Saidi Mdala’s The Loser’s Seminar
WeekendLife
Author: Saidi Mdala
Reviewed by DAVID BAAITSE
The Loser’s Seminar is a unique book, the only one of its kind in the world. Written by a celebrated loser from the past, the book can help change the lives of many people. It warns against useless personalities that make it impossible for many to realise dreams and or achieve success in the pursuit of life.
Many books have been written by renowned best authors as well as most successful and prominent figures such as The Way To Success, Think Like A Champion and How to Get Rich by Donald Trump in a bid to push people to the corridors of success. Trump's insight and business principles offer valuable lessons and great motivation to his books.
These people try very hard to be personal mentors and coaches as they share tips, tactics, and strategies, all designed to help one make the most of themselves, their career, and their life. They cover basic rules or beliefs, and show how to make it work as well as learning the vital qualities and skills that every successful businessperson needs.
The Loser’s Seminar is one such book that resolved to address the most common traits of a loser – it is purely from the author’s personal perspective and experience. This book unlike other motivational books does not endeavour to take a comprehensive approach to money making, life and personal developments because one dimensional success is not really success after all. This is one book that one will find interest in curving at least a few pages every day to push out of the losers’ streak to become achievers.
The author, Saidi Mdala said he wrote this book to highlight the stupid decisions he made and some idiotic habits he developed during the 40 years of his life. “If you can avoid half of these blunders you can be wildly successful,” he says. He narrates how he threw opportunities away and made bizarre decisions that cost him dearly and still did nothing about it until he woke up at the age of 40.
This What- Not- To- Do self help book is for a change and it emphasises what you should avoid as you navigate the ever tricky and often precarious terrain of life. If you relate to the author’s mistakes you can challenge the way you have done things up to now and change accordingly.
In the same book the author hints that being stupid can become a habit. He says back at college he was once offered a lucrative job opportunity at a reputable mine outside the country and turned it down preferring to finish the academic year instead.
From this decision alone, Mdala was on his way to becoming a serial loser. He later discovered that he could have transferred his credits to an institution in another country and finished his studies there. This was a lost opportunity. He gives examples of people who did the right thing when confronted with situations that demand making a choice between studies and a career.
Henry Ford had no formal education worth writing home about but he used his opportunity when it came to change the course of history by inventing the self propelled modern automobile, the Ford T- Model.
Abraham Lincoln, the man who became one of the most illustrious United States Presidents and abolished slavery, only attended formal school for 12 months. Still he became a lawyer at 32 because he knew exactly what he wanted to get out of life; with or without school.
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its inability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”. Saidi said losers are ill – disciplined. Indiscipline is an active form of laziness which generates action without results – in short, activity, while discipline creates action with results, i.e. productivity.
The reason why Mdala wrote a book on his personal experience is to ensure that this does not happen to others. He says many will however argue that they cannot learn from stories of failures but his argument to encounter that is; if you know what does not work you can always avoid it, or at least recognise it earlier enough to confront it with a far better chance of overcoming it.
“I have always wondered what it takes to earn the kind of money that Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Usain Bolt, Floyd Mayweather Jr and Jay Z rack in every year, and I discovered one common trait that gave life to all their successful pursuits. They work hard. All high net people work harder that you can imagine. Artists and sports people spend longer than 18 hours in the studio and and many hours in the gym pumping tones of weights and making hundreds of choreographed dance moves.”
Do you struggle to finish anything you started? Do you take crap while sitting? Are you just plain lazy? Do you lack guts? Would you rather play it safe than take a risk? If you even remotely relate with any of these, this book was written for you.
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