Who Moved my Cheese? The Importance of Accepting Change

There's been a lot of change in my life lately. Mostly my professional life. And sometimes it can be really tough to accept that.

My boss sent around a link to the video for Who Moved my Cheese, and the message actually really resonated with me. If you haven't seen it, I'll do my best to explain it, but I've also linked to the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txy6DwbwZ9g

The basic premise is that there are two sets of creatures in a maze - two mice, and two people - and each day they go out into the maze to get cheese. One day, they all find a huge amount of cheese. The mice realize that the cheese is finite and keep an eye on the supply so they can move on when the cheese runs low. The people, on the other hand, settle in, because they have plenty of cheese for now, so they see no need to do more than go to the same place in the maze every day for their cheese ration.

Well, of course, the cheese eventually runs out. The mice head out to find more cheese and leave the people to argue about what to do. "Who moved my cheese?" Demands one of the humans. They blame others for their lack of foresight, and argue day after day about what to do.

I know I can struggle with this, too. The people in the story eventually learn to move on and find cheese elsewhere in the maze. There are a couple pretty good sayings mentioned throughout the video, including "Smell the cheese often to know when it is getting old". That phrase really struck me, and I had to think about the last time I really examined my life, and what I'm doing with it.

When I thought about it over the last few days, I realized that I'm just doing the minimum. I'm sitting at my desk and putting my hours in, but I'm not really growing and thriving like i want to. I am lucky to have a boss who is working with me to push me to new and better things. But that isn't forever, and I need to work more on improving myself and my skill set.

There is a deep importance in accepting change. There are many things in our lives - both personal and professional - that we cannot change, but change around us anyway. Coworkers leave, new coworkers come in, and the whole culture of the company can change. These kinds of things can be tough to deal with - after all, it would be so much easier to just say "but that's not how things were!" and leave it there. But in the end it's important to change and grow with the people around you. The company is still made of the people, and nothing will ever change that.

I'm working on me, starting now. Hopefully it's all uphill from here.

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