Are you stuck in a Gumption Trap

What even is a Gumption Trap?

One of my favourite books from my past is ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ by Robert Pirsig from 1974.  I first read it, ‘old school’ in paperback, in the 80s and the brown edged paperback is a treasured possession that follows me from one house to another.  A couple of years back in a bout of nostalgia I trawled through books from my past in audio format and found a version of ZAMM in Audible and quickly downloaded and spent a happy week listening to it while traveling to work.

One of my favourite sections is where Robert Pirsig describes ‘Gumption Traps’.

Gumption is a term he uses to describe the attitude needed to accomplish a task with ‘quality’ and he also links this with a line from a Japanese list of assembly instructions, explaining that the assembly required ‘peace of mind’.

A Gumption ‘trap’ is something that would rob you of Gumption and the ‘peace of mind’ needed.  

According to Mr Pirsig there are two categories of these ‘traps’.  Those that are the result of external situations, or setbacks, and those that are the result of internal situations, or hangups.  

With the focus on ‘Motorcycle Maintenance’ as the main metaphor of the book he describes one of my favourite ‘traps’ – the ‘out of sequence reassembly setback’.  This is where you try to reassemble something only to find that you’ve missed something and it doesn’t go back together.  

Hands up for those of you who’ve been stuck in this trap!!!

Other more difficult traps are the ‘hangups’ and he describes three types – value hangups, truth hangups and muscle hangups.  

Robert also describes some strategies or ideas to help handle these with one of my favourite the concept of ‘mu’.  This comes form the Japanese term for ‘no thing’ and can be used to get unstuck from the ‘yes/no logic trap’, by introducing ‘mu’ as a third or middle way out of false dualities to ask yourself a different question that may open up further options.

So are you stuck in a Gumption Trap?  Has the ‘peace of mind’ you need been hijacked by hangups or setbacks?  Recognising that you’re stuck is the first step in the journey of recovering your Gumption.