HelPeR - BYU Idaho Special Collections and Family History

other items or events in your life in the same manner;
therefore, you go through life never experiencing the
benefits of seeing the alternatives.
Now take the same group of objects and reorganize
them using another principle of organization, perhaps
from the list suggested in the above paragraph. When
you have finished your second organization, compare
it to the first. What did you find You should have
found that these same objects have taken on a new
meaning. In other words, you have expanded your
imagination by perceiving things about the objects
you had not noticed before. Repeat this organizational
process at least five more times using a different organizing
principle and then compare the results with
all others. This game played on a regular basis with
new objects will gradually increase
your potential for seeing possibilities
where you saw none before, in
a word; your imagination has been
stimulated and some of your biases
have been minimized.
Another game I like to play involves
the use of a sturdy chair.
Select one from your collection,
set it in an open space, and see if
you can discover at least ten different
ways that you can sit in that
chair. Again, the challenge here is
to stretch the use of your imagination
and thereby ridding yourself
of the negative biases that told you
the “proper” way to sit in a chair.
How many different ways to sit
did you discover If you could find at least five, you
have gone a long way in opening yourself to new
possibilities. If you found ten, super!
There are many games of this type. Some that I
still play are crossword puzzles. These puzzles force
you to look at words in completely different ways if
you want to be successful in the puzzle’s solution.
Crossword puzzles are found in most newspapers,
or in books found in bookstores. My local newspaper
also carries other games I play to keep my imagination
sharp. One is called “Jumble: The Scrambled
Word Game,” and the other “Celebrity Cipher.” Both,
if played on a consistent basis, cause one to see that
what is present is not all that meets the eye.
For those who have computers, some of the card
games (Free Cell and Spider) may be helpful. Also,
…open yourself to
all the possibilities
that a document
contains rather
than focusing on
only one aspect that
might have been
recommended by
some expert, book,
magazine article,
or family member.
playing bridge provides an excellent opportunity
to expand your vision. The card games mentioned
become very good entries to a process that requires
examination of a great many options in order to win.
Card games of pure chance will not work because
they do not force you to stretch in the same way that
the games mentioned do. The game of chess accomplishes
the same thing as card games.
I firmly believe playing all of these games will go
a long way in opening your mind to new possibilities
where perhaps none were perceived before. They will
help free you of some controlling biases that may be
impeding your genealogical research. The question
remains; How do we free ourselves from these negative
biases I can only provide you with how I freed
myself. Ridding me of the negative
biases that I suspected were
getting in the way began with
the recognition that I was dealing
with both mental and emotional
issues. The games suggested earlier
helped with the mental aspect
by providing me with the tools to
see that there was more than one
way to skin a cat, they expanded
my abilities for seeing things in
a different way than I originally
thought possible. The emotional
side was a little more difficult, but
eventually I was able to move away
from this issue by believing that
those who helped form some of my
biases did the best they could at
that time with the information they had. They really
meant no harm, but now times had changed. Having
worked through these two notions, I was now ready
to see how my genealogical research would change.
The first application I made of my new-found freedom
lay in the perhaps the most fundamental search
done in genealogy, the surname search. I came to
realize that perhaps my genealogy instructor was
correct when she told me that my last name was
not necessarily spelled in many records the way it
is spelled today. I dismissed her observation at that
time, but after going through the games, seeing that
other possibilities were possible, I at least thought I
could test her out. She suggested going to www.familysearch.org
and searching for my surname. I did,
and found quite a number of variant spellings that
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