Who Moved My Cheese - A book that makes the prospect of change cute, fun, and easy - but is it?

Have you ever read the book Who Moved My Cheese?

by Spencer Johnson?

It's an oldie but goodie, packed with snappy sentences that frame the prospect of change as cute, fun, and easy! It's for business managers trying to get their teams on board for reorgs and layoffs.

Here's a quote: 

“The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.”

It could really be applied anywhere, even to making changes in life that are part of what we would call a healing process.

But is change really all that snappy and fun?

Often it's not. I am SO HAPPY for the people who have decided to get on board with making changes in their lives. EVEN as they find "healing" is not as cute and easy as it's cracked up to be. They are showing up, or straggling in. They are taking a breath or taking a break, but they keep returning to do their work.

One of the Reiki Principles is Do Your Work With Integrity.

Some take "work" to mean the work we do to earn a living. Others think of it as the work of meditation and aligning with our true purpose, of hearing our heart. When you choose a healing path, the work of livelihood and the work of inner inquiry are usually intertwined.

The participants I'm referring to are doing both. They are seeing how discrepancies between inner knowing and outward expression can lead to stress, heavy energy, physical and emotional pain patterns.

Why am I talking about the book Who Moved My Cheese? Because, while it entertains us with imaginative metaphors for handling change, it feels like a happiness meme before there was such a thing as a meme. We stop our scroll - and maybe even click and buy - because it cheers us up. We take its advice!

Before we know it, though, the old fears and resentments creep back in and we're back to book store or resuming our scroll.

Our Inner Healing Circle group might be called scrappy. (IHC members, what do you say? 😅) It's just a few of us. Sometimes we don't know what to say. Sometimes we cohere. Sometimes we're awkward. Sometimes we're floaty and perfect. Sometimes we want to end early.

We wonder what we are getting out of something that isn't very shiny or popular. I say "we" because I wonder, too. Success is about lots of likes, right? A few is not a lot.

Yesterday, though, it hit me EXACTLY what we are doing. And it is perfect. Our group is mirroring the actual healing process. So unintendedly cool!

This is how it goes:

You decide to open to your true self. Or more probably, you have a problem or crisis that demonstrates to you that your contrived self is suffering. Somethings not working. The time has come to open to your true self. It's exhilarating. You're about to set yourself free!

This is like learning energy work, too. At first it's cool and mysterious. You feel the reiki glowing in your hands. You see purple and blue when you meditate. And you thought you were bad at meditation 😲) Maybe you get hit with a spot-on intuition!

In time, though, it fades. You get bored. You feel you're repeating the same the same "spiritual" protocols. You get irritated with the people who gave you inspiration. Finding joy in the journey feels like a whole load of b.s.

The people in the Inner Healing Circle show up courageously. They are learning to trust the process. Trust themselves. They have now been at it just long enough to recognize a downward spiral forming in their mindset. They feel the lull in motivation.

BUT!

They are beginning to reframe uncertainty or fear as a clue that the next AHA moment may be just up ahead.

So they CHOOSE to show up again, even when they feel blah.

Sometimes our meeting leaves us feeling peaceful and supported. Sometimes wishing we'd eaten ice cream and watched a low-brow series instead instead of slogging half-heartedly through a meditation. (Slogging half-heartedly through a meditation is gold-star material. That IS the work!)

They keep showing up for whatever arises. That's what we do when we've entered the healing process. We trudge and trudge through it. We forget why we started trudging or where we're trudging to! Until one day we realize, the trudging has changed into traveling light. 💫💖