partnered. That becomes a bigger, much bigger. That's the, I feel like the golden key between wanting something and intentionality. And yes, that's important. And weaving the web, creating as it as if it already has happened.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's exactly I think is the goat, that's visual alchemy, of trust, is that you know, distinguish two manifestations from just wishful thinking, right? If it's just what I want that still stays on that very first layer of it, yeah, it's just can be the wishful thinking, but instead we kind of already embodied that action. But embody it means like we kind of already live our visions in a way that is reflected in the inclinations of our home. It can't be just something very small, right? You know, like the very choices of your glass water, the material, the texture of it. So I know people when they first heard, yeah, they often neglect all these kind of micro, you know, like almost they feel like miscellaneous, right? It's just uh often kind of, as I said in the entropy, hasn't really fully entered into the people's radar. So, but today, you I mean, it's not just Sarah, as I said, it's deeply grounded in all the uh empirical pieces and your own experiences, right? You're working with a lot, a lot of the clients, you help none of them actually kind of make the major transformation or the breakthrough, yeah, personally or professionally. So, so what do we tell you here? Like this is real, you know, the inherent uh kind. And links between our home design and life transformation. And also, you can already tap into all these uh instinctual elements in the spatial alchemy, uh, the energies, like the some symbol, and also you know the manifestation. So, if you don't mind, let's kind of further into it, all these core elements, because I think right now lots of people probably still say their eye in the interior. So, this is can be like almost groundbreaking ideas for them. Yeah, so I think it's really worth digging into those core elements. Yeah, I read your book thoroughly. I feel like you just elevated every concept, you know, you elevated manifestation into embodied, actually, like the culture into the dissolving. So there is so much gold in that book. Let's start with like energy. Yeah, energy just permeates everywhere. You know, I think you already touched on that. I'm energetic being, you know. Yeah, so I can say like many feel you can feel that, right? It's horrible. Yeah, the potential in the context of the home, right? The energy is permeated everywhere. I mean, even like uh each object also carries that energetic imprint. Let's say, you know, this uh water cup, right? You know, my mocks, my water glasses, and by the way, now I have 10 water cups right in front of me. So they all carry distinctive the energy imprints. Yeah, for someone who just started experimenting with energy, or for someone like us, kind of a little bit involved into a you know intuitive person, feels that we're a sensation with the energy occasionally. So you are the master to work with energy. So I wonder, yeah, any other wise that you can you know give us in order to build the enhance our energy throughout our home design.

SPEAKER_02

So, you know, energy is a universal principle. Whether the country is in Asia or in Latin America, and I've studied a lot with Latin American traditions, you know, shamans and all kinds of things, and you know, or Europe or Africa, they work a lot with energy, the seen energy and the unseen, the unseen energy things that you can't see but you can feel. So objects carry energy, as you said. Objects carry energy, and the one of the things that you want to start thinking of is it the kind of energy does this cup feel like I want to feel, right? So you can see, I mean, and we're all energetic beings, all the people are energetic beings, you know. You we read it even if we don't consciously realize so you begin to feel like does this piece of art, like, for example, feel like like the one in back of me, like I want to feel? I chose a specifically and I placed it specifically so that it frames me in a very specific way, as you can see. Like I'm sitting in the middle of these steps going up, you know, yeah, in art in back of me. And for those who are not watching, you know, on the YouTube, you know, I have a piece of art in back of me, and it has this kind of pyramid with steps.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's kind of a pyramid, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like a pyramid, and I'm sitting, I placed my body in the middle of it. So, for example, I call your background, and for work, you know, sitting in front of a background and taking conference calls in front of a background. People are seeing your background. We've all seen people on Zoom who you go and you see their background, and they have laundry and it's dirty, and it's like this like that's energy, and that's how you begin to feel the person. Yeah, right. And on Zoom, and it's just like dirty with laundry, messy, disorganized, or not considered, it shifts your opinion of the person, especially because you're reading the energy, you're reading the energy of not only the person, but the whole background. So you want to start taking that seriously. And one way you can really begin to play with it is think of where do I take Zoom calls? What is in back of me, and is that allowing me to be perceived as I want to be perceived? Because you're like the set designer, you create the background, so if it's disorganized and the rest of your life feels disorganized, that's a very good thing to change first. Yeah, like how do you make your background very precise and organized, like the opposite of your problems in life? So if your problem in life, or if your lament in life, if you're the loop, the mental loop that you go around and your often story is my life is too boring, it's too ordered. I like live in a very ordered life, and there's no fun and there's no playfulness. You want to start bringing the energy of fun and playfulness into the Zoom background, and not only into the Zoom background, but in your cup and your, you know, what I said was like earthy for me. I want this. I also want a little bit of fun, playful energy, you know. So you want to start like designing your background and with art, with interesting objects that feel like you want to feel. Because then when you're on Zoom, people's eyes are looking at you and people amplify. Eyes and attention amplifies energy. Where attention attention goes, energy grows. Yeah, that's a universal principle. Attention gives energy. So people are looking at you, they're giving you their attention on the zoom, so they're amplifying whatever it is is in back of you. That's the energy. If you did that in a very considerate and deliberate way, needing a background that feels like what you want to move towards in your life, that's powerful. That's a way to work with energy.

SPEAKER_01

Wow. You know, as you said, we're all energetic beings, just sometimes it exists in a very subconscious level, right? That's how we also shape our opinions and outlook on people, on the presence. Like if we start to begin to build the awareness, yeah, embedded the intentionality into that, and the result of it is gonna be, you know, we kind of almost bring the spell of the energy onto the conscious level. So, yeah, it's a very hard deep work to do, but you just give us like an example that kind of shows us that can be very tangible. Yeah, can be very durable, yeah, concrete. Yeah, so maybe next time, yeah, you will just need to pay a little bit extra attention to that background setting. Probably only takes you like a couple minutes or half hour just to set you up in the really right energy, which aka the right space to do, you know, what is really the priority task for you. Now, you break down the concrete like steps, it's not that hard to stop. You know, that's it to be planted. It's like in the sense that we kind of almost anthropomized our home. I think that was like the major layer of the barriers there because we live in our home, it's almost feel like mind-manging about it, right? It's just a place I come, I go, right? Particularly someone, you know, this uh hyperachiever who is working so hard, so busy with life, they just lost the touch, you know, with the energy, with the beauty in the space that we inhabit it every day. But that is where the misled occurs. As you said, if you feel in the spaces where you feel the absence, where you feel still stagnant, then maybe go back to reevaluating the relationship with your home. So, since we kind of like tap into the how we're gonna organize the spaces, right? Like aesthetically, yeah, but also mentally. I wanted to now bring it up to the dissolving, the concept of the dissolving.

SPEAKER_02

So dissolving goes deeper than decluttering. Yes. Decluttering asks, like, do I use this? And dissolving asks, does this thing represent who I want to become? We live with so many outdated identities and old versions of ourselves in our home, and they're really programming us, like who we are and who we're becoming. So, if, for example, like you want like partnership and love in your life and a family, you know, and all of the things that you have are like things that you had like 10 years ago when you didn't want that thing, you know, uh, didn't want that love, didn't want that partnership, and all the things are like pointy and aggressive. Sometimes we have these wall sculptures or things that are like have like a sharp, there's a lot of sharpness in them. I think Shui talks a lot about this as well. There's nothing like soft in our home, there's very few soft elements. The windows are hard and we have hard, you know, shades, and everything is like and we live with that every day. What you want to start seeing is does my home feel like I want to feel in partnership? And you want to start seeing what things, what are the 10 top things that feel the most far away from the person I'm becoming or the thing that I want to bring into my life? So, for example, a friend of mine who is also a client wanted love in her life, but she realized is that a lot of her furniture was found with her ex-boyfriend and it was bought with her ex-boyfriend and things of his that he didn't want, and she ended up with all this old stuff from him in her house, and you know, it was cheap and it worked and it was fine, but like she didn't realize like how much space he was taking up in her home. So this man that she wasn't even hasn't been with in 10 years, he was still energetically living in her home with all his stuff, yeah, and then but she didn't notice it, she didn't notice it because we're all blind, we're all blind to our own patterns. This is where the self-awareness comes in. We're all blind. So when I told her this, she was like, Oh my god, like she didn't, it was like she felt it, then she was like, I don't need this stuff. She liked when she let it go, she got like all kinds of new energy into her life. She got a lake house, like she was looking for house by the lake for a long time, and she couldn't find one, and then a lake house came in, and you know, just all of it. So, and like a new relationship came in, like not immediately, but like after she made a lot of moves and wove her web, you know, and was working on herself, like emotionally and mentally. It's not it's physical work, but it's also you have to work on the emotional and mental levels, especially if what you want feels very far away. Sometimes, sometimes the thing we want, we know it's right there. You know, we're confident. Like with some people, they're like, I want love, I'm gonna get love like that. They just know. For other people, it's not like that, you know. But for some people, money is easy. They they make money, it's not a problem. For other people, it's more difficult, and the thing feels very far away. The more far away it feels, the more dissolving you have to do. So that's the concept of dissolving.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, let me repeat it. And the more far away you feel, this is more dissolving you're actually needed to do. Wow. All these years, I was like, oh, I done all my personal growth, I do all this deep work, hard work, but I still found that this dissolving part is most challenging part for me personally. Now I know why. I still have more dissolving work to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Sometimes dissolving is painful. So I'm gonna tell you a story about how I worked with dissolving. Yeah. So I had this beautiful table, I was using it as a desk. You know, sometimes dissolving is painful. Like it was um, it had all these legs, it was surrealist, it had all these legs, different legs, many legs, because it was for an event. I did this, like it was this big long table for an event, and after it was a successful event, a very high le point in my career. And then after the event, they're like, take the table. I took it, I was using it as my desk, and I was like, ah, I love it, you know. But then I was feeling in my energy, I was feeling in my life that I was scattered, that I was disorganized, that I was being pulled in a lot of different directions, you know? And then I looked at my desk and it was exactly how I was right, all these little legs going in all different directions. I have it, a picture of it in my book. I tell this story in my book, and I have a picture of that desk. So all these different legs going, it hurt to give it away. I did not want to. When I realized, when I had my aha moment, I'm like, I designed my problem right into my life, and I'm working on it, and I'm feeling it, and it's like I'm screaming and I'm feeling it, and I'm literally, you know, working on a desk like this. I did not want to give it away. It was difficult, you know. I mean, I was just like, I have to buy a new desk and oh my god, and I have to get someone to move it, I have to like pay for the movers, like it was a whole thing.

SPEAKER_01

The courses are very difficult, yeah. The courses is so cheap.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but they're cheap. But then I asked myself, what do I value more? What's more important for me? And it's like some literally, it's like peeling off your own skin sometimes. Like it hurts, it's excruciating. It hurts, you know, and you don't want to give it away. You don't want to give this thing away, you know. Even if you know the thing is like from an old, it's reinforcing an old pattern that you don't want. So I just I want to say to people when they're dissolving, working with your own pain, working with that energy of sacrifice is very powerful. Very powerful. It opens the door to a lot of new energy.

SPEAKER_01

Ah, yeah, but it's just you have to really jump over that clip. You can like just uh torn in there forever or like you know, stand in a fence patrony, but then one day and at some point you're gonna have to jump over that clip. So that's what I prompted to do after reading your book. Yeah, I finally strode away nostro, I delayed it, that bag of the clothes, which is sitting in the dust for years, years. And it's not just about decluttering. I can do it, you know, like the fingertip is just decluttering. It's oh my god, it's all this undeserving identity, you know, hold up the old version of me. It is hard. I kind of see myself as doing all the personal growth and how to outgrow myself, trying to rebuild my identity, everything, but still sometimes that inherent identity that's can still take friends over. Alright, so we almost come full circle of this interview. Thank you so much, Olga. You know, you guys unpacked the nitty-gritty of the spatial alchemy, you all cast shoe, like how to connect to the future self, and you also help us to um dissect the dissolving process, how we're gonna like reconcile with the old self, yeah, so we can really you know marching towards the future self. So, my last question. For someone who just you know listened to this podcast, can cross there or stumble upon yeah, and then feel so prompt to do something, right? Probably for the first time in their life, they're kind of being hinted. Oh, actually, the key to get out of that state or like really unlock the future self is less in my home with that. The says it's plenty where this is builded, what is your advice for those people who just began to embark on this journey in a way that is actually feel like genuine and approachable? Yeah, it's supposed to be feel like very overwhelming or intimidating. As we said, we don't want to just encourage people straight ahead, you know, do the God right away, or like buying the whole brand new furniture, you know, or jump in that bandwagon of the trend or style. So, how would you guide them to go through this transformation?

SPEAKER_02

I would start small and start with small wins. So, one is see your home through the eyes of a stranger. Yeah, like so walk around your home, just look at it in different ways, and if that's difficult for you, bring a friend and say, look, like tell me the truth. Like, what do you see here? Bring three friends. What do you see here? Like what you know me, you know my problems, you know what I'm trying to do. What do you see in my home? That's that's like an old version of me. So you want to start. So see it through the eyes of a stranger, then the dissolving stage. That's number two. Number three is track your routines. So I'm gonna give people three things eyes of a stranger, yep, dissolving, let go of ten things, just ten things that feel the worst to you, you know, that feel far the furthest away from what you're becoming. Ten things. That's two, ten things. Then three is look at your routines. Look at your routines, track yourself, look at your routines. What's your salt cellar look like? What does your soap dish look like? All these small things that you touch many, many times a day. Start looking at that. These are not expensive things, are they like little small things that I could do that are, you know, that begin to feel like what I want to bring into my life. So you want to start looking at your routines and buying these new little things only after you've done the dissolving. Don't do it without doing the dissolving because you haven't taken the layer away. You don't want to build unless you've removed first, right? Otherwise, it's just like you're putting all like stuff on top of stuff. You really want to do the emotional work of dissolving first, you know, and then understand what it is that you're dissolving in with each thing. You're like, I no longer want this in my life. I don't want this energy in my life, I don't want this energy in my life. Like, really do it very consciously. Then your routines start upgrading your routines. Those are, I would say, the one, two, three. Wow. See your home through the eyes of the stranger, dissolving ten things, yeah, and then maybe bring in ten things to replace the things that you've dissolved that are small but effective, and begin to see how your body feels, and then continue, then dissolve some more, and then get a few more things, and dissolve some more. You know, you want to start having this dialogue with this conversation, this relationship with your home. If your home isn't just a place you live, it's a relationship. Yes. So you want to start having this deeper relationship. So that's what I would say.

SPEAKER_01

That's amazing. You know, it's flip that sequence. You know, what we normally do is like just buying stuff. But this remember what Olga told us to do. First of all, let's do the hard work, the emotional work. You're building a relationship connection here. Yeah, I mean, it's actually it takes efforts and it's hard work to build any kind of the relationships, right? But this relationship with your home is absolutely worth it, yeah, for you to invest, yeah, emotionally, yeah, physically, financially. Yeah, yes. That's um, I love it, I love it so much. You know, our home got our back, right? That's what you say. It's just like my my heart is yawning and I know I feel uh safe and secure because I have my home and my back. That's uh yeah, that's all uh that's all exactly. We are just really like for all the human beings, right? Well, what are we seeking for? You know, that sense of the safety, yeah, that belonging. Um that definitely should have started from your home. Yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you, Olga. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on, and you know, your your interest and your love of the book. Thank you, thank you. I'm so happy it's made its way to Australia, and it was a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you everybody so much afternoon. Bye bye, talk soon, bye bye. Bye bye.