Turn Your Heart

The genealogy research process begins with turning your heart to your family!

In another post, I introduced my genealogy research process and said the first step is represented by the turning heart on the left:

Turn your heart

It may sound awfully sentimental, but I believe this step is imperative for two reasons:

#1 If you are not invested in the subject of your research, when the going gets tough…you’re not likely to stick with it. You’re just not.

and #2 Turning your heart to your family through the activities that interest you is the BEST springboard for step two: Ask questions!

What do I mean by turning your heart?

Spend time doing something that piques your interest in those who have gone before you!

That was sufficiently vague, right?

What are some examples of heart-turning activities?

How about

• Talking to other family members. Just reminiscing about the people you miss or your shared memories
• Pulling out old photo albums
• Watching family home videos
• Reading whatever has been left behind: journals, letters, memoirs, recipe collections
• Reading your own journal or blog or any place you’ve collected memories
• Viewing what other contributors have posted to FamilySearch’s Memories or an Ancestry tree, etc
• Trying some of the fun and funky activities on FamilySearch
• Visiting family graves
• Bopping around on a pedigree chart (FamilySearch’s FamilyTree or other). Just take in the names, speak them out loud, let your memory or your imagination run freely as you picture the people there.

Whatever you do to turn your attention to your predecessors, it should be something you enjoy doing. This is a real lead-in to serious research, I promise! But this part in and of itself should not be too serious. It should be a pleasure.

I would further suggest that if you do want to be serious about genealogy research, you make time for this on a fairly regular basis.

YOU set the expectations. Will you turn your heart once a week? Once a month? On specific holidays? Will you spend half an hour? An hour? All up to you!

As you Turn Your Heart, you’ll be priming the pump to Ask Questions!

If there are other things you do that turn your heart to your family, please comment and share!