Who Moved My Cheese

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The book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Spencer Johnson explains the human tendency to resist change. While change is a necessary and vital part of life, it is at the same time a scary concept for most individuals. Change involves a journey into the unknown and untried. For many individuals, this journey provokes initial feelings of fear, which tend to impede the success of any change process. In Johnson's book, the main message is the book is that change happens, and how one responds to change will determine their level of success in the near future.

In the beginning of the book, the change process in introduced by a gathering of former classmates who discuss the process of change and the fear that provokes.

• The main message in the book is that change happens, regardless of how much resistance it encounters.
• Cheese is the metaphor for the things individuals want in life while the maze represents the places one must look in order to find what is valued.

The book revolves around four characters: two mice and two miniature humans.

The mice are named:

• Sniff
• Scurry

The humans are named:

• Hem
• Haw

All four live in a maze. In the beginning of the book, Johnson is careful to point out that the mice have simple brains and the humans have complex brains suitable for solving problems. Yet as the story progresses, it is the mice that succeed while the humans stall in indecision and fear.

All four of the characters enjoy their "cheese". After finding a huge supply of cheese, Hew and Haw get comfortable. Both believe they have enough cheese to last forever. Further, both believe they have earned the right to enjoy the cheese to the fullest extent possible. While Hem and Haw are blind to the small changes taking place in Cheese Station C, Sniff and Scurry begin to notice that their cheese supply is changing. When the supply of cheese is suddenly gone, Sniff and Scurry run off to find another source of cheese while Hem and Haw are unable to cope with the loss.

The attitudes expressed by Johnson in the story are very true to real life. When unexpected change happens, people react with emotions like fear, shock, anger and grief. Like Hem and Haw, individuals are resistant to change. Change involves moving out of one's comfort zone in order to embrace the new and the unexpected. As the story progresses, Haw eventually comes to terms with the loss of the familiar and tentatively leaves in search of new cheese. Hem however, remains immobile due to his feelings of rage and denial. He is unable to accept that what he believes he earned and so rightfully deserves could so easily be taken away.