Using Your Intuition to Discover Your Niche

Confession time. I didn’t write anything yesterday. Today? I don’t feel like writing. Which means I am going to write and publish something if it kills me. Good for developing focus of Will if nothing else.

Setting expectations with myself is important. Also, like most of the rest of my life the thing I am avoiding is exactly the thing I most need to experience. Once started it will probably feel good with an energy of its own to carry me to the end.

Of note, I may have made a big improvement regarding computer monitor eye fatigue. A situation which has been causing me pain and discomfort every day since I started using my computer after the recent four month tech detox/break.

While I have experimented with a few different approaches such as adjusting blue light and brightnesss about an hour ago I tried something simple. Something which finally made a very noticable difference.

I lowered the window shade.

There was a lot of glaring light coming from under the shade covering the window behind my desk. All I had to do was Iower the shade until there was zero light out from the bottom.

Problem solved! I hope. Like I said this was over an hour ago. The good news is my eyes are still not killing me! Yeah they are a bit tired but I expected to have a head ache and throbbing exhausted eyes by now.

No headache and just a bit of dryness.

Gonna call it a win.

As far as, Using Your Intuition to Discover Your Niche. Let me refer to my own checkered web publishing adventures as an example.

As of today, I have four wordpress sites up and running. This blog, a general tech blog, a blog specifically for programming languages which use a REPL, and a fan site for the Aikido dojo I attend.

Since about 2003 I have had what feels like an endless stream of web sites. Most, I wanted to have become a business. Trying to do all the things your supposed to do to be successful with an online business. Yet, never making more than a buck or two here and there.

Yes, I’ve made every mistake there is to make. More than once.

Why so many blogs? Many would say having more than one is too much. I agree, it is tough to to keep one going let alone four. But my goal is not to have four blogs. Nope, I want to figure out what topic to focus on , or, my niche. Who am I serving?

As for these four current sites, they represent long held interests I want to explore.

The Aikido site, while a new interest, isn’t going to take much of my time. I am hosting it to help potential students find the dojo. Mostly, with just a front page.

The other three sites are about topics in which I have long had interests. Self-improvement, the occult, and mysticism would all be on thi blog. With tech and programming on the other two. With the tech site I could be both writing articles and maybe creating small web apps.

As I have been vacillating between tech and personal growth for way too long I am going to do both and see which one I enjoy more and spend more time on.

I would like to do both on the same site. Multiple times in the past I have attempted to do so. But it never works out. Mostly, for psychological reasons. Fears of various kinds pop up. Directing my attention to or away from one path or the other. Plus, I have this feeling the combination of topics might be jarring for readers. I know it is for me and I am the writer!

Time to let the fear go. I am just going to embrace my situation. Yeah, occult studies are a big part of my life. I used to be able to really go deep into programming. Can I get back into programming? Will I have something valuable to offer?

I don’t know. Most recently I have been researching ideas for simple web apps I could create. Haven’t come up with anything I like yet.

Writing these semi-random posts though does seem to be something I can do. Not sure where they will end up but who knows?

In order to make more progress I am hoping to restart a practice to jump start my creative abilities. The practice is simple. I came across it James Altucher’s book, “Choose Yourself”.

All you need to do to become an idea machine is start writing down ten ideas a day.

Lists of ideas? Yep, and they can be about anything at all. Business ideas, articles ideas, book ideas, investment ideas, what to name a goldfish, tricks your pet rock can do, and on and on.

The point is not to come up with anything useful. No, we want to train our brains to not kill ideas before they are born! There might be a few sparkles of brilliance but most of what gets written down will be slag. Which is exactly how it works.

After doing this exercise for a while the ideas will flow. At some point an idea may even be good enough to try out. Or, maybe share with someone.

Yes! Ideas can be for others.

Just don’t expect anything in return. For some reason expectation will kill the process. Nope just let them come to you and write them down.

How about an example idea list?

What are ten topics I could write about?

• Duality and Non-duality While Walking at the Marina
• Aikido as Healing Art
• Soulmate ESP
• Energy Healing from a Distance
• Retro Game Programming
• Healthcare Analytics with Python and Excel
• Python Programming and MS Excel
• Python and Chat GPT Autoblogging
• Tarot Reading with the Hero’s Journey
• Visualizing Tricks, Active Imagination

Some of these I have already used for articles. Some are too generic. Though they can be the seeds of other lists of ideas. In fact, any idea can be the seed for another list of ideas.

Just keep going until there’s nothing else to write down.

Spoiler Alert: There is always something else to write down. Not only can you go more in depth with an idea you can also go wider.

Connect any idea with other ideas. Do the same with those new ideas. Until your fingers cramp and you can’t see straight.

Just keep making a list everyday. That’s all you need to do.

After you’ve got your idea machine running?

Try stuff!

Which brings me back to finding your niche. Everyone says pick a niche. For business. For blogs. For everything. The world loves a specialist.

Well to be quite frank that didn’t work with me. In fact, trying to do thigns the way everyone else was doing them kept me stuck and going nowhere. Thing is I think the advice I was reading and attempting to take was great advice!

Instead of giving myself a hard time for not being able to do what others appear to be successful doing, i.e. picking a niche to focus on, etc. I am going to NOT pick a niche.

Not right away, anyway. No. I am going to keep coming up with ideas. Do and keep doing. Try and keep trying. Until I can say, “I love writing about/focusing on/solving problems in ____!”

Maybe that means I blog about personal and spiritual growth. I might also write web apps solving problems for single person companies. Or, python programming tutorials.

If you have a hard time focusing on a niche you might consider not trying to focus. Let youself experiment and see what you love and enjoy most!

I can’t say taking this path will help you make money as I am not yet making money following my own advice. What I can say is allowing myself to discover while doing is much more satisfying and fun. I feel like I might even have a shot at discovering a way I can have the freedom of an internet business. By letting myself learn and explore guided by my intuition.