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.
WHAT’S IN YOUR 2023 TOOLBOX?
Happy new year! In the first 3 days of this new year, I’ve had a series of experiences which got me thinking of you (I share these on this week’s episode of Mind Your Business https://youtu.be/1X7hyysRyXU ). In these experiences, I lost focus momentarily and thank God I have some tools that helped me regain
TAKING CARE OF OUR INTELLECTUAL WELLNESS IN THESE TIMES
Merry Christmas! I hope the season is going beautifully well for you. In today’s episode of Mind Your Business, we wrap up the conversation on Understanding The Times; Taking Care Of Your Intellectual Wellness. If you’ve followed us for a while then I bet you’ve heard about my journey with money at least a gazillion
TAKING CARE OF OUR SOCIAL WELLNESS IN THESE TIMES
Happy Sunday! Question please: are the current relationships you’re in being of value to you and others in it? And when I say ‘relationships’, I’m not necessarily referring only to your ‘honey bunches of oats’; I mean your friends, family, associates, business partners, etc. This week on Mind Your Business, I shared 5 tips to
TAKING CARE OF OUR ENVIRONMENTAL WELLNESS IN THESE TIMES
Is it too early to say Merry Christmas? Haha! Anyway, I hope you’re well. This week we continue our conversation on Understanding the times with Selorm Dreamaker focusing on Taking Care Of Your Environmental Wellness In These Times. Selorm Djaba-Mensah aka Selorm Dreamaker is the CEO of Accento Projekts. She is an interior designer and
TAKING CARE OF OUR OCCUPATIONAL WELLNESS IN THESE TIMES
Hello, as we say goodbye to November, 2022, may we also say goodbye to all worries concerning our occupation! Amen. In this week’s episode of Mind Your Business, we continue the conversation on ‘Understanding the times’ with a focus on Occupational Wellness. Enjoy the episode here https://youtu.be/mSABOrXWhvw ! Ama xx PS: Mind Your Business is
TAKING CARE OF OUR FINANCIAL WELLNESS IN THESE TIMES
Hello, I hope you’re pressing on the upward way! This week’s focus is on our financial wellness. To help us take care of it, we have Dr. Evans Duah (I call him Dr. Wealth). He is a French and English-trained business expert. He worked in France, Morocco and currently in Ghana. He started his career
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