We all live
in a comfort zone; a place in our mind where we create limitations for ourselves, a
place in our mind that establishes what we believe about what we can or
can’t do.
What is your genealogy
comfort zone?
You’ve
taken up the hobby of genealogy and you’ve garnered a certain amount of
knowledge that has allowed you to arrive at this point in your research. You feel most comfortable where you are and
you continue to research and seek out answers within that comfort zone. However, you soon find yourself at a
standstill, you have too many brick walls, nothing is budging and your interest
is waning because nothing new is happening.
Perhaps your brick walls and your weakening interest have more to do
with your comfort zone than a lack of available resources. Your personal comfort zone
can be changed and certainly you can change your genealogy comfort zone as well.
Expanding
your genealogy comfort zone means taking on new challenges, challenges that may
make you a little uncomfortable but would expand your knowledge and therefore
your ability to grow your family history tree. Those new challenges may come in
the form of stepping out from behind your computer and seeking out relevant
archives. Maybe your new challenge comes in the form of adapting to the new
technology surrounding genealogy research. Perhaps it requires you to attend a
class, either in person or online or attend a conference. Perhaps travelling to
distant archives and ancestral hometowns would require you to step out of your
comfort zone. Or maybe writing your
family history stories is a challenge that pushes beyond your current level of comfort. We all have a comfort zone where we are prepared to conduct our research.
We were all
beginners once and to become great and knowledgeable about anything requires
going beyond what others are prepared to do, setting new limits for yourself
and discovering new territory.
I remember
when all I knew about genealogy came from my early days on Ancestry.com. This
is not a bad thing but it was my starting point and I soon realized I needed to
expand my horizons. I learned to step away from my computer and head to conferences
to expand my knowledge. I felt
completely out of my comfort zone when I visited my first archives and avoided
it until I realized my research would not move any further. Now I’m a volunteer researcher in my local archives.
Writing about genealogy was equally a challenge, this was probably my biggest leap outside my comfort zone, but the experience and knowledge has been
abundant and has brought me to a new career. The constant expansion of my
comfort zone has aided my knowledge and depth of my genealogy research. For many newcomers, genealogy can be a very intimidating
hobby. We are surrounded by experts and it can be difficult to ask those initial
questions for fear of looking foolish. Do you feel sometimes like you are back
in school, scared to raise your hand? You're not alone and this is may be a sign you are confined by
your comfort zone.
How do you expand your genealogy comfort zone?
Rather than research from a comfort zone, find your 'genealogy growth zone,' where you are challenged beyond what you've previously done. Perhaps
your family history began in your local archives and you’re not very familiar with
internet genealogy. Maybe you’ve been to smaller archives but not to a larger
national archive, that's just too intimidating.
Possibly, you never taken a genealogy class, gone to a genealogy
conference or attended a webinar? These are all opportunities to step out of your
comfort zone and embrace growth in your genealogy endeavors. If you don’t
challenge yourself and only conduct research from within your comfort zone, you
won’t grow, and if you don’t grow, your tree won’t grow.
Make a list of items that fall outside of your comfort zone and within your genealogy growth zone and begin to make plans to check them off. Once you start to tackle that list you will have greater opportunity to expand your boundaries, grow your confidence and your family tree.