What is your niche?

Remember how in my post about aptitude, I said that the first step in the career decision-making process was to evaluate your skills? Well, forget what you're "good at". The reality of the situation is you can get good at something if you have a passion for it.

Today, I wanna focus on interests. What is your niche? The Google definition of niche is "a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment". In other words, your "niche" tells you where you truly belong based on your passion. Do you belong in a courtroom? on the basketball court? in a bakery? What about on YouTube? Everyone has their own niche.

Now, obviously skills and abilities play a part in the process of selecting a career, but evaluating talents doesn't work for everyone. Some people know what they're good at, but it doesn't align with what they're interested in. Some people don't know what they're good at, but they know what they love.

How do you determine your niche? Well once again, you have to really look into yourself. Analyze your passions, interests. What excites you? Determining what you're interested in is much easier than determining your talents because we are much more likely to have talents we didn't know we had. There aren't many quizzes for finding your interests, but they're not necessary anyway. Go to YouTube, look at your recommended videos. Look into your history, look at your playlists, just look at every feature. What do you see?

Go to your social media pages. Go to your Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, whatever you have and analyze the type of content you see. Each of these platforms have personalized the content you see based on you and your interests. Mine basically sums me up ^^^ hair, baking, music, SZA.

You can even determine your niche by the type of content that you provide on your pages. I have a second account on Instagram, besides the one for my photoshoots, & I called it melanatedmusicinc_ . This account is solely for all music-related things. I post classical music, soul, rap, live performances from my favorite artists, etc. I'm a music-lover, I can't help it. My niche is music.

Butttttt it's not my only niche! I have a passion for so many things, and luckily for me, some of my passions align with my natural talents. I selected my future career based on my innate abilities. However, that doesn't mean I can't pursue what I love.

Oftentimes, we hear pessimistic adults say things like "Passion doesn't pay the bills." and you know what? That may be true for many cases. It's true, a lot of people don't make it big in the music business or the modeling industry or the NBA. The chances of following your passion and becoming ultra successful are very slim, and may be slimmer depending on who you are, where you come from, racial background, etc. That's just the reality of it.

But the "reality" is also that you can pursue what you love. I think the best approach to career planning is to do what you're good at for your actual career, and do what you love on the side. Especially if there isn't guaranteed success for doing what you love. It could serve as a second source of income, and if the road to success regarding your passion is slow, it's okay because you'll always have your main career to hold you up.

Think about the one thing you would love to indulge yourself in and go for it. Turn it into a career, a business, a YouTube channel, a book, a website, whatever you want. Make what you love a side hustle until it takes off and you can pursue it full time (because even though chances are slim, it's still possible!). Stop letting people tell you that following your passion is "unrealistic". You can make it realistic. You just need strategy and effort. Do what you love, hustle, and give yourself financial stability.