Live, Learn, Love!
The Path to Your Prowess
by
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In this book Kogi Naidoo reveals intimate stories of her inspiring life and experiences that took her from despair to hope, fear to courage, doubt to faith, ego to humility, and from taking her life for granted to living a life of gratitude. Having, lived and worked internationally, she, as a fifth generation to indentured farm labourers, rises above her life of poverty to use education, wit and charm to leave her inspiring legacy for generations to come. She has lived and worked in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
LIVE, LEARN, LOVE provides an honest, upfront account that mirrors insights and revelations about how we live, learn and love as individuals and as part of families and communities. This book is for those in the prime of their life, reflecting back on how life was and how it turned out, and what they can still do. The book also appeals to younger readers, bursting with excitement to change the world. Readers are taken through personal stories of stresses and strains, insights and wisdom, never forgetting life’s blessings.
You discover your unique talent, purpose and contribution. You learn how to use the three focal areas (LIVE, LEARN, LOVE) to live a more balanced and fulfilled life. Attain emotional, mental and spiritual balance. Learn how to make a difference. Take charge of how you live, learn and love to regain inner peace and joy.
Part One (of three) shows us that we each have a unique contribution to make. We are all leaders with the potential to achieve greatness. We have a duty and responsibility to make a contribution in the world. We can together alleviate the pain and suffering in our lives by using the keys to LIVE, LEARN and LOVE on our path to discover our personal power and prowess. In Part Two I share personal stories of the pain and suffering I endured to achieve my dreams and goals. It is not all doom and gloom! Sometimes, what we perceive as ill-luck or pushing against the tide, is life teaching us lessons we need to learn before we progress. Part Three focuses on the simple three-step formula we can apply to ensure we leave our unique legacy, making a difference as a result of having lived. You reflect on your life, where you have been, where you are right now and where you are going in your future.
LIVE, LEARN. LOVE, the book is inspired by vivid dreams (some recurring), real life experiences and reflection over my years. It is my ultimate truth and reality seen through my perspectives: wisdom, destiny and fate. I present my experiences as I remembered them, not through the lens of my conscious, social self, the academic and teacher schooled by the norms of society. I deliberately convey my innate authenticity. In some sense, I surrendered to my life experiences, having faith in God, Spirit or the Universe or whatever you believe in. I acknowledge that for a very long time I blocked out much of my life experiences. I demonstrate how one can regain trust in oneself and the Universe to create a life that is filled with divine grace and love, rather than one of struggle and hopelessness.
Throughout the book you have opportunities to reflect on your own journey and evolution. The recurring themes and your reflections sharpen the focus of your universal eye. It takes courage and perseverance to keep focused on your purpose and make a difference.
We need to be leaders of our own lives, before we lead others. By reflecting on the three- step formula of life to LIVE, LEARN, LOVE we focus on our true purpose to achieve our unique greatness. You can be great like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King. They each had a cause they stood for. Discover your unique talents and special purpose in life. We must get over our own limitations to pursue our dreams and goals. In inspiring each other we can live our lives optimally and purposefully until we achieve a world of love, as a result of the forgiveness and compassion we practice.
Research shows the major issues that cause people stress are money, relationships, work challenges, and health problems. The book is a self-development guide to:
• Gain a stress-free existence,
• Take immediate charge of your emotional, mental and spiritual states,
• Discover your unique purpose and greatness,
• Achieve your true purpose and make a difference to yourself and others, and
• Contribute to a better world, filled with love and compassion.
In the course of my life, education, experiences and learning, I discovered seven keys to Live, Learn, Love. These keys are the collective brilliance of the great teachers and mentors I was blessed to have in my life. These keys unlock how we use the gifts we are given, how we live our lives, what we spend our time doing, the impact we make in our relationships. There are also five ways you can adopt to tap into and achieve their own greatness in your journey of life.
As I share my stories, be amused and entertained. Laugh with me, cry with me, and be inspired to make a difference in your life.
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About the Book
Do you value who you are? Do you have a fulfilled life, loving relationships and a great career? Are you frustrated, disillusioned, or tired of being exploited? How committed are you to you? Invest in yourself and discover how your priceless gifts and talents can change the world. You can have it all!
Dr Kogi Naidoo is a devoted mother, wife, and author who has inspired thousands to live their greatest lives. In Live, Learn, Love! Kogi shares the best of her experiences with you. You’ll learn how her Tapping Talents techniques will motivate those in your life as well. By putting this simple three-step guide to work for your life, relationships, and career, you’ll find ways to ignite your spirit and bring out your inner power, living your life on purpose, and leave your legacy.
Never doubt that you can inspire everyone in your life! Dr Kogi Naidoo invites you to laugh with her, cry with her, and grow with her. Her stories are amusing, entertaining, and emboldening. They reveal that we are all courageous, authentic, risky, energised, resilient, and successful – some of us just haven’t taken hold of these qualities yet!
Time is precious. So what will you do to make every moment count? Live your life on purpose and make a difference!
About the Author
Dr Kogi Naidoo, Founder, Self Leaders Academy, is an inspiration to anyone who finds themselves in less-than-ideal circumstances and struggling to escape their lot. She is a renowned, leading authority on self-leadership to achieve greatness. Kogi is the great-granddaughter of Indian indentured labourers, who settled in Durban, South Africa in the late 1860’s. Despite the odds stacked against her, we see her rise to being a published author, while being a devoted wife and mother, university professor, and leadership coach and consultant.
Kogi started from humble beginnings living in poverty in shared rented accommodation to being first in family to receive formal education. Despite the difficulties encountered with apartheid, political unrest and an academic boycott in place, Kogi achieved a doctoral degree in Education, setting her on a path of academic success. Widely recognised as a leader in higher education, Kogi won a large research grant and lead a national education research team in New Zealand investigating student learning success. She presented her work at major conferences internationally in the U.S., Canada, Australia, England, New Zealand, India and South Africa; and has been invited to lead major discussions in education.
Kogi’s work is recognised by the many prestigious national awards and grants she received in her distinguished academic career, including the Ernest Oppenheimer Gold Medal award and the Junior Technikon Fellowship award, the SAARDHE Young Achiever Award for contribution to higher education in South Africa. In Australasia. She was awarded the HERDSA Fellowship award, demonstrating quality teaching standards and the HEA Principal Fellowship Award (UK) for leadership in higher education. In 2023, Kogi was awarded the US, How Women Lead’s, Women Leaders for the World Fellowship, a year-long program focusing on accelerating the impact of women leaders to drive change. Her most recent award in 2024, was the Education 2.0 Conference Outstanding Leadership Award, recognising Kogi as a World Leader in Education.
As an author, academic, teacher, researcher, speaker and performance consultant over the past four decades, Kogi has inspired many thousands, including teachers and students who have gone on to be successful in their careers and lives. With friend and colleague, Dr Fay Patel, they provided a forum for women world-wide, attracting contributions from South Africa, United States, England, Australia and New Zealand, to tell their stories in the book, Working Women, Stories of Struggle, Strife and Success, published by Sage, India in 2010.
In Live, Learn, Love! The Path to Your Prowess, 2012 published by Balboa Press, Revised Edition (2025), Kogi shares her personal stories, life experiences, lessons learned, providing valuable tools, insights and key strategies that will empower readers trapped either by their limiting beliefs and/or circumstances to be inspired to enhancing their lives, relationships, spiritual development and consciousness to achieve their unique greatness, live their lives on purpose, and make a difference!
Kogi re-ignited her commitment to her mission to make a difference through her simple, yet profound message, Self Leadership for Greatness, to educate everyone, sharing her personal life experiences, lessons, hints and tips to overcome any obstacles. Kogi is grateful for her experiences in India in 2013 when she made the journey to find her roots. This was the beginning of realising the dreams of her great-grandparents to find family they lost contact with in the 1860s. Kogi was not only inspired to pursue their dreams but her calling, to connect with her cultural heritage and soul purpose. Despite being born and educated in the west, she always felt her Indian heritage at the soul level.
Starting with the indenture numbers on her birth certificate and ship records, making several trips to south India, she explored many villages. Kogi fulfilled her childhood desires to visit the Taj Mahal, fulfilling the romantic in her, and in Rishikesh, she completed courses in yoga, meditation, ayurvedic therapies and spiritual development. In the next few years many pathways opened, including Kogi leading transformational retreats for women exploring their souls’ purpose on the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh, Haridwar and the Taj Mahal. Kogi also had the privilege of making presentations, inspiring students and staff at Madras University.
Kogi’s mission, Self-Leadership for Greatness is based on the practical blueprint inspired by a vivid dream she had one day. The LIVE – LEARN – LOVE – LEAD framework is a reflective self-help implementation guide, grounded in lived experience, spiritual humanism, and moral agency. It guides individuals to live consciously, learn wisely, love compassionately, and lead themselves responsibly, so that personal growth translates into meaningful contribution, dignity, and legacy. Leadership in this framework is not authority over others, but self-leadership, the courage to take responsibility for one’s choices, values, impact, and service to humanity.
Kogi continues to dedicate her life to sharing valuable lessons, demonstrating how we can take charge and change our lives, especially when impeded by circumstances, thereby eradicating poverty, empowering us to live rich and fulfilled lives through personal and professional achievement.
Soon after revised edition publication of LIVE, LEARN, LOVE! The Path to Your Prowess, (2025) Kogi, reflecting on her strong connection with India, committed to making her book more accessible resulting in this Partridge Publishing, India, publication.