The Mindset Mentor - Ep 55 - Who Moved My Cheese? - Embracing Change

Episode Date: December 25, 2015

The only thing constant in life is change. In this episode I talk about how to embrace and anticipate change in order to stay ahead of every one else and how it is described in a book called "Who Moved My Cheese?" Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Before we dive into today's episode, if you would like a free copy of our motivational ebook called Hack Your Goals, the Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success, go to mwfmotivation.com and download it. It's already been downloaded over a thousand times, so go ahead and get your copy now. All right, I'll get you the podcast right now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, which I am proud to say has been rated the number one podcast in iTunes new and noteworthy in six different categories, including self-help and business, and is a podcast designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in 10 to 20 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'll take a life topic, break it down, discuss it, and leave you with thoughts to impact your life and mind. My name is Rob Dial, and

the podcast starts now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast. This is Rob Dial. And today we're going to be talking about embracing change and how to embrace change. And before we dive in, if you have not yet subscribed to us, please do so on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud, however you listen to us. And if this is your first time listening to us, welcome. And if you like this episode, please share it with a friend. We are at 160,000 downloads in less than four months, and our goal is to get to 1 million within the first 12 months. And we won't get there without your help. So please share this with a friend if you like it. So how to embrace change? The only thing that is constant in this

world is change. Things are going to change, and we must constantly change in order to stay relevant and in order to stay ahead of the race as well. And embracing change is going to keep you successful in the race. And it's like Ben Franklin says though, most people die by 25, but they're not buried until they're 75. And the reason why is because most people hide from change. They get comfortable with their current life. They try to stay the same forever. And the reason why is because leaving your comfort zone can be scary. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you a story real quick to help you. And it's actually a book called Who Moved My Cheese?

And the whole story is just a metaphor for change. And the cheese in the story is a metaphor for anything that we may want in our lives, whether that be a job or more money or a bigger house or cars or financial freedom or relationships or health, recognition, spiritual peace, whatever it might be, anything that you could want in your life. And in the story, there's four different characters. There's two mice. One is named Sniff, one is named Scurry. And there's two what they call little people that are the same height as mice. And their names are Hem and Haw. And what they do is they go into this giant complicated maze trying to find their cheese, trying to find whatever is important to them. And these mice, they have basic minds. So they use simple trial and error method to find cheese.

They run down a corridor. If there's no cheese, they don't go back and they move on to the next. Now, the little people use their ability to learn to their advantage and this helps them, but it also hurts them because sometimes we tend to overthink things as people. And that's what they tend to do to make it more challenging for themselves. So I'll give you an example. Sniff and Scurry, they did the same thing every day. They woke up early, they put on their running shoes and the mice were up and out of the house early. And one day they came across an area of the maze which is called Cheese Station C. It has more cheese than they could

possibly imagine. Hem and Haw eventually find it as well. All of them are pigging out for days and days and days. They get comfortable with it. And eventually they run out of cheese. As soon as they run out of cheese, a few days later, the two mice, they do exactly what you would think. They go, okay, there's no cheese here. Let's get out of here. Let's go find new cheese. they go okay there's no cheese here let's get out of here let's go find new cheese and the two people do exactly what people do with their smart over complicated lives or minds is they over analyze it they think eventually maybe the cheese is going to come back and you know this is where the story tends to actually develop itself and the two mice they leave they go find cheese and eventually they find this

place with massive amounts of cheese, more cheese than they originally found in the first place. And then Hem and Haw, this is where their character develops. They sit there for a while, they come back for a couple days, hoping that the cheese will come back, but the cheese never comes back. And then Hem is the person who we all know these types of people. When change comes around, Then Hem is the person who we all know these types of people. When change comes around, they cry about it. They say, this is so unfair. How could this happen to me?

And then Haw ends up being the type of person where he says, all right, you know, it's been a few days. It's not here. I'm going to go out and actually try to find this cheese. And eventually he does find the cheese, but it takes you along the story of what he realizes and what processes in his mind as he goes about going through all of this stuff. And I'm going to give you just the keys to the change and what he finds out throughout this, because I originally recorded 21 minutes taking you through the entire story and then listened to it and I hated it. I thought it was boring.

So now I'm just going to actually give you the key points to it. So a few times he writes different things on the wall. One of the things he writes on the wall is if you don't change, you can become extinct. Now in this world, we know, especially with 2015, it's about to be 2016, things are changing so quickly that it's like a breakneck speed. Like it's just, you know, things are happening so quickly. We have to change and we have to become okay with change or else we'll become extinct. And the perfect example of that is becoming extinct. I'll give you an example of a company that was a massive company that became extinct. And that was Blockbuster. And Blockbuster, just so you know, in 2000, they were actually offered to buy Netflix. Netflix said, hey,

you can buy us for $50 million. And Blockbuster said, no, we don't want to buy you. And the reason why is because we know our customers. They like to go into these stores. They like to actually go in and physically hold onto the copy of whatever it is that they're looking at. And so they said, no, I think this Netflix thing, it's just a niche, it's going to go away. And now Blockbuster is completely out of business. And Netflix was valued at around $32 billion. So that's the perfect example. If you don't change, you become extinct. Another thing he talks about in it, and he realizes along his journey, is he asked himself, what would I do if I was not afraid?, what would I do if I was not afraid?

So what would you do if you're not afraid? Because he understands that fear can be good. It can prompt you to act before things get worse or before danger occurs. But the bad side of fear is that it can keep you from doing almost anything in life. And the thing about it is that we make it up in our minds. We make things up in our minds to be way worse than they ever are. So whenever he got discouraged as he was trying to find this new cheese, he reminded himself the reasons why he was doing what he was doing and that he was taking control of his life rather than letting things happen to him. Let me say that again. Whenever he got discouraged, this is what you should do.

Remind yourself of the reasons why you're doing what you're doing and that you're taking control of your life rather than letting things happen to you. So I always give the example I just did a couple episodes ago. I think it was actually last episode of being the captain of your own ship. And I use this metaphor because a ship is always going towards a destination. Your life is going towards a destination. You can't be the passenger on the ship. You're going to a destination. If you don't take control, you're still going to get somewhere. You're just not controlling where you're actually going to become or where you're actually going to. So when you're the captain of your ship, you're steering your life in the direction that you want

it to, the goal that you want to get to. So you can't just be a passenger and you can't just let things happen to you. There's also another part inside of this where it talks about a dark corridor and he's afraid to go down this dark corridor and he's realizing that he needs to stop being afraid. And so he takes off down this dark corridor. It's completely unlike him. And he gets excited because he's conquering his fears. He's overcoming these mental barriers that are inside of his mind. And what he says in it is that when you stop being afraid, you start to feel good. When you stop thinking about all the things that could happen to you, you start to feel good. And he realized that his entire life, he held himself captive by his own fear and that moving in this new direction to try to find this cheese actually freed him. And a lot of people realize that as well, is that,

you know, a lot of people, once they start going, they figure out what they want, they go on to the direction of what they want. It starts to get exciting to them and more exciting because they're going in a direction that fills them with passion, that excites them throughout their life. And so it says when you think about the stuff you could gain, it puts you ahead instead of thinking about things you could lose. So most people, when fear pops up, is they think about what could happen. And they're usually things that never do happen anyways. But it says he started thinking about the things that he could gain on his journey versus the things that he could lose.

So when you're on your way to success and you're thinking about all the things that need to change, think about what you can gain from changing versus what you lose from having to change. And another thing that he says is when you let go of old cheese, the sooner you'll find new cheese. So with change, the quicker you let go and understand that change is going to happen and that you need to change, the sooner you will then find whatever it is that you need to be successful. And it said that he realized that when you're afraid, all of those things that you're afraid of, they never turn out to be as bad as you actually imagine. In your mind is the worst that anything

will ever get. And that's the crazy thing about it. We worry about what could happen. And most of the time these things never happen. So he, he realized that he, all of his old thinking, it clouded his mind with worries and with fears. And he used to think about what could go wrong instead of what could go right. And that's what you need to focus on. If you focus on all the things that could go wrong, stuff is going to go wrong. If you focus on all the things that could go right, they're going to go right and it's going to keep you excited and going towards the future that you want. So he realized that he left his old beliefs behind him and was becoming a better person on this journey to finding his new cheese.

beliefs behind him and was becoming a better person on this journey to finding his new cheese. And so he says that old beliefs do not lead to new cheese. So your old beliefs aren't going to lead to a new success. You have to change your beliefs in order to change the person that you are in order to actually get the success that you deserve and that you want. And he learned throughout the whole thing that when you plan for the future to expect change, to keep it simple, and when things change, make sure you move quickly. Don't try to hold on to the way they used to be because then you're going to end up like Blockbuster and you're going to end up extinct. And then more than anything else, the moral of the story is that he realized that the biggest inhibitor in every single person's life is themselves. realize that the biggest inhibitor in every single person's life is themselves. It's not their outside circumstances. It's not their past. It's not their present. It's themselves that's holding them back and the excuses that they give themselves and the fears that they make up inside of their

own minds as well. So obviously it says fear should be respected because they can keep you from dangers, but most fears are completely irrational. And the last thing I'm going to leave you with is there's a quote where it says, smell your cheese often so you know when it's getting old. And there's a part where they talk about relationships in the book and they speak about, well, maybe I need a new relationship because I think mine is starting to grow mold. And they said, well, actually you shouldn't think of it as maybe my relationship is starting to grow mold. Actually, what you think about it is that your behavior in your relationship is starting to grow mold. You need to actually get a new behavior in your relationship. You don't need to get a new

relationship. So the new cheese in that situation would be a new behavior in the same relationship with the same person. So that's just a quick story on how change happens, how to embrace change. And I would recommend the book. It's only about 80 pages and it's probably in reality without pictures, it's probably like 40 pages. I read the entire thing in about an hour. I would recommend it to you guys. It's called Who Moved My Cheese. It's an interesting read and it's just one giant metaphor. But that is how you embrace change and all of the things that you'll figure out on your journey to embracing change. But with that, I will leave you with the one thing I leave you with every time, which is make it your mission

to make somebody else's day better. We have a hashtag on Instagram, which is hashtag MWF mission. And whenever you do something to make somebody else's day better, if you're able to take a picture, please take a picture, hashtag it, put on Instagram, hashtag MWF mission. And with that, I hope that you have an amazing day. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at MWFmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at MWFmotivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality.