💜 Who's a good egg? 🥚

Hello hello,

Thanks for signing up for the first Amar’s Letter.

I have a confession, I found it almost impossible to pick a topic for this email. Though I sent out 93 versions of my previous newsletter, part of me still worried whether I could pick up my old standard.

You’ll be the judge of that!

I would love to hear from you and whenever you reply, it will hit my inbox.

One quick question before we get into it, what is the best day for you to read this?

What to expect from this week’s Amar’s Letter:

• How to manage the pursuit of good egg-ness (3 min read)

• TEDxChigwell updates.

• Live shows.

• Parrots facetiming.

Become my LinkedIn friend

💡How to manage the pursuit of good egg-ness

Life’s been a blur.

I became my own boss 720 days ago.

The plan was to be a full-time writer.

I was meant to have a book out by now. I was meant to have hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to this newsletter. I was meant to be the next Mark Manson.

Instead I have only written one article in the last year.

Oops.

Uncracked

The thing is though, I have no regrets about not hitting the targets 2021 Amar set. My priorities shifted and I changed my actions to match. 2023 Amar is flawed but I’m proud of him.

The world has become obsessed with professional targets and how to hit them. Yet these can and should change as you understand yourself better.

Though my career has taken a million unexpected turns, one goal has stayed constant.

I want to be a good egg.

Are you the same?

Sniff test

Making money without morals is easy:

1. Play on someone’s insecurity.

2. Make them feel bad about themselves.

3. Offer a magical solution.

4. When it doesn’t work blame them for not manifesting hard enough.

To me, being a good egg means doing everything the right way even when it’s harder. I’m not willing to step on people to get where I want faster.

If you are then we’re probably not going to vibe. I understand if you unsubscribe.

Bad eggs like to think they are much better at hiding their intentions than they are but they reek to anyone who is secure in themselves. I’ll write more in depth another time about how to spot the rotten ones.

Often in your gut you already know when someone is false.

Yet we rarely turn our abilities inward.

Are you who you say you are?

No empty shells

Praise is addictive. Look online. Yet you can get drunk on it without actually doing anything.

Be honest with yourself.

Do you care more about helping or being seen to be helping?

You’re missing the point if you’re nodding to yourself thinking you’re in the clear.

None of us are good eggs our entire lives. We all slip up. We all get our heads turned by bright lights. We all let our ego get to us.

I constantly question my intentions and sometimes I don’t like the answers. This radical transparency with myself helps me become a better person over time.

An awkward example is when you tell someone you’ll be there for them after you see bad news from them. Congrats. Bathe in your warm fuzzy glow.

Do you check up on them a week later? Do you give them a big hug next time you see them? If they followed through and called you would you pick up?

True kindness isn’t performative.

With hindsight before I had my own bad news, I offered help to people and hoped they didn’t take up. I still do it sometimes to be “nice”. Yet it’s fake and I shouldn’t do it if I am who I say I am.

As I said praise is addictive and I’m no more immune than you but I’m fighting it.

Are you trying too hard?

Don’t boil

I am not your savior. You aren’t mine either.

The pursuit of good egg-ness can lead to accidentally cooking yourself.

My greatest challenge today is controlling how much pressure I self-inflict.

My insides burns with an primal need to be the best I can be because death has a way of reminding you how short life is.

Yet life is not that short.

And carrying the weight of the world will make it more fleeting.

12% of Americans said they had no close friends at all. Don’t underestimate the power of being reliable to one person.

Always start small and build up.

Right now, I could look you in the eye and tell you I’m doing too much. I’m working on processes to stop myself boiling and using my network to relieve pressure.

Are you kind to yourself?

Imperfect

Even with the best intentions, mistakes happen.

Here’s a dirty secret.

Every single Nobel Peace Prize winner is flawed. You reply to this email with one person who you think is perfect and I’ll point you to a controversy they had.

This isn’t to diminish their impact.

The lesson is you can be a good egg without being perfect. Making mistakes and caring about the damage they do is a bigger show of your character than pretending they don’t exist.

I say dumb stuff all the time. I’m just an East London kid who in the last 3 years has been thrust upon a stage I never thought I’d have.

I’m incapable of thinking of every scenario and how every person will react to everything I say. So are you so be kind to yourself.

All I know is when I know I’ve hurt someone I apologize immediately because my intent is never to cause harm. I’ll often overanalyze my mistakes which I wouldn’t advise but you do want to work out what went wrong to avoid it in the future.

The final step though is to forgive yourself and in your heart know you’re doing your best.

🍪New from me

Many of you haven’t heard from me in a year so I won’t try to inform you on everything all at once!

Here’s the last week:

• Overhauled my website so it’s actually up to date (more or less!).

• Interview with a guy making millions from healthy meals.

• Created form for potential speakers at TEDxChigwell.

• Created TEDxChigwell LinkedIn and Instagram pages.

Upcoming this week:

• Going live on Entrepreneur’s Handbook LinkedIn and YouTube at 8 AM ET/ 1 PM BST.

• Live podcast recording at the British & International Franchise awards (free tickets)

👍🏽 Recommendations

Cheating for this first newsletter to show you my other projects!

• Entrepreneur’s Handbook has bi-weekly concentrated startup advice which I won’t share for the audience here and insights from world leading entrepreneurs and creators.

• The BAE HQ is a weekly round up of content all about British Asian entrepreneurs in particular and lots of job opportunities and events for ambitious people living in the UK!

• TEDxChigwell is a TEDx event I am organising an hosting. If you’re from that area or just interested in following, keep your eyes peeled.

• Yuval Noah Hariri’s TED talk is my favorite speech ever. It had a huge affect on the way I see people who disagree with me and I highly recommend.

🐼 Something Random

Scientists taught pet parrots how to FaceTime each other and the parrots actually made friends with each other!

You know you’re curious.

I want to add the best reader sent meme here each week too and you’ll get a shoutout!

🤗 See you soon

If you enjoyed this letter and think a friend would enjoy it too, please send it to them through email or WhatsApp.

Have a great week,

Amar