Ieva Laguna

Full transcript: Ieva Laguna on London Real

1:00 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ieva Laguna, recent graduate of our Life Accelerator. Welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. Tell us about you. Where are you from, what do you do? I’m from Latvia, Eastern Europe, and I used to be a model. I used to live in New York like you and had a crazy life, and right now I have changed it to more simple, back to roots, back being in Latvia and developing eco buildings.

1:36 Okay, before we get to that, explain the crazy life first so then I can understand the new life. What was it like, how long did it go for, and give us a little bit of a window into, you know, that kind of a profession. It almost feels like it was another version of me. It feels so far away that it’s even hard to remember, but it was probably the hardest part was being away from family and sacrificing for your success and what I was aiming for.

2:09 And it was a lot of flying, a lot of being alone, spending a lot of time with the strangers, connecting with strangers immediately and entertaining yourself, and constantly being judged by your looks, by your appearance. Are you good enough, are you not good enough, are you slim, are you… maybe you should lose some weight. And it was quite an emotional stress, constant emotional stress.

2:41 But it came with lots of positive sides to it. Well, I am very grateful for travelling, experiencing so many different cultures and engaging in conversation with people from all around the world, whether it’s a taxi driver, whether it’s a hotel receptionist, whether it’s someone on a plane sitting next to you. So it’s just really up to you how much you take from what comes around. You’re right.

3:05 And you also made a lot of money. That’s subjective. Okay. Well, I guess that’s part of me. It was enough. Okay. And how many years did you do this super modelling? The beginning was probably like one year to slowly start it, and then the next seven years was like full force, and then I quit. Then I came back again after giving birth to my baby.

3:32 I came back and I thought, okay, I should focus, I should really take it, this, because everyone keeps telling me, if I was in your shoes I would be doing it. And I started thinking, I’m gonna be crazy, I might be biting my nails after not doing this, not taking this opportunity. But then, you see, I quit again the third time, so hopefully the last.

3:56 Okay, alright, good. So now it’s the new chapter of your life. I want to hear about that, but what was going on with you to join our Life Accelerator? Like, what was happening inside and outside to think, I need to go on this adventure? Well, you see, that was, I was modelling, I was doing very well, I started travelling a lot, but I had this disagreement inside of me of leaving my family, leaving the roots, flying again, being away, and not understanding what am I chasing.

4:28 Constantly chasing, going somewhere, to work for the future too. And then just you came across. We were building our first experimental project on our property, and the builder actually started talking about life, and he said, yeah, do you know London Real and do you know Brian Rose? And I said, never heard, let me see. And I started looking at some of your videos and I was very impressed.

5:01 I thought it’s a great idea to communicate with people in that way, to transmit the ideas, to turn them around and make people not feel alone, and engage people, because I would relate to these videos and I could listen, and if you like, this is something I wish I learned in school.

5:27 Okay, alright. So you decide to join the Life Accelerator. Mmm. You pulled the trigger and you’re kind of put in this group of people from around the world you’ve never met before. I’m asking you to do all these strange new practices. What is that first two weeks like for you? It was so long time ago, I actually don’t remember much, but it started with meditation, so that was beautiful.

5:50 I was familiar with meditation and gratitude, but the difference was that I was kept accountable. I was kept emotionally involved because there was this group of people that I felt familiar with, felt attached in some strange way. It’s hard to explain, but it was beautiful. I started meditating, I started feeling the immediate difference.

6:16 Because before, I knew about meditation, but I will skip quite a few days, sometimes weeks, and here you have to really have it in your routine, so it really starts doing magic, and as it goes you can feel the change. And yeah. Did you start feeling change in yourself during the course? Absolutely. What was happening?

6:40 I was feeling more aware, more conscious, which was not easy because sometimes, at least for me, it’s hard to tolerate sometimes the injustice is, nothing justices, take the full ownership, right? But all the mad things that happen around us, and the unnatural things, how we live, how we give birth, how we don’t take care of nature and so on, of each other, relationships.

7:15 Of course you also see, you are aware also of the good things and how you can change your environment around you, and when you change your attitude then everything else changes around you, including the relationships that you have. And what was the hard part about the course? What did you struggle with? Resistance. What is resistance for people who don’t know?

7:36 It is this little monster that will just find any creative way to skip all the things that you are not comfortable doing, and it will create all kinds of excuses. And I was, I was familiar before also, taking full ownership. That was probably one of the most meaningful books I read. That was suggested by the director of my agency, and that’s how actually I changed my career.

8:07 I took full ownership and I saw myself that I wasn’t doing good enough work. I could be doing better, and that’s when things changed. And same with the course, you see that you’re starting to have all kinds of excuses and all of a sudden this is more important, and you see that your brain is playing tricks with you, and to control that.

8:35 What was the biggest win for you? The course, so what did you take away that was super helpful? Right, but you’re in charge. You’re in charge with the present moment. You are not in charge with the surroundings or what comes in your way, but you’re in charge of how you react on it, and if you act, so if you’re active or you’re just a bystander. That was quite a hard moment for me.

9:06 Okay, tell me about your classmates. What are these people like and what’s it like interacting with them? What did you learn from them? Very interesting, and that is something that I find quite extraordinary, this whole course, the way you built it. We have this ability to connect with people all around the world, and of course we have Facebook, we have groups and we have tools, but here we were just put together with the same kind of goal and we all go through the same challenges.

9:39 And it was quite interesting to see that I’m not alone. We are pretty much all the same with slight differences, but the very foundation of who we are is very the same. We seek for love, for appreciation, for understandings, for acceptance. And are you excited to meet everybody? Of course. Have you met a few people?

10:11 So you’re here, what’s it like meeting people you know? Unreal, really. Sometimes it feels like, okay, if everything is in our mind, is it in our mind? And that’s why I said, I’m Ria, Andreas, are you real? Because it’s just, yeah, I realities, it’s a very different sensation than being divided by the screen. Hmm, yeah, but everybody is real, that’s the thing.

10:37 Tell me about you, because you’re in my Inner Circle now and you have some big plans for your future and what you want to build. Can you talk to us about them? Well, you see, I’m just starting, so it is difficult to see where are we gonna go with this, but we are aiming to build a hundred percent ecological households.

11:00 So far what I have researched is that a regular household for an average family of two children and two adults, it consumes about like driving with a petrol vehicle for 26 years. So if you can take earth, sand and clay and just compress it, okay, maybe the compression, if you do it mechanically, you are using some sort of energy, but in Latvia, let’s say 80% is produced by water. Yeah, hydraulics, yeah, hydroelectric.

11:36 So that is green energy, and so here you go, you have a product that’s 100% ecological. In a hundred years, if you don’t want it, you can just demolish it and it is soil, it is earth. There’s no chemicals, it feels good, you breathe good, you are not allergic to it, it has thermal mass, it has all the very good properties. And it kind of clicked with me when I was in New Zealand. Why are we not building this way?

12:03 Do you know the story of the three little piglets? I want to hear it either way. You know, the three little piglets, the one builds from, I think, straw, the other one with clay, and the third one with stone or concrete or something, like very strong house. But actually the reality is that you don’t necessarily mean like a strong house. We have the idea that a straw, let’s say, it’s very fragile.

12:35 But when it’s compressed and it’s putting in the right front formwork of wood, and engineered in the right proportions, in the right way, then it’s as strong as cement, if not even stronger. Let’s say the rammed earth, it lasts for seven hundred years, thousand years, but while cement is decreasing its strength over 100 years, and you’re polluting unnecessarily.

13:01 And that is my question: why do we choose artificial over natural when we could be having both, and what prevents us to go the natural way? Why is it more expensive? Good questions. And so this is your focus, to build houses. And it’s challenging, especially in Latvia when you are under weather conditions, when it’s only three months is summer season when you could actually physically build, and out of that this summer was 70% rain.

13:40 More resistance. Challenging, more resistance. But you see, it teaches you, it builds you even stronger, so that was a good school. It was like army. So the next one, I’m sure we will be prepared. And okay, you have other projects you’re working on as well? Yes, absolutely. In Gauja National Park, in the middle of forest, with no phone reception, a kilometre in the woods, totally preserved.

14:13 So hopefully that will be the one that we will be coming open to public and talking about this issue. Okay, and you’ve also had some thoughts on women giving birth and just different methods for that as well, remember? Yes, I think it’s so important, and I think that is the very foundation of society, of who we want to be, of who we are.

14:40 The seed, if you look in nature, is one, and the seed is rotten if it’s not taken care of. Let’s say if it doesn’t have the right, the good properties in soil, the nutrients in it, enough sunlight, it’s not gonna survive. Same is how we give birth. How can you expect a child to be self-sustainable, to be emotionally intelligent and a good human being, if the mother, the very first person that is supposed to love you the most, is willing to give the baby away to random strangers, and in two weeks she’s back at work?

15:17 What are we talking about? We drop off the children before we go to work and then we pick them up at five, six, some at seven o’clock in the evening after we finish work, then we come home, we have a meal and they go to sleep. How often do we see our children? How much do we spend time with them? And then where are they, with who are they together? So what is their environment that’s created for them?

15:51 These are good questions. Mm-hmm. You’ve got some work to do over the next 20 years. Yes, right. Okay, tell me about you. How have you changed? If we walked down on the street and bumped into Ieva who didn’t take this course, what’s she like? Hmm, very good question. Less aware, less focused, less clear minded, I would say. Less serious. I take much more responsibility at the moment as well.

16:23 Yeah. Okay. I find the passion, the energy, and I have the spark. I have to believe, yeah. I lost it somewhere on the way. I had it and I lost it, and now I have it again. Who knows, maybe on the way I lose it again for some time, but that’s the way, we can predict it. But I hope that right now, implementing the tools that you also mentioned about in your course, implementing them in your daily life, that will keep me stable on this spark road.

16:58 Yeah, I think if you focus on mainly one thing and put everything into it, I think you are an unstoppable force, and I can feel that about you. So that’s what I’m gonna be encouraging you to do for the next 12 months, is really just, let’s this one thing, and let’s get that with momentum. And I know you have the strength to do that, and I know you know that too, so that’s what I’m looking for you to do.

17:24 Last piece of advice for anyone watching this, something that maybe they can take away from your learnings inside the Life Accelerator or else, like, what would you tell people? A bit of advice of what they could do to kind of empower themselves in life. What to do to empower? I would say not to be a bystander. It’s very comfortable and easy to stand by and look and hope that someone else will do it for us. No one else will if we don’t.

17:48 Good advice. And last question: someone who’s thinking about taking the Life Accelerator but just isn’t sure, what would you tell them? Pull the trigger. If you feel right with it inside of you, and I’m sure you will, then pull the trigger. It can’t hurt you. Well said. Yeah, thanks for being a part of the Life Accelerator. I appreciate you putting in the time.

18:13 And you used to call in from your car all the time, in your car, and you pulled over the side of the road, but I appreciate you putting in the time. And again, in the Inner Circle, you know, there’s a lot that you can accomplish, so I’m looking forward to helping you do that in the next 12 months. And thank you. Let’s do big things. Okay, all right. Thank you very much.