I feel like I need to share a little pearl of wisdom that was passed on to me by my very generous uncle. I never see my uncle and we hardly talk and this is why it came as such a shock to me that when I recently took a trip up to Johannesburg to see my extended family, he could tell immediately that I was not happy with the way my life was going. He handed me a book and said, “Courtneigh, it will take you twenty minutes to read, and it will change your life.” I am not the type to pass up a good book so I was game before he said anything. I saw those dog eared pages flapping towards me and already my interest was piqued so to be told that the story would change my life made me all the more interested to get started.
The story is called, “Who moved my Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson. As my uncle told me, it changed my life. I am a firm believer that your mind-set is the key to how your life turns out and this book reaffirmed that fact for me. The book teaches you to always plan ahead. If you think that you are on the verge of getting bored of your job, then look for other opportunities. Our life is short, and it is getting shorter every day, we cannot afford to stay complacent because we are comfortable. I know people who are bored as sin with their friends, people who hate their jobs and people who cannot stand the place they live. I have news for you all: the world gets tinier every single day. You can move to another country, you can look for another job and you can find new friends, if your life is really not where you want it to be.
You are the only person who can make your life better. No one else has the capacity to or the interest to make your life better, unless the name of this person is The National lottery, in which case you have a close to non existent chance of that happening. This story is of four characters that are on the constant search for cheese. The cheese is a metaphor for happiness, love and money. The one pair of characters are mice and the other pair are tiny men. Sniff and Scurry (the mice) run on pure instinct. When they find cheese, they do not settle down and accept that their life is made but they keep their running shoes tied around their neck and hope they never will need to use the shoes. Hem and Haw have more emotions that drag them down and lead them to get comfortable and slack in their pursuit of cheese. They find one load of cheese and build their house near this cheese and leave later and later every morning to get to the cheese. Eventually the cheese runs out. Take a guess which pair are more adaptive to the situation? Sniff and Scurry put their running shoes and get the hell out of there; they need to find more cheese.
This story continues to follow Hem’s journey into thinking more like the mice and wanting to move on and find a better lot of cheese for himself. He eventually leaves stubborn Haw behind and finds himself in a massive cheese plant that is ten times better than the cheese he had before. This is all a metaphor on how most of the time change can only lead to good things. Personal growth is always something that is needed in life and we should not put it off because we don’t have the energy to find that little slice of happiness for ourselves.
This story lead me to start this blog, because I feel like I have so many thoughts in my head and not releasing them is an injustice to myself. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is an injustice to others but if someone gets an inch of entertainment from my musings then I am happy with that.
I have decided that any actions I need made in my life have got to come actively from me. There is no white knight that is going to swoop in and make me a princess. There is no “Competition of Life” that is going to name me as its next winner. I have to make myself a winner, I have to make myself happy and I have to make myself into the person I would want to know in this big unhappy and unjust world.
If you are in a rut and feel that you need a change I really would suggest that you track the book down. I am taking steps to be the change. When will you?
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