“You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

Richard Branson, Entrepreneur, founder of Virgin Group

“It just occurred to me when I was out for a walk in the woods…”

In 2003, I started a business creating educational products. Each week, I wrote an article and sent it to my subscribers. By the end of the first year, 5000 people had subscribed to my articles, when I had a sudden insight. Google had recently launched “Adwords”, the little adverts that show up when you search the web. I could run ads for my newsletter and pay a low price for each new subscriber. It was years before anyone else caught on.

By 2008, I had one of the largest email lists in the industry, with over 80,000 subscribers in my “tribe”. I explained my adword “secret” to a marketing expert who was interviewing me, and he asked me where I got the idea. “I don't know,” I said, “It just occurred to me when I was out for a walk in the woods.”

Now I know where that innovative new idea came from; it came from the unknown…

Looking to the database of the known for navigating the future is like looking in the rear-view mirror to find your way forward…

When people are looking for solutions, they tend to look to what they already know, but all too often the answers we need can't be found there. When we want fresh new ideas, creativity, solutions and changes, it pays to look to the unknown.

Disruptive innovation

The music industry was like a rabbit in the headlights in 1999 when Napster enabled millions of users to share their music collections with each other. The record companies responded by clinging to a model designed for a world that no longer existed. They looked to the known for the answer, and came up empty-handed; their revenues dropped by 50% between 2001 and 2010. Meanwhile, Apple launched the iTunes store in 2003, making it possible for customers to purchase and download music online legally. Apple threw a life preserver to the music business, and gave their customers what they really wanted, becoming the world's most profitable company in the process.

The gap

Epistemologist Gregory Bateson said that problems result from the difference between how nature works and the way people think. If we try to navigate using an out-of-date map, we run into problems; our thinking is out of step with how the world is working. But the music industry (and many other businesses) clung to the map of their habitual thinking in the face of overwhelming evidence that it was no longer fit for purpose. Why?

Lack of clarity.

The only explanation for this bizarre behaviour is that they were lost in contaminated thinking, hypnotized by the outside-in misunderstanding, unable to see clearly. Contaminated thinking can make it seem as though the unknown is dangerous, and the database of habitual thinking is a safe refuge, but nothing could be further from the truth.

So what's the alternative? Insightful understanding. Insightful understanding closes the gap between how life works and how you think it works…

Throughout history, many of the most groundbreaking ideas came from the unknown, in the form of insights and sudden “a-ha” moments: Archimedes had his “eureka moment” as he climbed into his bath, and suddenly realized how to determine the volume of an object. Isaac Newton had his insight into the nature of gravity as he lay under an apple tree in his mother's garden. We all have a source of fresh new thinking, beyond what we already know…

• The insight that gives you the elegant solution for something which had you stumped.
• The realization that has you understand something which used to baffle you.
• The “a-ha moment” that gives you a fresh new perspective on a situation.
• The clear mind that allows you to remember where you left something you'd been frantically searching for.

Whether you call it an insight, a realization, or an “a-ha” moment, new arrivals from the unknown almost always come with a feeling of peace and clarity, a gentle rightness and “knowing” that feels fresh and new.

The known of our thinking is often like an out-of-date map that doesn't show any recent developments; the new streets, parks and paths of possibility. We can search the map as much as we like, but we won't find something wonderful that's just around the corner (or right there in front of us) if the map doesn't mention it.

So, if it's off the map, where can you find it? And how can you benefit from the clarity, resilience and peace of mind that it brings?