One of my very favorite books in life is Who Moved My Cheese, by Spencer Johnson, MD. It is a fantastic book for many reasons. 1. It’s easy to read because it has big print and it has pictures! 2. It’s about two mice and two men and let’s face it, who doesn’t love a story about mice? 3. It has one of the best messages about letting go of the past, getting over the things you cannot change, moving forward, and realizing that there is no reason to fear the unknown because the unknown may be better than anything you could have imagined! It’s really all about change and how change has unlimited potential depending on how you deal with it.
Let me give you a quick overview of the story:
Cover via Amazon
The story is about two mice named Sniff and Scurry, and two little men named Hem and Haw. They all live in a maze and they find a pile of cheese. The two men build a home by the cheese and settle down to live where the cheese is. The mice come to eat the cheese as well, but as they smell the cheese they realize it’s getting old and starting to diminish, so the mice prepare themselves that they will soon need to find new cheese.
One day the pile of cheese runs out. The two mice, having prepared for this day, recognize the need to go find new cheese and they run off through the maze in search of new cheese. The two men don’t handle the cheese running out quite as well. First they are dismayed, they feel sad that they have run out of cheese and they get very depressed about it. Then their sadness turns to shock. They cannot believe that the cheese is actually gone – How could that be? Surely it will come back! Then they become angry – How dare they run out of cheese! It is unfair! It is wrong! They won’t stand for their cheese running out. And then finally they have to face the fact that the cheese is definitely gone and there is nothing they can do to make it come back – and so they have to make a decision. Will they sit down and give up and starve to death, or will they go out and find new cheese?
One of the men decides to go out in search of new cheese, but he is scared and intimidated by the long dark halls of the maze. He is afraid of the unknown, yet he forges on as he knows he must start looking if he is to find new cheese. As he goes down the dark passageways, he finds that getting down the first one wasn’t so bad. He begins to feel more courageous about entering the next dark passage, and his confidence grows little by little as he begins to learn life lessons. As he travels through each hall, he stops to write on the wall the lesson that he learned that day. The life lesson messages he writes on the different walls are as follows:
- Having cheese makes you happy.
- The more important your cheese is to you the more you want to hold on to it.
- If you do not change, you will become extinct.
- What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
- Smell the cheese often so you know when it is getting old.
- Movement in a new direction helps you find new cheese.
- When you move beyond your fear, you feel free.
- Imagining myself enjoying new cheese even before I find it, leads me to it.
- The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.
- It is safer to search the maze than to remain in a cheeseless situation.
- Old beliefs [may] not lead you to new cheese.
- When you see that you can find and enjoy new cheese, you change course.
- Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come.
- Change happens. Keep moving with the cheese.
- Anticipate change. Get ready for the cheese to move.
- Monitor change. Smell the cheese….
- Adapt to change quickly. The quicker you let go of old cheese….
- Change. Move with the cheese.
- Enjoy change! Savor the adventure and enjoy the taste of new cheese!
- Be ready to change quickly and enjoy it again and again. Keep moving with the cheese.
The lesson of the story is that we need to recognize change and accept it, and even better, we need to enjoy it! In the end the man finds an even bigger and better pile of cheese than the one that went away and he is happy, but he is always ready and prepared for the fact that things may change and he may once again be off in search of new cheese – bigger and better and tastier cheese – and he is okay with that. He is even excited for when that day will come!
Ah, yes, this book is one of my all-time favorites. Truly. It has helped me more in my life than I can even describe to you. You can apply it to any life situation. When I went through a divorce at a young age with two small kids, this book helped give me the hope to go in search of new cheese. When I had failures or trials in my professional career this book helped me to have the courage to pick up and move forward. When things don’t go the way I planned them to go, this book reminds me that change happens and I need to embrace it and look forward to it and ENJOY IT! I hope that all of you have the chance to read the entire book because you will love it. And I hope that it helps any of you who are struggling in life with any situation the same way that it has helped me in my life.
And always remember, that there is bigger, better, and tastier cheese just around the corner, so keep going!
~Amy (my daily blogs can be found at www.amyreesanderson.com/blog )
