Many of us “have a book in them” as the saying goes. Some of us have the courage or curiosity to pursue the dream to bring it to life, some develop a plan to make this happen. Melanie had her own way. One that really resonates with the way of A SoulPreneur.
We know Melanie as a devoted member of the SoulPreneur community from its early days, so when we heard she published a book Das Glück der kleinen Gesten (freely translated “The bliss in small acts of kindness”) we knew we had to feature her story.
Melanie is a choreographer, teacher and private coach, producer and model, and now published writer. Writing has always been part of her life, but in contrary to her 30 year long modeling career, this calling of hers stayed hidden. Until today.
CREATIVE LIFE DOESN'T GROW IN A LINEAR LINE
Melanie reflects on the process of birthing the book starting in 2010 when she came back to Zurich after her long stay of professional dancing in Paris. “I’ve alway been writing. But it was after a heartbreak that I needed to voice my feelings. I felt a lot misunderstood, my voice wasn’t heard, and writing has helped me through the difficult times”.
Melanie’s background is varied. Not only she ventured to Paris to follow her dancing passioN, she also spent time in San-Fransisco, where she felt “overwhelmed by the fact that people didn’t see each other. Everyone was busy with their business. Coming from little Effretikon this was a bit harsh”.
When we follow our passion, we often plant seeds for bigger things to grow later, without actually realising it. Mostly it happens when we look for a community that reflects our values as the SoulPrenur community aspires to do. That’s what happened to Melanie when she joined a Buddhist community. “I was always very spiritual but didn’t find the proper philosophy to match my intuition. The Buddhist community SGI matched my values. I shared a little bit of my writings because we talk about our personal experiences and it was very well received so I thought there might be a reason to share these texts I’ve been gathering for years. I started thinking about publishing”. The resonance between the way the community sees life and value human revolution and the way Melanie sees life allowed her to dream bigger.
“There was this one session where we were invited to write our boldest dreams and be shameless about it. I wrote that I wanted to be the face for peace because I was working as a model off and on in my life.”
Malenie put her note in the box, which were planned to be sent back to them years later. But then she had a change of heart. She drew the note back from the box and add
“I want to be a writer who publishes and I then added it’s going to be a best seller, because I was supposed to be shameless. Couple of months later I joined a world-wide online casting by Benetton“.
Benetton looked for their future models. The campaign had each candidate set a personal online profile. The online profile was up for 30 days where people could post comments. 65,000 people joined. “People liked me I think because I was very personal. When someone wrote to me on my profile I would always thank them and say something genuine to them, like ‘I liked this or that about you’. I promised myself to keep it personal no matter the scale of the thing. I was one of the twenty winners and was invited to NY for the shooting.”
Melanie realised she needed to write about the whole process behind the scenes because “often what’s portrayed is not what is actually happening. For me it wasn't only about being in the spotlight, I felt I had a message”.
A SOUL MESSAGE
Melanie’s father was forced to go to Vietnam war. That influenced her wish to bring a peace message to the world and shaped her view - “fashion is fun but whenever I was interviewed I put my heart and life philosophy into it and talked about how we should treat each other with respect and kindness”.
The SoulPreneur philosophy is that the values your soul resonate with are not just a marginal aspect of your “home personality” but the core of whatever you do. This leads to the surprising shifts and expansions of your working life.
The most desirable dream ‘to be found’ happened to Melanie when one of her interviews about winning the Benetton campaign was spotted in 2014 by Chantal Sandion who offered her to co-auther a book about random acts of kindness.
“She didn’t even know I’m writing. She responded to something I sent out the world”.
This offer hit home with Melanie who lived random acts of kindness. But her then boyfriend responded with a comment “such spiritual staff is useless. I just thought to myself ‘that kind of thinking is useless’”. Needless to say the book made it, the boyfriend didn’t.
Melanie and Cahntal are very different. Chantal is an introvert and very structured while Melanie is more ‘chaotic’ and have an out-going personality. Chantal is a writer, has two kids and a mama lifestyle, Melanie is a city girl. “But we share the same desire.”
In 2017 Chantal started looking for a book agent, which for Melanie was a completely new world. Out of the two agents who were interested they chose the man because “men and women working together are balancing the energies and that’s when the whole potential really comes out”.
In the business community the dominant voice is that before you even start anything you need to have for everything a business plan, ROI forecast and a clear structure. This can kills creativity. Women often are criticised for their business making style as they often operate more spontaneously and respond intuitively to something before they understanding the ‘why’ reason. One of the SoulPreneur principles is that the form and the formless are married together and not in a competition.
Melanie wasn’t always sure she saw where this whole process, by now of three years, was going. She allowed herself to question the process but out of trust rather than cynicism. When the agent came back from the famous Frankfurter Buchmesse with a publishing deal that you cannot refuse, they took it!
As a true SoulPreneur life and business are inseparable.
“It all started with the idea that I want to bring peace. I couldn’t bring the numbers to it. It wasn’t just a biz idea. Off course you need a structure not just to float in air. Before it became a business I LIVED IT truly to the core”.
DOOR OPENING CHALLENGES
Melanie always wanted her parent’s praise for what she did. Four years before the publication of the book her father lost his ability to speak to a stroke. “He spoke with his eyes. When I told him about the publishing book I saw in his eyes he was very proud of me".
"With my mother it was different. Nothing ever pleased her fully. Because of our family dynamics I started growing and then felt like I’m not allowed to, because I would always wait for that moment for her to say how it’s amazing that I’ve created my life around art, independent woman doing what she loves…. it never happened.
I remember when I told her about signing a publishing contract and like a little girl I was hoping for the praise and the only thing she said was ‘nice’ and then she kept on doing what she was doing.
At that moment I realised it’s not going to happen. This woman cannot see YOU. It was a very valuable lesson because I let go of the idea that I should be recognised for what I do by all the people around me. Some people are literally blind for what’s going on in your life. Some people will relate to your accomplishment but accepting has to come from yourself, that you’re happy about your accomplishments. It’s enough if one or two people in my life can do that because we all need acknowledgement but I think we look for it in the wrong places.
I learnt to ask myself ‘Who says that, why do they say that and how does it play in my real life?’”
It’s important to receive validation from our parents. When it doesn’t come a genuine hunger to be seen and loved develops. Realising this is not an easy moment. But in face of Melanie’s whole journey that led to this point of actualising her dreams she jotted down in a note back in 2010, she was able to accept her hunger and understand she can satisfy it from different sources. This is why like-minded communities, in Buddhism called Sangha, play a major role in our development.
A past SoulPrenur meeting focused on the importance of engaging with the important life questions we have not just engaging in answers. When we find it difficult to accept someone or something it’s because we’re afraid of losing something. This is one of the reasons we don’t understand why it’s so difficult for us to accept certain difficult people/events in our lives. Melanie realised there’s nothing to lose and that allowed her to both accept her mother as she is and fully enjoy the process of further developing her book.
THE WISDOM OF ACCEPTANCE AND KINDNESS
The book speaks about the concept of doing things because you value them not because you’re depending on the results of your actions. Random act of kindness is in the intention to be kind not in counting the success. The process of writing the book also helped Melanie internalised her philosophy more deeply which led her to accept herself without depending on external validation, even from her mum.
“If you do things only to expect something in return it’s a deal. It could be a good deal, but it can also go wrong. When you do things out of the conviction of your heart with the understating this will bare fruit, not knowing how and when, I could become a bestseller and still not be satisfied. It has little to do with how someone else respondes to this but how I do”.
The book lies on two poles: the social science behind kindness and the actual behaviour of random acts of kindness and their effect.
“When I brought my mother back from hospital I decided to write a card to the people who took care of her in the hospital. I told her about it and said maybe you want to do it yourself. She did. I was happy I inspired her. I felt they were very attentive and caring and she had a changed perspective about them. We put that in the book. “It was something I wanted to do for myself, not to find praise, but to manifest my love for her. She may have been a very fearful mother. Still I could be a brave daughter”.
“At home I found a license to be happy, which is in the book. It says ‘The holder of this license is by time, place or event has the right to be happy without any reason. This license cannot be revoked’. She hasn’t signed it. I put it in her hand and said why don’t you sign it?!. She did. But it was a moment I realised ‘Melanie you really have to sign it yourself’. No one else can sign this for you. As long as you don’t you’ll keep on looking for acceptance outside. During the writing process I grew immensely.”
Another reason we don’t reach acceptance easily is because we’re afraid of failing. When there’s a pain point in our lives we’re afraid of rubbing against it. This is how we stop taking risks, that in our mind refer to this pain point, therefore never get to grow from it. Melanie opened up to her pains and through that evolved both in her personal life and her working life.
“I dropped projections and came to meet reality. Everyone think that you climb a big mountain and you’ll find the holy grail. What you find is different perspectives. Then you climb another mountain then the next and sometimes it’s like ‘I just need to sit by the river and listen to the birds singing’. Looking for things in other places”.
MELANIE’S MESSAGE FOR WOMEN IN BUSINESS
“From my experience I can say that the voice that you have, that you feel, hear, experience through your senses, is so intelligent and connected. It’s so much bigger than your thought process. You cannot imagine how things come to life, you can feel it with your heart. I couldn’t think my way to publishing. Keep that vibe alive. Do it with your daily meditations. I went for the feeling more than the rational.
Don’t let people put things into your head like you need the perfect business plan [before anything else] because then you get caught up in all the rational NO’s. I don’t have the funds, the contacts, the experience… Trust your guts. This is something that’s been said over and over again, but we still don’t listen.
If you have people who challenge your dreams and are supportive, keep them. But if you realise that people don’t want you to dream because they don’t have any of their own, because dreamers and visionaries won’t tell you just ‘don’t do that’. DO WHAT YOU’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT. People give you a plan for your life and I know many people who are not happy with what they have”.
LAST WORDS FOR THE FUTURE
“This is going to be a very good experience” Melanie says with a big mystic smile “because the book is about true transformation and that doesn’t happen over night. The response will slowly drop in. I like the point where I’m at in my life, being patient about the response. We teach each other that you really need an immediate oscar or you’ll be forgotten in the cellar of unfulfilled… We took all this time to write it why won’t we gift time for a response.
It brings me back to nature, things got clearly out of hand on this planet. We poison ourselves with the speed of things, we don’t want to stop because if I stopped everyone will get ahead of me. If we keep on making business like that we just keep on polluting the environment and ourselves because it’s not natural”.
Spending time to learn from Melanie’s wisdom and spirit was a delight.
You can purchase her book {so she can get the funds to translate it to English !} at Kosmos or orellfüssli.
Find more about Melanie here: www.melaniealexander.ch , contact@melaniealexander.ch , IG: melaniealexander77.