Who Moved My Cheese?

I read a book written by Dr. Spencer Johnson yesterday evening called 'Who Moved My Cheese?'

I finished this book within an hour as it contains about 96 pages.

This is a self help book aimed to reach all sorts of audience including kids. My 11 year old daughter read the book and she also grasped the idea.

The author's main point is that change is inevitable in life. We all have four personalities mentioned in the book in the form of characters namely

• Sniff -- One who sniffs the change
• Scurry -- One who scurries into action to get comfortable with the change
• Hem -- One who resists the change by getting afraid of worse situation and
• Haw. -- One who adapts to change quickly.

It is up to us to choose the personality and go with the flow to find the new cheese. Here, the new cheese could be a new job, relationship, investment, health goal or anything important to us.

Authors important message is to laugh at us when we get uncomfortable with the change. This will help us to find the new cheese.

Another important message is to visualize ourselves to live in the new change. This itself will motivate us to find the new cheese.

Vanavasam by Kannadasan

I went to Chennai during the week of Diwali (26. 11. 2011) to celebrate with my parents. It was quite nice because I celebrated Diwali with my parents after nine years.

After Diwali, I went to Vanathi Pathippakam in Pondy Bazaar and picked up a book called VANAVASAM written by Kaviyarasu Kannadasan.

I finished reading the book couple of days back.

This book was written in the year 1962 after the poet quitted his political life. Usually vanavasam means a very hard life (similar to life in the forest) as it normally refers to Pandavas' 13 year vanavasam or Lord Rama's 14 years vanavasam. In his case, it was 10 year vanavasam.

His political career was just an accident after he was influenced by DMK leader Anna Durai's speech against brahminism. After many struggles, he realized that political life was not for him and this ended his vanavasam.

This book is not much interesting to me like his other books such as Arthamulla Indumatham (10 volumes).

But, there are few statements I would like to remember from this book:

• When suffering people come together, they become friends.
• When greedy people come together, they become enemies.
• Goalless and unplanned life will not take us anywhere.
• Unidentified people live peacefully when compared to identified people. Here, he refers to kind of popularity as identification.