Publications

Marija Zamarytė

LRT.lt

Public speaking, and public communication in general, is closely linked to the extent to which the speaker feels himself, is open to the world and, very importantly, has a defined purpose. Marija Zamarytė, a master of conscious, authentic speaking and an alumna of the HAI Institute, advises what any reader of this interview can do right now - before any speech on social networks or in a meeting, ask yourself the question: "Who am I in this situation?"

"Am I, for example, a lover who supports her loved one, or am I a professional who wants to inform people accurately, or am I an entrepreneur who wants to make money? Who am I when I speak? I have to think about what word, what action would allow me to create what I most want in that situation."

- Could you tell us how you became a public speaking professional? And do you think that intuition or rational factors played a bigger role in your life choices?

- You could say that it was not even my intuition, but life's intuition. In my eyes, life and man are co-creators. This was also evident at the beginning of my career.

Before I could hear myself very well, life heard me very well. Suddenly, a man asked me to help him prepare a presentation for a conference. I had never thought that I could do anything professionally with public speaking. I knew I was good at public speaking because I had previously taken part in and won public speaking competitions as a teenager. It was intuitive - a place of my heart, a place of pleasure.

When I spoke, I felt that my body, my heart and my whole psyche were saying 'yes'. Nevertheless, I did not plan to do anything professionally with public speaking. It seemed to me just a childish hobby. However, I decided to help this guy prepare a report, slides and a presentation.

After the conference, his manager at the time, the director of a large foreign company, asked him to divulge who had helped him to prepare such a presentation. The guy pointed me out, and that's how that organisation became my first client: two months later I was in Las Vegas training people from that organisation in public speaking.
When I received this offer, I immediately started thinking that I knew nothing about public speaking and especially about teaching it, I knew no theories about how to teach it, and even less in English. I was 23 years old at the time and had just finished university. That's where the intuition really came in, otherwise fear would have taken over at that point. But after listening to myself, I realised that this was something I really wanted to do, and I started to learn.

- You have told me that after you mastered the American way of public speaking - which is very directive, precise and form-oriented - you realised that this was not the way you wanted to speak and to teach others. How did this realisation come?

- The first experiences of this were in my teens, when I spoke out of a deep inner desire to simply share my message with another person, with an audience. When I read poetry in reading competitions, I was actually in love with one person and I felt so deeply the overflow of something beautiful inside me that everything I read seemed to flow with that feeling.

And when I turned it into my career, when I had fully mastered the American principle and they wanted me to stay on and planned a huge career for me, I started to feel that I was just unhappy. I observe my condition and I feel that I am getting old, I am empty. I fly to more and more trainings and I see how the other speakers are happy, they feel fulfilled, important, and I go, I do great, but I leave almost depressed: I am sad, I have no energy, I can sleep for a few days after the trainings.

I realised that a career in this form is not suitable for me personally. I took that offer to the max and saw that there was nothing good there.

I remember a very important event in my life. I had friends coming to see me, one of them a famous educational leader working in Lithuania. He probably pointed out that I had incorporated that American style in all areas of my life. I was wearing black classic trousers, a silk blouse... I was like a twenty-seven-year-old lady having a house party (laughs).

This man was talking to me and asked me what femininity was for me. Do I think I have enough of it in my life? I think, what else is he talking about, what is femininity? (laughs) Of course, then I answered tactfully. But then I sat there and I thought: I don't really know what it is and I'm quite curious.

I started looking for answers and I met a wonderful teacher who, it turns out, is far from just talking about femininity. André Amaya Pabarčiūtė. The first time I saw her in person, I was blown away - she was everything that I could call "beautiful". Professional, knowledgeable about her subject, but at the same time she had that joy, that exuberance, that I experienced as a teenager.
I started studying with André. I accepted the perceptions of femininity, but at the same time, in the deepest part of me, there were completely different processes and discoveries. For example, what is inner abundance, inner truth, what does it mean to realise yourself in life, what does it mean to feel everything that surrounds you, how to create a life that is full of you, as you are.
It took me about a year and a half before I started to see great contrasts in my work. One part of my work allowed me to be myself, to be free, to be successful, to make an impact, but in many areas I was somehow exhausted.

- Perhaps the way you measure what success is, what a successful life is, has also changed?

- Our lives are heterogeneous but interconnected. We have different areas of life - personal, social, intimate, inner life, etc. - and these areas of life work in completely different ways, have different laws, different principles. We should distinguish success at all these levels.

For example, success in the personal sphere is a deep satisfaction with your life, a feeling that everything is the way you want it, that you are taking as much beauty, as much intimacy as you want. Success in personal life depends on how in touch you are with yourself and how many psychological, even physical tools you have to create that success. You have to know a lot about yourself to have a successful personal life.

Success in social life is a different matter. It is the ability to tap into your talents, your professionalism. It is not only to earn a living, but also to feel alive and needed. Here you have to know the rules of sociality, how the career ladder works, how money works, etc. Ultimately, success is about getting the most out of a result - it is the ability to put in a little effort with precision or intuition and get a big result. If a person works in this way, he can create, create and create a lot without getting overworked. I will not go into other areas - I think it is important for us to catch the principle itself.

If one succeeds in bringing success to all areas of life, one gets the feeling that, along with life, one is able to create a world, both inner and outer, in which one is happy. It is no longer tied to social achievement.

- Do you think that today in Lithuania we know how to interact, how to communicate, how to reveal ourselves in public?

- There are several themes here. First of all, in order to reveal yourself, you need to know yourself, you need to know how to behave outside the box. I see a lot of cliché in the way we communicate, in the way we speak in public.
In public, I think there is a phenomenon that happens: people seem to be more public, they are more visible on social networks, but in reality that publicness is not conscious. Why do people put their moments of leisure, their meals, their yoga asanas, when they have no purpose for it? Are we doing it because everyone is doing it? What do we expect then? Conscious publicity must have a purpose.

Even if you take a picture of a puppy, it has to have a purpose, otherwise it is not a conscious situation, a leadership position, but a reactive plea for attention.

I would attribute it to emotional immaturity. Maybe instead of uploading a photo without a purpose, you should go to your loved one and talk to them, open up to them? I also see another trend: people like to put up their "mirages" - images of how we would like to feel and live, but we don't. This is a lie. Social networks seem to have made it even more clear that we cannot be real in public.

How people can reveal themselves in public is a very interesting topic. Back in my university days, I read Hannah Arendt's book 'The Human Condition', in which she writes that it is through speaking, through the word, that man brings his truth into the world. In other words, it is through communication, through communication that man becomes a unique part of the world.

How many important messages and questions are contained in this thesis! How safe do I feel among people? How free am I to express myself? Who am I at all? What is my position towards people? How do I see the world? Through publicity, we can open ourselves up to the world. I can experience a state where I can hear people more, feel our connection, listen to them more. I just hear the world and it's as if life itself is present in my speech. It's totally different from the usual genre of speaking where I just come and say something prepared. When I speak, I come into a meeting between myself and the outside world.

- Is opening up to others always a necessary, positive thing? What if those to whom you open up do not hear you?

- It is certainly not always necessary to open up. One risk for those who want to open up is that their message, their thoughts, will not be liked by everyone. How much inner strength it takes to open up uniquely, with your own truth. The other person may say: I don't like the way you are. It takes inner courage, inner strength to open up like that. If one is unprepared, if one is weak, one will not be able to bear it.

Another danger is that a person may tell about his or her difficult experiences, traumas, and then open up so much, delve so deeply into his or her past experiences, that he or she is traumatised once again. I am certainly not saying that you should all be open and free and then you will all feel good. I do not think so. Open up when you are ready, open up in a way that does not hurt you, open up when the time is right, open up to the right people.

My teacher Rimvydas Židžiūnas has said that you can only share your discoveries after you have integrated them into your life. If you talk about something that is still completely fresh to you (and people often do), it is like selling out your inner world and then you cannot integrate it into your life. They are used to make others applaud you, not to make you grow. You need to value your inner life more than applause.

What any reader can do right now is to ask themselves, before any statement on social networks or in a meeting, who I am in this situation and what I want. Am I, for example, a lover who supports her dear one (then I will speak in a specific way, right?), am I a professional who wants to inform people accurately (a different language altogether), or am I an entrepreneur who wants to make money in this situation? Who am I in this moment, in this situation?

If I speak in a very directive way in a personal relationship, I will only hurt my loved one, I will lose the possibility of maintaining love and connection in this relationship, and that is not appropriate. If I present myself as a nice person in a business environment, I will not get the desired result either. These are just rough examples, but there are many nuances.

Often, just a few words can give away what you really think and feel about yourself, others, your activities, how confident you are, how much you value your activities, etc. Clarity about what we want to create with our words is an essential part of conscious communication. I have to think about what word, what action would allow me to create what I most want in that situation.

The same in social space. For example, I am an entrepreneur who wants to make money: is it very important for me to have space? Well, no. Is it very important that everyone thinks I'm tough? And no. It is important to me that people buy. And in this perception there is transparency, cleanliness, and according to this goal I can intuitively choose the tools and strategies that will work. Hundreds of other imaginary commitments fall away. I always have to answer to myself - what am I imposing on myself, what am I imposing on others, and what am I imposing on my greater, higher value?