 So this week's episode is a special one. It's an international collaboration with Nigerian creative Rio of Afro Smiley's. And I thought it would be a welcome change after he proposed this project that he was working on and why he wanted me to feature. So the project is called You Make Mad Sense. And it's a project to inspire people, especially young people, to be more confident in their decision-making and living up to their fullest potentials just by hearing stories of people like me based on a particular topic of discussion. So today on It's OK in collaboration with Afro Smiley's, I present to you the answers to these questions on self-esteem. Now, this hit home for me because it's something we all struggle with. And lately, although I get a lot of compliments on my work and other stuff, I'd like you to know more about what I've been going through and my take on the subject of self-esteem. So yeah, let's get to it. It's gonna be questions you want me to answer and I hope that my story or answers inspires someone somewhere. So yeah, my name is Kwame. I'm a documentary filmmaker and photographer as well as a voiceover artist based in Accra, Ghana. And prior to becoming a freelance or a freelancer, I was a radio presenter for 80 years. I'd worked with two radio stations. The first one was in 2013. And from 2013, late 2013 all the way to 2019, I was working with another radio station. So I think that most of my professional experience comes from the second one. That's where I learned a lot of the things that I know now. And I'd also loved photography and I was doing that as a hobby. I did a lot of writing as well in terms of promotions and everything so I combined it all. Writing and photography and sound and whatnot and came by filmmaking as a freelance profession as well as photography as well as voiceovers. So here we are. That's who I am. Kwame from Accra, Ghana. Voiceover artist, filmmaker, photographer. Yeah. Well, self-esteem means a lot of things to me. Self-esteem influences a lot of things in our lives, especially our choices and how we feel about ourselves. By definition, self-esteem is the confidence in one's worth and abilities as well as self-respect. So there's a confidence, there's your worth, there's your abilities. So self-esteem is compounded in several ways and is linked to a lot of things that we do. Your self-esteem, for example, will influence the decisions you make or influence taking action with those decisions. Your self-esteem is knowing how much you are worth and being true to yourself. Your self-esteem will also depend on how much you do know. So you realize that your self-esteem will be affected or may be affected by encountering someone who seems to know more than you do. But it shouldn't be in a negative way if you are true to yourself. So self-esteem also comes with being true to yourself. If you do know that what you know is enough to do a certain thing and the other people who may know more than you and you accept it and you learn and you improve, it builds on your self-esteem. So in connecting that to your decisions, in connecting that to your outlook on life, in connecting that to the enthusiasm and the passion with which you do things, in connecting that to collaborating with people or working with people, self-esteem does a lot to, I mean, for your progress as a person or development as a person. So self-esteem is everything. It's pride, it's knowledge, it's confidence, it's belief. It's a lot of things. And when you're true to yourself, you realize that it's easy to acknowledge your self-esteem and where you need to work more on yourself. Yeah. Okay, so environment and parents and growing up, I think it's both in my opinion with my experiences, for example. So the environment I grew up in, I grew up in different places. So it can't be one or defined by one. I was about nine before we moved to Accra, but before then we were in Takratay, so it's a lot of places. But yes, environment does count. The places you grow up and the kind of childhood you have, whether at home or outside, does count to affect your self-esteem in so many ways. One of the best things that my parents did for I and my siblings was that they always made sure in terms of education because like I said, it's based on your knowledge, it's based on how you perceive yourself and knowing more makes it easier for you to be more confident. So they made sure that we went to the best of schools that they could afford. If they could do just a little bit more, in that sense, they would do that and make sure that we didn't go to a school that they didn't feel that will boost our confidence in gaining knowledge and being more confident. So yes, in that sense, my parents made sure that we were taking care of. However, in the part where you're supposed to be encouraged to find your potential in certain things that you were interested in, it wasn't as easy because as you know, in almost every African home, your parents tend to dictate certain things that they want you to do and you don't get encouragement necessarily like soft-spoken encouragement when you're not doing so well in school, for example. You get scolded. The talk is different from when you're actually doing really well. When you're doing really well, you get encouraged and everything. And the encouragement usually tends to be connected to a condition of a career choice of sorts. You know, you're really good in school. So yeah, my son will become a doctor, my son will become an engineer, my son will become this. Meanwhile, you may be really good academically, but you just really want to do music or you want to paint or you want to become a concert pianist or something. I mean, anything that you love. But you seldom see parents pay attention or at least in my growing up, pay attention to certain things that they see that you're really good at and push it to you or encourage you. The school, they'll pay the fees. You get clothing, you get food. But some of the things were there that they would tell you, no, you can't do it. That tends to mess up our self esteem and confidence a little bit, especially with going to senior high school and the courses you have to do. I did talk about that on my podcast. I'm still continuing the story, so I'll leave a link below. Feel free to check out my podcast as well. And university and the choices thereafter. It does some way somehow affect your self esteem because you're not fully encouraged to explore things that you want to explore. So it's a bit of a both. And frankly, this particular question can go on for days. We can have conversations about parenting styles and how it affects our self esteem for days. But based on the little that I'm gonna be sharing, this is what I feel. The instances does to our self esteem in general. Several. Several moments you feel less confident in your life. Like I said, the more you know the more confident you are and the more you discover that there are other people who may be more knowledgeable or more skilled than you, then you tend to fold up and be surprised by the possibility that you might not know it all. No matter how good you are, you may be at something. So for example, if you're self confident or you feel less confident in yourself after you lose, for example, a competition that you felt so good about winning and thought that your capabilities were enough or good enough to beat whoever you're competing with, these instances tend to affect your self confidence, especially when you think you know so much and then you're thrown off. In the quiz, for example, you're thrown off somebody's answering the questions and it tends to affect your confidence. So sometimes, even when you do know the answer because you're bummed out by getting a lot of mistakes, you tend not to want to speak and somebody else who feels more confident in their self will be answering these questions. That you probably even know the answers to. But there are several instances where you feel less confident, especially with skill. In film, for example, you can't do everything. So in knowing that maybe your strengths lie in shooting or your strengths lie in editing. When you ever encounter a set which has different people with different specialties, you know where you place yourself. You don't go about throwing your weight around like you can do everything. So I can't pinpoint exact moments where I felt less confident in my life. There are way too many, but these are some of the instances and it does happen. It's normal, it's natural to feel less confident in yourself. Even applying for a job, I mean, you don't know what's on somebody's CV and what it can do. So until you're hired, your confidence is questionable until you're given the opportunity and you're like, ah, it's back, okay, let's do this, let's do this. So I can go on and on and on about that. There are also several moments you feel very confident, especially when you're put in a situation where among the people that are competing or being asked to do something, your skill is virtually unmatched or there's none. Or you've done it for so long that people ask your opinions on certain things and it makes you confident. If you are a consultant, for example, for something that's a specialty, you are working with confidence. I mean, you feel very confident telling the person who has no clue what it takes to do a certain thing, how to go about it. That's when you feel confident in your ability, you feel confident in your skill, you know your worth, you're quoting this amount, you don't feel too, you know, maybe it's not worth it or that, yeah. So there are several moments, but yeah, all based on what you know, your experience and comparing it to what's maybe out there and what you think you can do. So there are several moments, but mostly to do with a specialty kind of work. For example, with voiceovers and scripting and recording and editing, if a client hits you up and they are virtually clueless about your industry, that's where your confidence peaks and you know what to talk about, you know what to tell the person. And you feel confident about what you're telling the person because you've been doing it for several years and it's not something that they can easily come by. So these are some of the moments where your self-confidence is very, very high. So social media does a lot for either boosting your self-esteem or getting you to question or doubt yourself. So it's a double-edged sort in that sense. Yeah, social media does a lot of good, it does a lot of bad as well. My confidence has been boosted, for example, by posting something that I worked on as part of one of my YouTube vlogs, sharing how voice and sound can change any video. And I did the mock Nat Geo intro. And when I posted such a thing out there as my entry to the Nat Geo challenge with the response I got, these things tend to boost your confidence. It makes you feel like, yes, you're doing something well or you're doing something good and if you keep working hard, yes, it would definitely work out for you or you're worthy of the praise. So there's that. And there's the side where you post something and you get certain comments that tend to throw you off completely. And then there's the aspect where you compare what you're doing with what others are doing, maybe in the same range and you realize that, wow, I am really not doing a lot and maybe it's not even worth it to be doing what I'm doing because these people are just with that level good, you know? So it's a lot, it helps you with boosting your confidence and it can also make you feel really, really shitty about yourself. So it depends on what you consume and how you feel about not being all knowing and being truthful to that. I mean, you can't know it all and you can't be better than everyone. So if you are aware of such a thing, it makes it easy for you to accept, I mean, people being better than you and just work with what you have, build on what you already have and gain more confidence. Yeah. Well, younger self hasn't been defined. So I don't know where my younger self starts, but I've realized that I've, especially with work and having about eight years of radio experience, working in an organization that gave me different roles to play in a bit of marketing, a bit of radio, a bit of copywriting, a bit of promotions and everything. Before I didn't have that much confidence in my ability, but now I do. So rating one to 10, younger self, I'll take it from there when I started work. About 4% confidence in what I could do. I mean, you don't know, I mean, you can't go and throw your weight around until you've learned enough. So I hadn't had any work experience before then. So I wasn't very confident till somebody gave me the chance to build that confidence. So yeah, it would be about, I'd say four or five. Let's just say it's the middle ground, 50, 50, five, 5%, no, five over 10. Sorry, five over 10 confidence. And then you grow into it. I don't think confidence can ever be 10 over 10. Then you're crossing into arrogance, which is sometimes good, but nine over 10 seems to be about the fairest level of confidence. 10 confidence seldom happens because we keep learning, we keep growing. Nothing is ever truly mastered. So yeah, there is that as well. Nothing ever goes to plan. So stop worrying too much because even though things don't go to plan, they tend to work out in the end. That is what I'll say to my younger self if I could meet him. Just chill, do what you can and stop letting perfectionism and comparison steal a lot of joy from you and stopping you from making certain decisions. So what are the things I love now most about myself? I love that I am more accepting of my capabilities and my skills, learning to be more truthful to what I can do and what I cannot do, to believe in it being enough to at least start something and grow from it. I've always loved my brain and how creative it has been. I always find a way to figure things out. So it's not a now thing, it's still there, but now I'm learning to do more and allowing not so perfect things to still manifest and then learn from it and grow from there. So yeah, I'm learning to be more truthful to myself. I am happy about that a lot. One word, describing my self confidence. I don't think I can have one word that describes my self confidence. There's too many things. I don't think I have one word. It's too many things. What one word describes my self confidence? I would say growth. Yeah. I don't know if it even works. I don't think growth works, but growing, growth, because there's so much more to do. Or is it more aware, self aware? No. I'm not sure I have one word to describe myself confidence, but if I do figure it out, maybe another time we speak out, definitely put that word out at the moment I don't have one word. So yeah, that's it. My name is Jose Kwame and I make mad sense, yo. Mad sense. Mad. Mad. Peace.