This week I learned a new word, and as I soon as I read it, I knew I had to commit it to memory. The word is MUGRUMP. Have you ever heard of that? It may be that a few of you reading this today are mugrumps and you didn’t even know it. A mugrump is someone who has a difficult time making decisions. Basically, they are fence sitters. Their “mug” is one side of the fence, and their “rump” is on the other. I think I want to put that word on my license plate, because I will admit that I am a class “A”, full-fledged, bona fide mugrump. If there was a mugrump Olympic team, I’d be the flag bearer.
I think I’ve always been a mugrump. Decisions are difficult for me. I can stand at a fork in the road, and stare down both alternatives, and see them both as having worth, and then have a panic attack trying to figure out which one to take. Wouldn’t life be easier if everything was decided for us.
I wonder why decisions are so difficult, and thus fences are so safe? Is it the fear of missing out (FOMO if you are under 30)? Is it the fear of messing up? Or do we just want to “have our cake and eat it too”?
Despite their ability to induce stress, we make decisions with remarkable regularity. Experts tell us that the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. Now, that sounds unmanageable, and it is. Our brains would short circuit if they had to weigh the pros and cons of 35,000 decisions every single day. In fact, 95% of them are made subconsciously. When you swing your legs out of bed, it is unlikely that you are sitting in your pj’s stressing over whether you should put your right foot or your left foot on the floor first. It just happens. 95% of the decisions we make every day are made without us knowing it. It’s the other 5% that we have to worry about. They include what to eat for dinner, what TV show to watch, and whether you should water your plants or leave them for one more day.
Anyway, back to mugrumps.
If you are a person who struggles with decision making, the big brains at Harvard have a solution for you. There is a practice called “morning pages”, which was created by a Harvard trained Psychologist named Julia Cameron. Here is what she suggests: every morning when you wake up, commit to writing three pages in a journal. If you do this, you will improve your ability to make decisions. You may be thinking, “what do I have to write”? Apparently, it can be anything. You can write about a dream you had, or about the dinner you cooked last night. You could write about your kids, or just write, “I don’t know what to write” for three pages. Supposedly, this practice of putting words on paper stimulates a part of your brain that you use when you make decisions. It’s kind of like giving your subconscious a shot of morning coffee. Your brain, now stimulated from the writing, will be able to access deeper wisdom and insight, and you will find greater clarity when you have a life changing decision to make. So, when the boss says, “there is an opportunity for a job that pays twice as much as you are making, but it is in Yellowknife, you have two hours to make a decision”, you won’t fall into a mugrump coma, but you will exercise your recently fired up thought processes and make a good decision.
Does that practice really work? Who knows. But maybe it’s worth a shot. At the very least you will become a better writer.
Now, I must decide, do I put my IKEA bookshelf together tonight, or leave it displayed in its beautiful box for another week. Yes, I know, that’s not being a mugrump, that’s just plain old laziness. Can’t journal my way out of that one.
