I look at it more like the Robo-Cop movies, particularly the one where Robo_Cop is "blessed" with a thousand directives (think "best practices") to get along with humans.  In the end, he throws himself on an electric fence to purge himself of all the preconceived notions bestowed upon him by people that don't actually have a clue and get's back to the basic directives he actually started out with.  There's a parallel in programming... there are certain basic directives ("best practices") that simply must not be ignored but don't let all the other junk cloud your own abilities to think.

And, yeah... I absolutely agree.  Walking away from a problem to take a deep breath frequently helps especially if you not foolish enough to continue trying to fix a problem that can't be fixed and needs to be rewritten instead.  Sometimes an idea will come up out of nowhere even during conversations that don't actually have anything to do with what needs to be done.  A favorite example was in the movie about Turing trying to crack Enigma.  He had the machine for it but not the clue he needed until someone totally not involved with any of it made a comment about someone ending every message with "Heil Hitler".

Heh... and no... not a good idea to stare a lion in the eyes, proverbial lion or not because that'll just mean that you'll be able to see the lion's tongue as he rips your head from your body.  😀  Much better to "keep your head" both with a lion and when trying to solve a problem.