Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson Book Analysis

Summary

Throughout the activities like the famous quote's activity, the personal inventories and reading the story “Who Moved My Cheese”, they have taught me about myself and who I am, and who I need to become in life. I found that each of these activities shined light on different lessons and outlooks of who I am as a person. Starting with the story “Who Moved My Cheese”, this story was a great example of what could happen if you don't adjust to change, and you become too comfortable with the “norm” of life around you. You may never realize that you do this, but when you look from an outside perspective, it may shift how you look and do things. Moving onto the personal inventories and the quotes exercise. These two activities together were intriguing in the way that they both shined light on who I am as a person. You never take time to sit back and think about your personal traits and how they contribute to your personality as a whole. This exercise to me was the most eye-opening and helpful in terms of understanding more of who I am as a person. 

What have you learned about yourself through these three exercises?

I believe these lessons had slightly different teachings. Regarding the book “Who Moved My Cheese”, I was able to take a step back and reflect. Not realizing it, this story showed me how I’m like Hem and I need to be more like Haw as I go through life. One of the quotes that resonated with me was “Haw realized again, as he had once before, that what you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists” (Johnson, 1998, Pg 63). My whole life, I have always been reluctant to change, and would believe change would lead to something worse. I was doing exactly what Hem was doing in this story, which was assuming change would lead to a negative when in reality, it could move things forward in a positive direction. I learned that change is ok, and that in order for life to go through its path, change has to happen. Furthermore, I learned that I have to change my mind set and understand that change is ok. After reading this story, it has helped me with my mental health and my friendships drastically. I never wanted to conform to the change around me, and I wanted everything to be the same as it always has been. I've learned, being open to change has made me a happier person, and I'm not stuck in the same patterns of daily life as I once was. 

Working through the personality inventory and the quotes exercise, I believe I was able to learn more about my personality, and I was able to break down who I am more than I have ever been able to. During these two activities together, it taught me more about who I am as a person and why I do the things I do. During the personality test, it showed me that I have an ISFJ personality. I learned that I am mostly an introvert, but I do need that occasional social interaction to charge my social battery. During this exercise, it was also nice to see the breakdown of my personality traits. Traits that I never knew existed, or I never had words for, I was able to learn about myself doing the personal inventory. For example, understanding why I cry more than the next person can be explained by this exercise in the category of nature. I scored slightly higher than half and, this explained that individuals in this category are seen to be more sensitive and emotionally expressive. The biggest takeaway I learned from these exercises was, being able to break down my personality traits really explained who I am as a person, and it explained things that I never had answers to. I learned why I take things more to heart, why I don't love going to parties every weekend, and why I am the way I am with school. This inventory was able to help me make sense of it all. 

Did you find overlap in what you learned? 

What I found interesting during these three activities were the overlays I found. The storyline behind the book “Who Moved My Cheese” was about having to accept change and conforming to society around you. When reading this book, I felt that I connected a lot with Hem, and how I don't like the idea of change. When doing the personal inventory, under the category of strengths and weaknesses, a weakness of the defender personality that I hold was “reluctant to change”. I found this very interesting because, before doing this test, I already knew that as a person, I was very hesitant to change, so seeing this tie into how I felt regarding Hem in “Who Moved My Cheese” was an eye-opening find. According to the website “16 Personalities”, they state that my defender personality is reluctant to change. “Changes can be particularly hard to address since defender personalities value traditions and history highly in their decisions. A situation sometimes needs to reach a breaking point before defenders are persuaded by circumstance, or the strong personality of a loved one, to alter course.” I believe this is a true representation of myself, and this overlap of a personality trait seen in “Who Moved My Cheese” and the personality inventory was an interesting find. Not knowing previously that these two exercises may intertwine at some point was something very interesting to find. 

Did each exercise shed a unique light on an aspect of who you are or what you want to accomplish?

Breaking down each of the exercises taught me new things about who I am as a person and what I want to change. Starting with the quotes exercise, one of the three quotes I chose was said by Eleanor Roosevelt, and it stated “ No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent”. The first interesting point about this quote and who said it, is that both Eleanor Roosevelt and I share the same personality code of ISFJ. The reason I chose this quote is that it’s actually the motto I grew up hearing. My grandmother has always said this quote to me and this is something I have always struggled with. Something I want to accomplish from this, is that I want to stop thinking that people have the ability to alter how I feel and how they don't have that power to control me. I believe getting over this thought that people have the power to “control” me or how I feel will let me move further in life and I will be able to succeed more. Going through life constantly worrying if you’re pleasing people will only bring you down in life and that's no way to live. I would like to learn to overcome this battle. 

What I would like to accomplish from the story “Who Moved My Cheese” is to become more like Haw in the story rather than Hem. Haw was willing to change after seeing that being stuck in the same life situation was doing him no good. Moving with the situation will help me get through life, and I would like to become more accustomed to change. I believe identifying that I do struggle with change is the first step, now actually doing something about it, is the next battle itself. I would like to be more comfortable when change makes its way in my life and to be more willing to adjust to it, rather than push it off to the side. 

In what ways will you use what you learned from these exercises moving forward this year, after graduation, and beyond?

I'm really happy I had the opportunity to read the book “Who Moved My Cheese” and I have recommended the book to a lot of people, because I think it relays a really important message. I think the lessons from this book are what I will mostly take and run with for the near future. In regards to what may happen when it comes time to graduate school acceptances, I may have to accept some new change. There can be a few factors here, whether I dont get into graduate school i'm going to have to accept that and adjust to that change. If I do get into graduate school, i'm going to have to change my way of going about my schooling like I did in my undergrad. Same thing goes for my future job one day. The job I hold someday when I am 26, will not be the same exact job when I am 65 years old. As the years go on, I’m going to have to realize when change is happening and i'm going to have to adapt to that change around me.