Joe describes the “404” — system error, page not found — as one of the most valuable states in transformation work. It’s the moment when a person can’t put their world back together, and the team is actually happy when that happens. “Don’t try to put it back together. Don’t try to create a new story yet. Be in the unknown for a while.”
Research supports this: pushing for results or trying to get unstuck too quickly slows or prevents epiphany altogether. Joe cites an artist friend who said 80% of his art was just looking at the canvas, and a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician whose process was to exhaust himself thinking about a problem, then refuse to think about it until the solution presented itself in whole. Michelangelo stared at a block of marble for ages before carving David.
“If you’re digging it, if you know it’s good, you’re like, ‘Cool. I’m in wonder. Cool. I don’t know what’s happening. And this is a really good sign.’ But if you are afraid of it… then you feel stuck and trapped and oppressed because you don’t have a story to put to it.”
The difference between “wonder” and “stuckness” is entirely about your relationship to not-knowing. When you resist the liminal space, you call it stuck. When you welcome it, you call it wonder. The experience itself — uncertainty, confusion, not having answers — is identical. Stuckness, in this framing, is simply intolerance for the unknown.
Related Concepts
- Be in the unknown during identity shifts
- Uncertainty is where transformation happens
- Wonder and stress cannot coexist
- Stuckness is resistance to the abyss, not the abyss itself