RAVINDRA AGRAWAL – REFLECTION OF THE BOOK “WHO MOVED MY CHEESE” – SHORT BOOK CLUB.

After reading the book, “Who moved my cheese” written by Dr. Spencer Johnson, I can strongly say that it is a must read book in life. The book contains a very interesting story with four characters in it, “Sniffy and Scurry (the mice) and Hem and Haw (Tiny people). They all used to live in a “Maze” which represents our work place, society, home, culture and so on. The characters in the book represent different mentality / behavior / habits of different people. It also portraits different ways in which people deal with the change occurs in various aspects of their lives at the regular interval of time. “Cheese” can be defined in your own way such as, “Money, fame, success, health, family, own house or any other materialistic thing. “Move With The Cheese” represents the key learning of the book. It is telling us to analyze the situation, anticipate the future changes, be mentally ready for the same, proactively adapt with them as soon as possible and enjoy moving with them. If we are able to follow these things, change will never be able to surprise us and we can embrace the change. For most of the people “change” is scary because of a lot of uncertainty and fear of security which is mentioned in the book with the use of metaphor “darkness”. This book can inspire you to keep moving on to find your “Cheese”. However, it also says that some fear must be respected in order to keep ourselves safe from real danger. But our fear should not lead or empower our decisions in life. “What would you do, if you weren’t afraid?”, is my key take away from this book. I think this is one of the biggest learnings of my life and a very good way to start leaving many empty cheese stations of my life. (To understand “what is cheese station, you will have to read the book). I think I have played all the story characters at some points in my life. But I admit, I was more of a “Hem” in a major part of my life and the same has been observed by me for others. But I will shift from “Hem to Haw” (Confused Again? – Now what is this? – Read the book.). Thank you for the wonderful opportunity of learning.