Ama Duncan
Corporate Trainer | Business Coach | Author | Speaker
Welcome to my blog! Here, I share valuable content on BUSINESS & MONEY to help new women in business to plan, execute and achieve their business goals.
MY HUSBAND AND HIS FRIENDS
Hi there! Do you know anyone who is yearning to travel abroad to seek greener pastures in another country? I encourage you to forward this blog post to them. It’s about a group of young Ghanaian men and how they struggled to travel abroad for a better life. What happened afterwards? This is the fourth
YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN BUT NOT ALONE
Hi, it’s great to be alive and well innit? I have been totally enjoying sharing a bit of my third book Yarns of inspiration II with you all in this month of November. And thank you for your kind and beautiful messages. Enjoy today’s story ‘YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN BUT NOT ALONE’ ——————————————————————————————————————————- Hello
MENTORING MOMENT WITH MRS ELSIE ADDO AWADZI
EAA: Interesting question, because that is a daily challenge. I have younger people ask me always whether it is easier to juggle my roles at my level. The challenge doesn’t get any easier. I have just come to terms with the fact that not all aspects of life are going to be perfectly balanced at the same time. So what I do a little better every day is to work smarter and make a little more room for self-care and for discharging my parenting and other responsibilities. There really is no perfect formula for all times, and I take it a day at a time…
PEOPLE TALK. PERIOD!
PEOPLE TALK. PERIOD! Hello! I trust your day is as sunny as mine 🙂 So all throughout the month of November, I have been sharing chapters from my third book Yarns of inspiration II. For all those who have been following, sharing and/giving me feedback, I am so grateful. Enjoy today’s story PEOPLE TALK. PERIOD!
WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR YOU TO LOVE ME?
Oh, my goodness! I will never forget the defiant feeling I felt as if I was some rebel! Well, I guess I was actually a rebel. I was rebelling against that voice which was always willing to spend on others except me!
MIND YOUR BUSINESS WITH ETHEL N. AMOAKO BAFFOE
I didn’t get the right information when it came to career, sexual health, etc. As a result, I missed out on a lot of things. So as I grew up, I realized this problem still persists with a lot more other girls. And so I told myself, why don’t we create a sisterhood online platform…
My Story
Dealing with low self-esteem
I was born in Sekondi to a nurse and a farmer. When I was about 5 years, we moved to Komenda, a small town in the Central Region of Ghana. Even though I was one of the best students in primary school, I always felt ‘little’ when we travelled to cities like Cape Coast, Accra and Takoradi.
I felt everyone there was more beautiful, more intelligent, spoke better English and was generally better than me. I had a similar experience in secondary school, always looking down on myself and feeling I was not good enough. Oh, how I wished I were an ‘Accra girl’ because I thought they were so cool! Yet, when my family finally moved to Accra, I still didn’t feel cool. On top of this, I didn’t even have a boyfriend! If only I could get a boyfriend, then I will be cool like the other girls… I thought.
In University, I met some really wonderful friends, some of whom were from ‘rich’ families and I thought being friends with them will make me feel cool. I didn’t. I had the opportunity to start travelling abroad, and I was certain that when I returned, I most definitely will feel cool and belong in a ‘cool girls click’. Well, I did have cool friends before and after travelling; still, I didn’t feel like I was cool and ‘there’ yet. Oh, by the way, in my third year, I finally had a real boyfriend (now my husband). Not only that, but he also lived abroad, and hence, I occasionally went to visit him, which should have made me feel cool, or? Well, guess what, I still didn’t!
Even as a career woman working in an international four-star hotel as a manager, I looked down on myself. Once my General Manager called me into his office and asked why I never came asking for a pay raise and promotion when other managers always came to him with such requests. My response was ‘I want to earn it, not ask for it’. That was a half-truth. The real reason was that I felt I was not good enough to deserve more. I convinced myself that ‘I was not there yet’. I used to look at my friends who were lawyers, doctors or pursuing something big and wished I could do that too. I also wanted to be ‘somebody’.
To make matters worse, I was just getting pregnant and fat! After having my two kids, I thought getting an MBA will make me finally feel cool and ‘important’, yet I felt no different after completion. Even with a handsome husband and two adorable kids who doted on me, I thought I had very little value. Interestingly, at various stages in my life, I would meet people who were so impressed by and thought highly of me, yet I never saw what they saw. Mostly when people even complimented me, I doubted them and thought they were just trying to be nice.
How I found my ‘cool.’
Read the rest of my story in Yarns of inspiration II