The 6 Words You Need To Change Your Life: Maria Thattil (Transcript)

Here is the transcript and summary of pageant winner Maria Thattil’s talk titled “The 6 Words You Need To Change Your Life” at TEDxSydney conference. In this TEDx talk, Maria talks about her journey of self-discovery and the pivotal moment that changed her life. She shares her experience of feeling trapped by societal pressures and the need for external validation. However, she realizes that she doesn’t need to conform to society’s expectations to be successful. Instead, she embraces her true self and uses her voice to speak about issues that matter to her.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Do you all remember a significant moment where your life changed? The year here is 2020, and I have just come out of 112 days in lockdown, and I’m one of two women on a split screen, broadcasted digitally all over the world, and I hear, and the winner is Maria Thattil. And in that moment, I had just become only the third woman of color in 69 years to be Miss Universe Australia. Thank you.

But you can see it on my face, there was this air of disbelief, because I had gone from being this closeted child of working class Indian immigrants, one of who is an ex-priest, to now being, I didn’t realize that was funny, but somebody had a giggle, you know. And then I went to being the representative of our country on one of the biggest stages in the

And now, I’m an openly queer and sex positive author, TV presenter, podcaster, and host, and I can see how, yeah, that’s, it looks like it’s the moment my life changed. In fact, it was actually my little brother who’s here today who recently said to me, I’m just waiting for my Miss Universe propeller moment, you know, the one that’s going to change everything. And to be fair, he is so gay, so he might actually be waiting for his Miss Universe moment. I don’t know.