Why can’t I stop thinking about this 22-year-old book

Behold New Year resolutions because I just completed one of the first books of my reading target of 2026! The book is Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. Written over two decades ago and barely 100 pages long, it manages to teach timeless life lessons with remarkable simplicity.

Interested? Let’s go!

The story starts with friends meeting for their reunion many years after they graduated from school. One of them asks his friends to read the story and to reflect what the story meant when they reconvened.

We are taken on a journey with four characters-Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw who are in a maze looking for their cheese. They all started from the same point and eventually found cheese at station C. For them, cheese represents a full tummy and a comfortable life.

But then one day, the cheese starts to disappear.

What follows is a simple yet powerful exploration of how each character responds to unexpected change.

Some of my favourite lessons are enumerated below-

If you don’t change, you risk becoming extinct

The cheese in their lives starts to slowly disappear. Hem and Haw continue to live in this cheeseless station, reluctant to accept the change, getting famished by the day. We see how Haw realises the toll staying was causing to his health and decides to move out. He asks his friend Hem to join him, but he blatantly refuses, not wanting to relinquish his life of comfort.Haw realises- either he could live here with his friend and perish or move on.

Smell the cheese often so you know when its getting old

When the four characters started, they all had running shoes. Sniff and Scurry tied the shoes around their necks while Hem and Haw hung them at the station & forgot about them. When the cheese starts to disappear, they realise it’s time to move and leave the cheese station C early on. Their decisiveness and ability to adapt led them to cheese station N in time, helping them live comfortably despite such sudden change.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid

Haw, during his escape from the cheese less situation realises that he feels dread every now and then. He would sometimes end up in dark corners, find cheese here and there but nothing that lasted. But, he also realised that every time he acted, it helped him get out of his comfort zone. His journey is a testament that fear is necessary for change. If we weren’t scared once in a while, we wouldn’t act — and without it, we would never be able to manifest change.

When you stop being afraid, you feel good

When you speak to most people about change, the first response is often fear or delusion. In the last three to four months, I have seen change up close and personal- losing my grandma, shifting homes and now cities. I was overwhelmed.

Through all this, people shared their own apprehensions- some good, some not. It’s only when I stopped feeling powerless, and a victim of my circumstances, did I feel happy, that this might just be the blessed change I was looking for.

The quicker you let go of the old, the sooner you will find the new

Kim Eun-Jae- the famed singer and golden globe winner for the song Golden, in the movie K-pop Demon hunters (fantastic move, do watch!) say, “Rejection is re-direction”.

It stayed with me.

She toiled for a decade as a K-pop idol with no recognition. Today, her song is charting in the Billboard top 100 and has won a Golden Globe. Her ability to persevere in adversity- learning to let go of her old self and continuously reinvent- is what led to this enormous success.

When you see that you can find and enjoy new cheese, you change course

Through the story, we see Haw through his journey of looking for new cheese. Every time he found new cheese, it gave him the confidence to keep exploring. He realises that his fear was really the fear of the unknown. It held him captive and when he understood that, he chose to be free.

To run in the opposite direction. To finally, savour the journey and not just the final reward.

These are some of the many interesting lessons from the story and there are more hidden gems if you choose to read this book. It’s one of those books that quietly leaves a lasting impression without being preachy.

Give it a whirl. You never know how your life, just might, change.