Who Moved My Cheese?

Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr Spencer Johnson, published by Vermilion, has the virtue of being probably the shortest book on change ever written! I have read quite a few so that gives it brownie points in my view. Seriously, you could probably read this in a lunch hour and it has pictures!

It’s a simple little parable, suitable for anyone at any age. That said, it rarely leaves anyone neutral, it’s a love it or hate it book!

When I first read it I fell into the latter category, but over the years I have come to appreciate it so much more. When I’m running my change seminars I take along a selection of books on change; many of them are very inaccessible, by which I mean heavy going and you’d need to be really keen to get to the end! They get looked at, sometimes someone will even take down the details, but it’s the cheese book that people get hooked on and find some meaning in.

It’s basically about two mice…oh and two tiny humans. Sniff and Scurry are mice, who just get on with life which means chasing the cheese. Hem and Haw are “little people”, tiny humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It’s not simply food to them; it’s their self-image. Their lives and values are built around the cheese they’ve found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods–our jobs, our career paths, the organisation or industry we work in–although it can represent anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out. It is quite basic but it’s amazing how often it really hits the spot for people.

You can get it from your local library, encourage your work to get a few copies, your local book shop, or on line via Amazon.

You can read about my book review policy here.

You Can’t Do It All

I have just been out in my garden and, as is so often the case, it prompted a post. Hope you like it.

A few years back my garden was my pride and joy. When my children (and several other people’s kids!) had stopped using it as a playground, and the sand pit, swings, and slide became redundant, I began to reclaim it, bit by bit. For a while the lawn served double duty as a rugby pitch and my washing line prop is still a pole once used for vaulting, but once the offspring disappeared it became my own personal terrain. My pet project.

It was a labour of love (and source of huge expenditure) but the results were worth it. It was a joy to see the garden I had oft dreamed of emerge. It wasn’t Kew, and wouldn’t win any prizes, but it was mine and it gave me huge pleasure.

Letting Go

However, about two years ago we were finally granted planning permission to build a wee bungalow for my Mum on a plot of land opposite our house. This too had been a long held dream but the vagaries of Bath planning delayed it for year after year. We reapplied for a third time, having drawn up lots of different plans and permssion was granted. Suddenly (or so it seemed after the enforced delays) we were in the throes of building a house with builders, and the consequent disruption, despite having fabulous builders!

Temptation

We have lived in our family home for over 30 years and during that time I have had many a fantasy (not shared by my husband) about knocking down walls, replacing windows etc, but in the way of these things very few had become real. But now I had a team of lovely builders at my beck and call and the temptation was too much.

“How much would it be to knock down that wall? Really, that cheap if we let you do it when it’s raining and you can’t work on the house? Great, it’s a deal! Oh and we’ll now need a new floor, new…”

Many similar conversations followed and at one point I found myself ‘supervising’ the new build, a new kitchen installation in my mother’s old house, and major works in our own! And I had more training and coaching work than I could handle! Of course, my husband was a huge help but I had very clear ideas about how my Mum’s new house should be designed, and I’d been plotting the wall removal in ours for ever, so I was voluntarily at the helm. Ms ‘I can do it all’!

The Garden

And I still wanted my lovely garden. But the garden became a dumping ground for rubbish and ‘possibly useful one day’ items, like old sinks, bits of pipe, and tons of wood to be stored for our new wood burner (another addition to the Woods household!)

The trouble was I wasn’t always around to supervise where all this rubbish went and a lot of it ended up on in places it shouldn’t. My lovely garden was being destroyed. I’d come back from a day training and wail:

” But there’s a beautiful clematis on that trellis, don’t you remember? Oh no, all my white tulips are under a pile of wood! You can’t put a wood shed there it’ll block access to the pond”

In short, and in all honesty, I was a right old nag.

And one day it dawned on me.

To achieve the more pressing and immediate dream of building my Mum’s new house and gaining my lovely huge kitchen diner, I had to let the garden go. And so I did. I made a conscious decision not to worry any more about it. Not to go rushing about like a demented witch every time I came home and found something on top of something about to bloom, or right in front of the window so it looked like a world war two bomb site. And not to nag my poor husband ragged about it.

Relief

It was actually a huge relief. I hadn’t stopped loving my garden - I hadn’t given up on the dream, but I had relegated it for a wee while.

And that’s what we all need to do sometimes to survive, postpone things in order to achieve more immediate aims. It’s what sociolgists call ‘deferred gratification’.

Sometimes we have to let go of our sacred cows, our long held dreams to get where we need to be. If you feel like you can’t see the wood for the trees (in my case it was the literally the trees for the wood!), pause a while. What is the most important to be doing right now?

Three Things for Friday!

No, I haven’t invented a new tongue twister (try saying it out loud!), just a quick exercise to maximise your learning from this week and help you realise how fabulous you are!

As you read this, follow the instructions.

Take a pen (or several coloured pens to boost your creativity) and without too much thinking write down:

1) Something new I learned this week.
(Examples- how to use a new IT programme, a piece of family history, how not to get cross when complaining…)

2) Someone new I met this week.
(Could be a new postie, a colleague on the phone, all sorts!)

3) Something I did really well this week.
(Don’t hide your light under any bushels! Did you help someone? Did you finish a tricky report? Did you cope well with a set back? Did you get some new business? Did you cheer up a friend?)

Now look down your list, give yourself an imaginary pat on the back and go off and enjoy you week end!

Coping With Change

‘If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude’. Maya Angelou.

Most of us, when faced with a change outside of our control, insitinctively react by wanting to hold onto things just as they are (even if they aren’t that fabulous – better the devil you know….!).

A few of us will say we’re good at coping with change, but many people I work with tell me how much they hate change, and wish ‘they‘ would just leave things alone for a while.

Lots of us think we’re not good at coping with change but in fact, assuming you are adult, you will already have coped with lots of change in your life and have masses of experience to draw upon. Some of those changes you will have managed better than others and this exercise will help you to realise what some of your coping strategies have been in the past.

A Change Exercise

Take a sheet of A4 paper and turn it sideways (landscape if on your computer). Decide what scale you are going to use. For example, if you are in your early twenties you might have a timeline divided up into two year gaps, e.g. 1-2, 2-4, 4-6, etc but you’ll probably start from when your memories begin, say 5! If you are older, you may use a 5 year span 5-10, 10-15, 15-20. Choose one that’s appropriate. Draw columns down the page for each span of time.

Once you’ve marked off your sheet, put into each of the time frames all the changes you experienced during that period. For example, at 5 you started school (how did THAT feel?), and will have had different schools at different times. You may have moved home, you started working, you maybe left home, siblings may have arrived, parents may have divorced, you went to college, decimalisation was introduced, you had to wear a seat belt, smoking was banned in all public places and so on. This is a great exercise to do in a group as you will spark each other off as you remember more and more changes that you have experienced, some funny, some serious, some sad, some really good.

A Change Survivor

The point of the exercise is to illustrate that you have survived all those changes and not only survived, but also accrued some valuable life skills along the way. Those skills stood you in good stead once and will do so again, if you can just access them in your mind and remove some of the inevitable fear that accompanies change. One of the most helpful things you can do to help cope with change is to stop telling yourself it’s bad and that you’re no good at it!

Coping with Change Article

I have written a much longer article on change which also looks at some of the theory associated with experiencing change. It’s available with many others free of charge on my web site. You can read it by clicking here.

Share Your Tips

If you have your own particular ways of coping with change in your life I’d love to hear them, simply comment on the blog; it’s easy! I look forward to hearing from you!