This book is an encouraging little story about how life changes. Four characters are running through a maze looking for "Cheese." Sniff and Scurry are mice, and Hem and Haw are the littlepeople. "Cheese" is whatever you consider to be/bring success and happiness in your life. At first, all four characters find a large supply of Cheese. As time goes on, they are slowly eating the Cheese away, and then one morning they go to their Cheese supply to find it is now empty. The mice accept this change of circumstances, and they quickly depart to find new cheese in the maze, but the people can't accept that their Cheese is gone. They wonder, "Who moved my Cheese?" and they dwell on this predicament instead of going back to the maze. Finally, Haw decides to overcome his fears, embrace that a major change has taken place in his life, and venture back out into the maze to search for Cheese again.
Before the Cheese story, we meet a group of people together at a class reunion, discussing some of the problems and changes in their lives, and after hearing the Cheese story, discussing the lessons they have learned from it. I found this part of the book to be far more helpful than the actual story about Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw in the maze.
Perhaps it's because I am already in a habit of reading personal growth and development material on a regular basis, but I didn't find this book to be nearly as inspiring as I'd expected and hoped. There is a lot to be said about adapting to changes in your life, but I didn't particularly like the Cheese analogy. I kept thinking as I was reading this book that the messages were good, but the Cheese analogy just didn't fit. When you earn (find) success (Cheese), there's usually a productive way of continuing to earn success, but in the story, they really couldn't earn more Cheese where they were. The characters ate the Cheese until it was gone, and then went back in the maze to find more, "New Cheese", elsewhere. Maybe it's the fact that I've been cheated on so many times that the thought of them finding "New Cheese" all the time didn't sit well with me. I would've liked the story more I suppose if the characters had a way of producing Cheese, so that once they found it, they weren't just slowly running out until it was gone, and having to search for more someplace else. There will be times in life when you really have to search for "New Cheese," such as if you lose a job, or you suddenly lose your home. I've been homeless a couple of times, so I can relate to that, but it just bugged me that the littlepeople didn't have a way of producing where they were, without needing to leave and search for "New" after running out of "Old."
The idea of making changes where you are was discussed when the people at their class reunion were together talking about the Cheese story, and I'm glad that was covered, but I still don't think the Cheese and Maze analogy fit very well for those types of circumstances, and that's why the "discussion" part of the book was necessary (and more helpful than the story itself, in my opinion).
Anyway, there are good lessons to be learned here. You'll move ahead a lot better in life if you adapt to life's inevitable changes instead of fearing them. Continual growth is important so you don't wake up one day and realize, "What I thought I had is gone! Where did it go?" I think this is a good book to read for the lessons learned, but I don't consider it an essential to have on your shelf. It's a really fast read, so you could probably go find it at a library and read it there without ever needing to check it out.
So...who moved your cheese?
With Who Moved My Cheese? Dr. Spencer Johnson realizes the need for finding the language and tools to deal with change--an issue that makes all of us nervous and uncomfortable.
Most people are fearful of change because they don't believe they have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Spencer Johnson shows us that what matters most is the attitude we have about change.
When the Y2K panic gripped the corporate realm before the new millenium, most work environments finally recognized the urgent need to get their computers and other business systems up to speed and able to deal with unprecedented change. And businesses realized that this was not enough: they needed to help people get ready, too.
Spencer Johnson has created his new book to do just that. The coauthor of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager has written a deceptively simple story with a dramatically important message that can radically alter the way we cope with change. Who Moved My Cheese? allows for common themes to become topics for discussion and individual interpretation.
Who Moved My Cheese? takes the fear and anxiety out of managing the future and shows people a simple way to successfully deal with the changing times, providing them with a method for moving ahead with their work and lives safely and effectively.
