‍Have you found your niche?

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My answer for the longest time, was a flat-out NO.

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Until very recently.

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I always hated the well-intentioned advice.

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Find your skills and follow your passions.

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F***ing Venn diagrams.

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I hated it because I couldn’t stop watching those self-help Youtube videos and felt like shit for not being able to find my skills and passions. I wasn't good at anything. I wasn’t passionate about anything either. Sigh. Ikigai my ass.

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They'd say, "Follow your passions!"

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As if.

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Career Specialization = Catch-22

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If I didn’t even know what I was good at or passionate for, how the hell was I going to specialize? Perhaps I should’ve taken a leap of faith and plunged myself into a sea of student debt to find out if the career was right for me.

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And even if you were able to find a specialty and become a specialist in your area of expertise, you are not “special” at all. There are thousands of other “specialists” doing exactly what you do. Wait a minute, I thought I was so special!

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Thanks, Mr. Rogers, for making everyone so special...

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Now that you are a specialist, you will be compared against other specialists. Congratulations! You are now officially replaceable! The specialists are ideal building blocks of the economy because they can be swapped like old tires.

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Thus the advice, “find your niche in the overlapping area of skills and passions” is not just good career advice. It’s a moral mandate. I don't have a choice.

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Really, how do you find your niche and happiness?

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Googling might help, but you know, you are asking the wrong question.

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What I’m saying is this.

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If you are struggling to find your niche, you are hurting yourself.

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You don't have to be so hard on yourself because

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• You can’t FIND your niche. You haven’t lost it yet.
• You can’t TRY consciously. It’s subconscious.
• You can’t SEE yourself. Only others can see you.

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I’ve been doing it all wrong. Now let me share with you what I’ve been doing recently so that you can see how I am making the transition.

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People are my mirrors

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Theoretically, the niche exists because there are others and me in this world. If I were stranded on a remote island by myself, I don’t have to worry about what I am good at. The need to identify my niche arises because there are many others.

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So I need to understand what others perceive as my uniqueness and what I feel comfortable doing without forcing myself to do anything fancy. Since I have not found my niche, I had to do something different because you can't read the label when you're inside the bottle.

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I had to replace my mirrors around me. I also had to increase the number of mirrors around me. Multiple mirrors from varied angles and distances would increase their effectiveness.

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More concretely, what I did was:

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1. I reached out to the authors of my favorite newsletters.

2. I joined an online community.

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Saying hello to a stranger

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In this Covid-19 situation, meeting new people via IRL coffee chat was not a very popular option so I responded to newsletters. I told the writers what I like and appreciate them in a few sentences.  

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The responses I received from my “distant mirror friends” were unexpectedly positive.

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Lev writes a newsletter called Wednesday Wisdom about books, technology, personal finance, and his dear hometown Chicago. Those subjects are interesting on their own, but what I ended up liking most about reading his newsletter is how his personality comes through in his writing.

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Although his newsletter is not filled with in-your-face cuteness of kittens and puppies, for some reason, it makes me feel mentally safe. For me, Wednesday (or Thursday in Tokyo) is a "backstabbing-free" time on the internet. It’s so hard to hate him because he is a genuinely nice, supportive person. I wish people who are posting “financial dickpics” would learn some lessons from Lev about moral decency.

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Funny thing is, I never met Lev in person. But I’m positive that when I’m in Chicago, I’m going to take him out to his favorite coffee shop so that he could later buy me sushi at his favorite restaurant ;) Anyway, what I thought was a rather “ordinary and effortless” email was received by Lev as something interesting.

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I always knew people are looking for a niche. But I never thought what I did “naturally” was something “unusual” to others. Isn’t it natural to let others know what they are good at? Apparently not. Hmm.

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I had another confirmation of my uniqueness shortly after when I wrote to Salman.

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What’s cool about Salman’s newsletter is that you can be curious and creative without being a snob about them. Everywhere we go, we have wearable metrics and ask ourselves, “Why am I so stressed?” Yet when you read Salman’s newsletter, you can loosen your armor and join the rest of humanity in general.

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His leadership in authenticity seems so real to me. If we were to work together on some project, and he for whatever reason had to fire me, I’m pretty sure I would be able to walk away without confusion and contempt. The way he shares his vulnerabilities as he wanders into uncharted territory (like learning how to animate his drawing) is my favorite way to learn about the subject of courage and leadership.

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What I wrote to Salman was about his unique strength and how it shined in his writing. He seemed to like it. Just like Lev, I never met Salman in person and he could be a real jerk in person. I’m sure he is an awesome individual, but even in the worst case scenario, I’m fine. What matters is that he is a real person, just like us. That’s why I like reading his stuff.

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I joined an online community

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Another thing I did to increase my exposure to the mirrors was to join an online learning community called Write of Passage (WoP). When I joined WoP, I felt a bit intimidated. Correction: I felt very intimidated. I went to a second-tier state college where it was NOT known for its rigorous academic curriculum. But here, I was to keep up with cohorts from all over the world with an incredible array of successful track records. Did I sign up for the wrong school?

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But after a week of interacting with my peers, one thing stood out to me.

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I noticed a lot of my peers were writing toward their colleagues in their echo chambers. Maybe that was intentional. I couldn't tell.

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Very subtly, my strength was helping me notice that there are audiences from various backgrounds. It’s not easy to accommodate every reader’s needs and wishes but I at least can naturally see that people from different cultures have different expectations.

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So when I wrote my first article, I wrote it toward the audience outside of my industry. I directed my attention to people without art school education by writing about 3 basic tips to improve their website immediately. It was the most natural thing for me to do to make myself useful in the community I’m in now.

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As a result, I had the fortune of meeting Robbie Crab, a trial lawyer, and creator of "Performative Speaking." This is how we started our experiment to learn in public by building the next version of RobbieCrab.com.  

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Finding my niche through the eyes of others

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I'm getting lucky with meeting good people who are kindly serving me as my mirrors to show me what I do naturally is, in fact, rare.

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I don't have to rely on my willpower anymore.

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Not everyone cares about what makes one person unique from another.

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But I do. Naturally.

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Not everyone cares about explaining things to the outsiders in a way they would have an easier time understanding.

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But I do. Naturally.

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It appears that those lenses of mine go pretty handy with designing something as I seek out core values that make people unique. I also strive to make it easier to understand the foreign concepts to outsiders.

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It doesn’t mean I am always successful though. I fail often but even those failures feel worth the trouble because I am engaged with my natural dispositions.

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So yes, I am beginning to realize the way I look at this world is something quite different from others. I am also very comfortable with the thought of a lot of people not needing me at all. That’s fantastic.

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Willpower is for people who haven't decided what they actually want in their lives

- Benjamin Hardy, organizational psychologist

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Exactly. I no longer want to force myself.

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I can only serve those who wish to be themselves. I am drawn to those who care to communicate with people outside of their comfort zone.

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It sounds like I’m specializing in a very narrow segment of people. I am. This is liberating. Because luckily, there are other people with different lenses who could serve those who I can’t serve. I accept the limitation that I can only serve a very very small segment of people in this world. I’m only human after all.

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I surrendered.

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By surrendering to humanity, I reaped a reward.

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I can now connect with other human beings through their visions.

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I've been wearing my pair of glasses all along. I had to be told so.

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Thanks for your time and for being an awesome mirror for me.

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You are the best!