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.
AFI AMORO | 2023 iFAB SPEAKER
Lady Afi Amoro, Founder of Jandel Limited was one of our speakers for iFAB 2023. She was unable to join us in person and so invited our video production team to record her. In her presentation, she touched on all the 8 dimensions of wellness giving very valuable tips on how to take care of
MORGAN CHARLES KITISU | 2023 iFAB SPEAKER
Last September, I met Morgan Charles Kitisu at the Opportunity Collaboration conference in the Dominican Republic. On the first night after hearing a bit of his story, I invited him to come speak at this year’s iFAB and he said yes! He had a lot on his plate and yet made time to come to
KAREN KANE | 2023 iFAB SPEAKER
Question please: what would you do if you could take one whole day off every week? And by ‘off’ I mean no house chores or errands. You get to have a full day to yourself doing what you love. I’ve been pondering over this question for a while and the options of how I will
SURELY, YOU’LL GET TO YOUR DIVINE DESTINATION
So apparently, I’ve been experiencing growing pains! Well, this was what my big-sister-coach-friend exclaimed some time ago when I shared how I was feeling about some ‘unfinished business’ in my business. And the good news is, growing pains is a good thing for a young business like mine. In this episode of Mind Your Business,
FAITH FATIMA OSEI-MENSAH | 2023 iFAB SPEAKER
I first met Faith at The Fabulous Woman Speaks Conference 2016 and have watched in admiration as this woman defies odd after odd to build her dream businesses. During her presentation at iFab 2023, she showed pictures of her at the 2016 conference and shared the story of how broke she was soon after. She
WE NEED TO BE AT THE TABLE. PERIOD!
Today marks exactly 15 years since I started my first full time corporate job in Ghana. The next day, I found out I was pregnant! This changed everything in the most unexpected ways. Every year around this time, I reflect on this experience and this year I thought I should share some aha moments I’ve
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