Who Moved My Cheese?

Why is it so difficult to deal with change and uncertainty? What’s up with the world and wanting to move our cheese? Wait, why is there an emphasis on cheese here?

Today’s post is another book summary! A lot of you may already be familiar with it: ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ by Dr. Spencer Johnson. It’s a tale about 4 mice in a maze who have different approaches to the inevitable changes that they experience. I won’t dive too much into the story itself, but rather the nuggets of wisdom that I gained from it.

We experience change on a continuous basis. Most recently, the era of Covid-19 has disrupted the way we do everything. From social distancing, to wearing masks, constantly spraying our hands with vinegar smelling sanitizers, having curfews and working from home.

It certainly has been a struggle for almost everyone. But it is less of a struggle for people who manage to adapt rapidly and expect change. Let’s talk about the nature of change, its consistency in life, how we can learn to expect change and embracing a growth mindset (yet again).

The nature of change

What exactly is the nature of change? This is such an interesting way of thinking about things. It’s essentially what evolution is all about; the ability to adapt to unexpected circumstances. As human beings, we love predictability (I suppose all living things do). When we experience situations that disrupt those predictions, we feel uneasy. Yet the essence of life is continuous change.

In the story, the 4 mice experience a radical shift in their living situation. They no longer find cheese in the same little station within the maze. Two of the mice decide to move on and search in new places to potentially find cheese. The other two get stuck in their old ways and start complaining. They become furious and agitated because their cheese is no longer there. They feel like they deserved and earned it. It’s unfair that this is happening to them.

The cheese can mean different things to each of us, but it essentially represents something in our lives that we hold onto. Something that we deserve. Something that we’ve earned. Something that should permanently stay ours. Something that makes us happy. This could be a job, a relationship, freedom, recognition or even an activity.

The problem with that mindset is that it makes us clingy. We stop seeing the world for what it truly is. We become egotistical in a sense. It causes us stress, it drains our energy, and it makes us unpleasant to be around. So what can we do instead?

Expecting change

We should be more like the mice who decided to move on and look for new cheese, immediately after the calamity struck. What’s interesting thing about expecting change is that we basically have to ‘expect the unexpected’. You never know when something could show up and re-direct the course of our life. It just happens. We don’t necessarily get a choice in that specific event, but we always get to choose how we respond to it.

When it comes to anticipating change, the key is to stop holding onto things. We need to learn acceptance. I’ve spoken about that several times before, but it’s always so relevant. Acceptance is what enables us to become more adaptive.

Another way to expect change is by actually imagining the worst-case scenario. This kind of exercise isn’t always easy, but it allows to consciously think of how we would overcome terrible scenarios. It’s actually quite a common practice in stoicism. Again, the point here is to embrace the unknown. Start leaving your comfort zone more often. You’ll be surprised at how resilient you are.

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Growth mindset

The last point I want to make about change is that being adaptive is fueled by having a growth mindset. Everything that I mentioned before is primarily driven by our mindset and approach towards things. If we believe that our experiences will help us develop new skills, make us stronger and allow us to grow, change becomes a necessity.

Constantly think of the impact your struggles have on the neural connections in your mind. Being adaptive can actually become physically ingrained into who you are. The next time you face an unexpected change, embrace it. Accept it. Think about it this way:

“What have you come to teach me?”

You’ll realize soon enough that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, to become who you’re destined to be. It’s okay that you find it tough. It’s okay that you enjoy planning for things. It’s okay if you’re comfortable in your routines. Just anticipate that it won’t always be that way. You’re better off when you stretch yourself past the discomfort. You got this.

“Be like water, my friend”

Change And New Beginnings

Every year tends to bring with it a new chapter. A new beginning. A new adventure. The concept of novelty is highly sought after, despite how terrifying it can be. We’re creatures of habit, but we also get bored very quickly.

Life can be quite painful. We encounter tragedy at every corner. It’s essentially inevitable. What we have control over is our perception, reaction and ability to adapt. Let’s talk about accepting change, becoming resilient and seeking novel experiences.

Accepting Change

To really understand why it’s so important to accept change, I always think about this quote:

“Change is inevitable, resistance is futile.”

It’s going to happen whether you like it or not. Nothing stays the same. All you can do is prepare and become receptive to the disruptions that are inbound.

I recently talked to a friend of mine about the concept of being in a cocoon. We start off being little caterpillars, content with our leaves and staying on the same branch – immature. Then life gets a little trickier and we decide to engulf ourselves in a chrysalis. It feels safer, more comfortable and we don’t have to deal with the external world.

The initial discomfort is a crucial step in the metamorphosis. It catalyzes our transformation into the best version of ourselves. Once we’ve adequately accepted the change, we start evolving into a butterfly and break out of the cocoon – matured. This is the point of escape; from limitations, negative self-talk and denial. We fly into the world stronger, faster, braver and more beautiful than ever.

What we don’t realize is that the difficult and new circumstances were a critical aspect of the transformation. We require novelty and a certain degree of hardship to grow.

Becoming Resilient

And so, when we learn to continuously embrace challenges and try to overcome them, we become resilient. The reason I love talking about resilience is because it’s at the heart of learning.

When we experience change or disruption, we’re forced to adapt. When we learn to continuously adapt, it becomes easier for us to deal with more unprecedented changes. The cycle essentially feeds itself. We need to approach our fears with courage and prove to ourselves that we truly are capable of overcoming them.

Resilience allows us to try again. It allows us to keep pushing. It prevents us from giving up because deep down we know, we can do it.

If you really want to observe resilience at its best, just spend time in nature. Watch the trees and plants. Notice how they have absolutely no control over their environment, yet they find ways to thrive. Follow your nature and embrace the inevitable changes that are coming your way. In fact, you should go out of your way to face challenges that you’ve never experienced before.

Seeking Novel Experiences

Instead of waiting for changes to come your way, why don’t you go out to face them instead? I don’t just mean trying out a new restaurant or hotel, but I mean actual adventures that require some form of courage and dedication (I can see how you could argue that for restaurants or hotels, but you get my point here).

What I want you to understand here is that you can mentally (and I suppose physically) train yourself to get used to adapting. Not just to survive, but to get the hang of it and thrive. You prove to yourself that you’re capable of overcoming the discomfort, difficulty and uncertainty. The more you leave your comfort zone, the more you’re exposing yourself to growth.

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The point I’m trying to make is that we’re always going encounter unfamiliar situations. It’s going to be scary, overwhelming and challenging. What we can control is our approach to and perception of those situations. We can look at the circumstances we’ve overcome in the past and utilize the same skills again in the future. We can turn those challenges into opportunities to grow.

If you just reflect over the past few months, you’ll realize that you’ve been remarkably resilient. You’ve endured an incredible amount of hardship and suffering. Yet you’re still here. You’re still fighting. You’re still giving it your best. Don’t give up when it’s hard. Smile and embrace the challenge. It’s going to transform you into the beautiful butterfly that you’ve been destined to become.

Implementing Change

So we’re approaching a new year yet again. I’m genuinely surprised that we managed to survive up until now. I have no idea what 2021 has in store for us, but we’ve already endured enough to take on whatever challenges it brings.

I’ve discussed the concept of reflecting, habits and preparing for a new year before. You can click on any of the hyperlinks to read those posts in more detail. Considering that December is around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to get the ball rolling.

Prepare in advance

This philosophy has carried me a long way in terms of getting things done. Whenever we take on a new task, project or habit, it initially seems like a mountain to climb. There’s just way too much to do and it can be very daunting.

The solution? Start before you’re meant to start.

It works like a charm. If you’re writing an essay or a report for example, start with setting up your template before you even get your assignment brief. Maybe even get the introduction in while you’re at it. If you’re planning to start exercising, keep your outfit ready the night before. If you want to get into reading, keep the book by your bedside and read 1 page before you sleep.

“You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.”

It’s more or less about mentally preparing. You’re telling yourself: ‘Ha, I’ve already started… Let’s just continue and make a little more progress.’

Starting is more often than not where the most friction is. If you can find a way to lubricate the beginning, it’ll make your life a lot simpler. Prepare in advance for any of your endeavors.

Write down your goals

It’s as simple as that. Write. Down. Your. Goals. If you don’t know what to write, that’s enough of an indication that you need to start working on yourself. You’re essentially creating a map to direct your energy, perhaps we could call it a compass.

There’s an infinite number of directions that we can take in our lives. We need to figure out which ones are the most worthwhile and aligned with our values. You need to carefully start thinking about this, well before the new year comes.

*FYI, I’m just using the new year as a reference point. It psychologically helps with making abrupt changes in our lives. We should be doing these practices throughout the year at any given point.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.

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Visualize

Everything we use today is a result of someone’s imagination. It’s been thought of or visualized before. We all operate in a similar way. We’re guided by our thoughts.

Energy follows focus

Keep in mind that the more we contemplate our goals and visualize ourselves achieving them, the more likely we are to relentlessly chase them. You’re constantly reminding your subconscious of what you want. It’s essentially what we do when we pray for things that we want.

Yes, a lot of it is out of our control and somethings are destined for us, while other things are not. That doesn’t mean we should try our best to get what it is we do want. This also works best as soon as you wake up or before you go to bed. Your mind is still hazy and you absorb information a lot quicker into your psyche.

When you do visualize, really put effort into it. Feel the emotions. Feel the celebration. Feel the contentment of working hard and achieving your objectives.

Reflect

We are all just a bunch of mistakes. Each and every day, we make several terrible choices. We also occasionally make a few great ones. The best way to filter those decisions and differentiate between what worked and what didn’t, is to reflect on them regularly. It’s how we make sure we don’t repeat the same mistakes again.

Before you go to bed, take stock of how the day went. What were the range of emotions? Did you achieve what you set out to do? What worked really well for you? What was a complete waste of time? What did you learn today?

These are some really great questions that we should keep in mind as often as possible. Don’t ever stop learning, especially from your own life. The treasure is there and it’s infinite, we just need to be willing to dig in.

Change

Now we’re getting to the crux of things. The post today was essentially meant to encourage you take action. To embrace change. To keep striving to improve yourself.

It’s always easier said than done. Something we’ve evolved to do is take the past of least resistance. What does that mean exactly? Well, it basically means that we’ll keep doing the same easy thing over and over again, if it give us average results. But even when we do keep at it, things just pop up and force us to adapt.

“Change is inevitable, resistance is futile.”

Ultimately, what we need to do is become more adaptable. If we start making changes in our own life and gain a new perspective, it’ll mean that we are becoming more comfortable with change. Become comfortable being uncomfortable.

“The only constant in life is change.”

And there you have it; a growth mindset. Which a central theme yet again. Because we are only capable of much more than we think we are. Our greatest limitation is our own thoughts. Remove the sentence ‘I can’t’ from your vocabulary. Whatever you’re overcoming, whatever you’re struggling to achieve, whatever you’ve been praying for, just remember: Not yet.

Make stress your friend!

Far too often we get trapped in our own little cycle of thoughts. Some are true, some are exaggerated, some are just unnecessary and some are completely wrong.

By now, I’ve explained how critical perspectives are. I’d like to help change your mindset towards a very common foe; stress. I shouldn’t be using the term foe at all, in fact it’s our ally more than anything.

Let’s unravel how building a relationship with stress, can boost our performance in pretty much every aspect of our life. And how our relationships can also help us better deal with it.

I’ll start start with a few negative aspects regarding stress.

The statistics are quite staggering. Stress is absolutely detrimental to your health. Here are a few of the risks associated with chronic stress:

• Mental health issues
• Cardiovascular disease
• Intense headaches
• Weakened immunity

This isn’t meant to scare you (or maybe it is idk). I’m just trying to shed some light on a very common subject. The negative effects are associated only when you believe that being stressed is bad for you. So the aim is to try and optimize that belief.

But can a simple change in perspective really minimize the negative effects? -Absolutely.

Here’s a TED talk I highly recommend if you have the time:

You should also know by now that I’ve started to fall in love with questions. So what is stress?

“Stress is your body’s reaction to any change that requires a response.”

I quite like how brief that description is. We pretty much feel stressed all the time. It comes in various forms & at multiple stages, but it’s always somewhere there. It’s what forces us out of bed every morning. It’s what pushes us to study for our exams and get done with our tasks.

The key to problem solving, lies in having great awareness of the issue. This would also include having a good understanding of what you’re capable of doing. Largely, what we know about stress is that feeling when we have a substantial amount of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it. We get a little panicky, impatient, slightly (or highly) irritable.

So the first step would be to become aware of those feelings. Accept them as part of your body’s natural response. Don’t think about it as being bad for you.

The next question is: How much of stress do we need?

The mind works in marvelous ways. I’ve always been fascinated by how quickly we adapt to uncomfortable situations. There’s a very narrow gap between having just enough stress to be motivated, and that overflowing into stress that damages our health.

Each person works effectively under different circumstances. Therefore, there can’t really be a definitive answer to how much stress we need.

Identify it for yourself, through building some form of self-awareness. Determine how much stress pushes you to work, and how much stress pushes you overboard.

Think of stress as your back-up response. Your personal SOS. Your subconscious dial for 911. It’s your ally! It’s there to help you, as long as you keep it in check.

I love talking to people about perspective changing, because it’s honestly what has helped me change so much in my own life. Now, I’m going to ask another very important question: How do we learn to deal with stress?

The minute you start ignoring the signals your body sends you, that’s when stress starts getting out of control. A few key important steps:

• Notice how your breathing changes (breathe in more deeply)
• Be aware of your thought patterns (stay present)
• Focus on the task at hand (back yourself)
• Imagine the feeling of relaxation once it’s over (you will survive!)
• Socialize 🙂

Apart from the aforementioned points, immerse yourself in the present moment by practicing something you really enjoy. Clear your mind with exercise, watching a sunset, reading an interesting book, watching your favourite movie or just going for a stroll in nature.

The key philosophy I’m trying to get to is this:

Better awareness leads to better choices, which ultimately leads to better results.

Do you know what else works really well to relieve stress?

Oxytocin!

For those of you who don’t know what oxytocin is; it’s not a drug. Well sort of. It’s a hormone released in your body that’s associated with socializing. Also known as the cuddle hormone. Oxytocin is released as part of the stress response, to help you get along with other people.

Lucerne, Switzerland [Contiki 2018]

Why would that help? Because we’ve evolved that way. The most effective way to deal with daily stressors is through seeking assistance. When you confide in others and find a helpful social structure, you mentally deal with the stress a lot better.

I really just want you all to realize that there are certain aspects of our biology that we can and cannot control. The most efficient way to live therefore, is to use what we can control, to help us deal with what we cannot control.

Stress is your friend. And your friends help you with stress. Life is a vicious cycle of paradoxes that don’t always make sense. That’s okay. We just have to follow our nature. Try our best. And ultimately realize that we’re going to die some day. None of this will really matter then.

“Live for the present like you’ll die tomorrow, plan for the future like you’ll live forever.”

One of the most profound quotes I’ve come across. I hope this message was beneficial. Please share it with those who could make use of it. The aim is to help as many people as possible live out their full potential.

Thinking Out Loud ~ 4

Another post where I’m just sharing the chatter that often stays in my mind. A few topics that I’ll dive into are: Art, Beauty and Change! Ahh, the only constant in life. Excited to get the ball rolling with this one, let’s learn some ABC!

I’ll share pics from the my adventures as I’ve done with the previous posts in this series.

Art

Is in the eye of the beholder. Define art, I dare you. Haha, the thing is, it’s always left up to the individual’s perception. Kind of like taste. There’s no certainty in what tastes good or bad, it all depends on the person and their experiences.

Just as our views and opinions evolve with time and experience, so do our senses. The moment we become conscious of how readily our perceptions change, the more easily we’ll become lovers of life.

I like the idea of art being related to contentment. When we’re truly able to be mindful of how certain things affect us, and be grateful for that feeling; I’d say that’s experiencing art.

Art doesn’t necessarily have to be a painting or a sculpture, it can be anything that allows you to feel connected to the world.

The sky is art. It’s different each and every day. Just like you, you’re different every day. The weather also makes us feel a certain way. Good or bad? That doesn’t matter. When it’s out of your control, learn to accept it.

The way we connect to the world is with our feelings. And feelings influence our thought patterns, which subsequently drive our behaviours! Or is it the other way around? Do our thought patterns affect our feelings?

It’s definitely all intertwined. Acknowledging that our thoughts, emotions and behaviours all affect each other, can help us understand ourselves better.

After all, we are art. Cultivated by the Creator.

The cognitive triangle!

Ahh, we’re getting somewhere with this. I’d like to touch on beauty while we’re here.

Beauty

Let me make you cringe a little (Although you’d probably love to read it anyway).

BeYOUtiful. You are beautiful. You look beautiful. You are art.

Is there a difference between being beautiful and looking beautiful? Absolutely! One is complimenting an appearance, the other is complimenting a character.

You know what’s an impeccable piece of art in my opinion? Developing your character.

Appearances are temporary, futile and lustful. Definitely something important and should be genuinely appreciated, but not the main plot of the story. Who we are, what defines us, our purpose, our contribution, our legacy. That should be our main focus.

We need to still be comfortable in our own skin. So I’m trying to find the balance between being and looking beautiful.

I’m kind of leaning towards how we should each strive to be beautiful human beings. We’re all beautiful in a physical sense. We’re all created from the same soil, the same source. We need to internalize that connection and appreciate the beauty in our differences.

But what about our spirit? We need to be ourselves.

To be yourself, you need to understand who you are! Through unfolding our turbulent childhoods, we can decipher where our belief systems came from, and see how our perceptions were formed. It’s more often than not, due to a younger version of ourselves coming to a silly conclusion about the world.

In essence, I’m encouraging journalling again, haha. Why? Because it allows you to see yourself for who you truly are, and appreciate the beauty that is your journey. To understand your own nature and beauty.

You’re not static. You’re constantly evolving. Stop holding onto false egotistical beliefs. Change the inner narrative. You’re not your circumstances, you’re more than that.

In the purest sense, you’re beautiful. You should measure that by your soul and character, not just your appearance.

Change

I love talking about change, considering how it’s one of the most consistent aspects of life. You’re not the same person you were a few minutes ago. How come? Because your physiology literally changes all the time, that includes your brain. Neuro-plasticity!

Change is inevitable, resistance is futile.

Now, what I really want to dig into, is the change we choose to suffer. We tend to associate certain changes with negativity, for various reasons. Sometimes the change is our fault and can be genuinely harmful, most of the time however, we suffer from change that is not really in our control.

When people say things like: “You’ve changed so much! You’re not the same… ”

We often associate that with faults, or that there’s something wrong with changing. We should rather embrace it and be content with our change. Of course we’re meant to be different if we’re growing and maturing. What use is it being the same?

I’m just trying to encourage one thing here, embrace change. Understand that you need to experience discomfort and non-ideal situations, to actually grow. To actually learn. To actually make a difference.

Imagine if everyone stayed the same or lived within the same conditions, how static would the world be?

This is just something that I enjoyed sharing and I hope certain aspects of it did resonate with you. Art- Appreciation. Beauty- Be yourself. Change- Certain. These quick reminders help me find meaning in the day to day struggles.

“Nobody cares about how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

So keep showing people that you care. Be grateful. Be strong. Be you. You’re everything you’re meant to be and more.