Ed.Williamson's Full Review: Spencer Johnson - Who Moved My Cheese
I kept wondering what this book was all about a year ago when someone mentioned how it had made a major impact on their business. I tend to be a little skeptical of books with titles that say "Manage Your Business One Minute At A Time" . In one sense, they seem to me to be the School-Of-Business version of the Vegematic vegetable slicer ("Isn't that A-MA-ZING!!!) or the "Popeil Pocket Magician." When it comes to books on business management, I tend to look for books Like Peter Drucker's excellent little tome "The Effective Executive" rather than "Fifty Snappy Ways To Increase Profits And Keep Your Workers In Nirvana" and all that genre.
But something told me this book might be different.
So I bought the hardback version of it, and then on impulse, the audio version. This review is about one of those two products, but I'm not telling which it is. This is supposed to be a review of the hardback book, but I am going to vex the official epinions police as well as the "I would have given you a higher rating but this review is in the wrong category" epinionators by simply telling you I'm not going to tell you whether it was the print version or the cassette version you are reading about. You'll just have to guess. This is just so you'll wake up in the middle of the night and worry about whether you might have given it the wrong rating because it was the right item in the right category after all. Sorry, o ye ep perfectionists.
Anyway, what about that business in the title that this book can jump-start your life? It can.
The book itself is about 4 characters who live in a maze and love cheese. I can sympathize. Right now I am wishing I had a big hunk of extra-sharp Kraft cheese (yeah, the kind that comes in the red foil wrapper in the USA) and some Ritz Crackers. I know, cholesterol city and all that, but it sure tastes good. Anyway maybe you like cheese too. But that's what the book is about. Actually, the "cheese" in this book serves as a metaphor for whatever makes you very happy. It can be love, food, accomplishment, or many other things. The "cheese" is whatever really makes you smile and want to go and get some. And it is about how these 4 characters go for the cheese.
It is also about the fact that life has a way of taking our heart's desires (cheese) and moving them away from where we think we can count on them to be. This always seems manifestly unfair and depressing to us when life hands us a scenario which is "not the way it s'posed to be." It is at this point that we have to make one of the Great Decisions of life: Are we going to sit and feel sorry for ourselves because life isn't giving us what we want, or is there a way to go for newer and maybe even better "cheese"? Here is where the book gets interesting. What do you do when they move the cheese on you? Do you get angry, or do you get going? And if you get going, how and why do you do it?
The answers may surprise you. They may also make you feel guilty.
One of the reactions which I had, and I think that many people have, is to reflect on areas of my life where my own cheese has been moved and I have just been in denial and paralysis about it. When I saw those areas I wanted to change, and the book alludes to how change can come. You can jump-start your life.
One thing I liked was that the book did not make a great deal of fun about people who have been so stunned by unfair things happening to them in life that they have given up and withdrawn into a shell. It seems to understand that anyone can go into that time of pain and grief, and yet it gently tells of a way out and into a life of "cheese-seeking" all over again.
Are we really rats in a maze, or cheese-seekers? Not really. But sometimes life seems like that. And no matter how much we design life to give us an endless supply of cheese on all fronts, sooner or later something moves the cheese on us. You have a choice to make when it happens.
The lesson in this book is told with a nice degree of humor and irony. I am told that it has changed thousands, and possibly millions, of peoples' lives for the best.
It doesn't take long to read it, or even to listen to it (one cassette). But it just might change the direction of your life for the better. While no "Effective Executive"-type book, this one is worth reading/ listening to. And it gets even better with re-readings/re-listenings. So go get this one when you have a chance. Sit down in a nice easy chair somewhere and read it. And eat some Kraft sharp cheddar with some Ritz crackers while you do; it will drive the lesson home.
You may even find yourself passing this story on to someone you love, too. It's that kind of book.
****
WHO MOVED MY CHEESE?
By Spencer Johnson, M.D.
$19.95 full retail USA
ISBN 0-399-14446-3
The textbook, Who Moved My Cheese? : An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life (Large Print), by Spencer Johnson, available in ...More at Textbooks.com
WorkPlace Culture Business & Economics - With over a million copies in print, the #1 New York Times bestseller Who Moved My Cheese? An A-Mazing Way to...More at Barnes and Noble
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