Try remembering a place that you visit often. You usually (if not always) approach it from the same angle, right? Take your office for example. If you have a private parking place like many of us do, you will always approach from the same angle. You will approach the office entrance from where your parking is located.
Now, try for a change approaching the same building, at the same time of day, but from a different angle. Try, for instance, approaching from the north, if you typically approach from the south. Doesn’t it look like almost a completely different building? Doesn’t even the whole neighborhood look different?
During WW2, the USAF (part of the US Army back then) performed a study of the damaged parts of all bombers returning to base. It was perceived that the parts who took the most hits were the ones that also needed to be reinforced, to increase airplane survivability. Albeit this assumption may at first sound logical, an aviator with a mathematician’s background, actually proposed the exact opposite: The perspective that he adopted was that the USAF’s analysts only had access to the data regarding the damage suffered from planes that managed to make it back home. Meaning that the airplane parts in need of reinforcement, weren’t the ones with the most damage, but rather, the ones with least, the reasoning being that damage suffered on these parts resulted in the plane’s shootdown. If you have a problem that looks like a tough nut to crack, just try changing the perspective from which you are examining the problem. Sometimes, all you need to do, is to take a different turn that, albeit may look initially like a mistake, may also be the key to allowing you to move forward.