Family History Guru

My wife is a family history guru, and she gave me a bit of advice in searching for records/sources for one's ancestors. She told me to assume the record is there. This sounds like a simple principle, but it is a principle of power in family history research. In some cases, there are no records for a certain place for a date range. But in my case, in the US and England, the records are often there; I just have to think of creative ways to find it. So, try searching for another person in the family that is probably in the record you are searching for. Or perhaps, look over the records for the city and not thru an index. It's worth trying.