SELF-ESTEEM Unravelled

Insanely Practical Insights to Build Lasting Self-Esteem

K . V. L A K S H M I N A R A Y A N A

SELF-ESTEEM UNRAVELLED INSANELY PRACTICAL INSIGHTS TO BUILD LASTING SELF-ESTEEM

K. V. LAKSHMI NARAYANA

PRAISE FOR SELF-ESTEEM UNRAVELLED - INSANELY PRACTICAL INSIGHTS TO BUILD LASTING SELF-ESTEEM

I know the author of this book Lakshmi Narayana for more than four decades and interacted vary closely with him. I know how he transformed himself by following the same principles that he described in this book. This is what we call leading by example. The content in this book is interspersed with a lot of personal experiences and encounters in real life to substantiate the ideas presented in the book. The quotations at the beginning of each chapter are very apt and describe what is being discussed in the subsequent paragraphs. The mindfulness Meditation described in this book is a very powerful tool in transcending many problems faced in day-to-day life. However, I think a step-by-step procedure would have been more helpful to the uninitiated. This book has a universal appeal as it doesn’t have any religious or sectarian connotations. Highly recommended as a primary source on this subject. P.SRIDHAR GOPAL FORMER SENIOR DIRECTOR PTC SOFTWARE INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED

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The book “Self Esteem Unravelled” is like Dale Carnegie book series on self-improvement. Now-a-days with a lot of ‘intellectuals’ around and competition to be best amongst others, the self-esteem seems to go down the drain, the more the education, the less is the wisdom earned. We should be the source of inspiration for others, instead of depending on. This book comes in a time when one should be happy with what they have than what they could not achieve. The twelve chapters of the book is an eye opener to many. The book is very well written bringing out the experiences of the author. We look to others for inspiration and guidance, not knowing that we alone are capable of guiding ourselves and shaping our lives. We should spend some time for ourselves, discovering and reinventing ourselves. This is the essence of the book. DR. K.SHANTI SWARUP PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, IIT, MADRAS Self-Esteem is the source of personal power that motivates, stimulates, and augments individuals to successful living. Many people fail because of low Self-Esteem. By becoming aware of your own strengths and weaknesses and developing your Self-Esteem, you can modify your behaviour. In this book, Prof. Lakshmi Narayana emphasizes the sources of your self-esteem, how to nurture it in yourself and how to bolster yourself against attacks that may weaken it, and most significantly, how to use it to move forward in your personal development. I strongly believe that this book will influence your thinking and help you to make significant changes in your personal and professional life, and make it possible to achieve your inner potential that leads to a rewarding career and life. In a refreshing literature approach, the author infuses you with improving your own self-esteem as well as of those around you.

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DR.SRINIVAS VISSAPRAGADA PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES AT PSCMRCET AND SELF-ENRICHMENT COACH, VIJAYAWADA This book is very well written. Every reader will certainly benefit from it. The author distilled wisdom from a great compilation of sources and his own experiences! I wish I could read it 30 years ago! This book can not only be used as a Self-Help practice book by people who want to raise their Self-Esteem, but also as a thought-provoking guide by a general reader. I can even dare to say that it can be useful for practitioners as a text book. The readers, who like story telling approach, may directly go to Appendix I and II and read the fictional stories written by the author (and you will learn valuable lessons related to the topics of the book from the two stories). You will thus get hooked to the book, as the author’s story telling skills are matchless. NARASIMHA RAO RALLABHANDI MANAGING DIRECTOR, GUDEL INDIA, PUNE The author made an excellent attempt to bring in his 30-35 years of experience with various human emotions and thought processes into the book. The ingredients of emotional intelligence of positive and negative feelings are elaborated in the book. The keen readers of the book will be able to discover the inner strengths of them to find a solution to their dilemmas so as to harness the best in them. I am also connected to the book, as I recollect the dilemmas and pains, I have experienced in my life at various stages. Application of the six components of Self-Esteem for improving EQ, Self-Healing, Coming out of situations of low spirits, High achievements, all of which help in raising the SelfEsteem are very well dealt with in the book. This book helps every reader to become successful in attaining the goals of happiness and peacefulness in life.

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T.SURA REDDY GENERAL MANAGER (BUSINESS EXCELLENCE, TECHNICAL SERVICES, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY), WRII HQ, NTPC LTD., RAIPUR

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This book helps you in understanding what Self-Esteem is and focuses on the underlying factors that are used to build your selfesteem. The author has done a very good job in focusing on the solutions as much as an analysis on the reasons for a particular emotion or feeling. The book is very well researched and provides a very good psychological and physiological reasoning. Also each of the chapters/sections is kept at an optimal size so that you are not lost trying to understand what is being conveyed in the section. The best thing about this book is that you do not have to be an expert in understanding the psychology and a layman can very easily understand it. I highly recommend this book. Even though you may not have a problem with your Self-Esteem, I promise you that there are a lot of things you will learn about yourself and help you get better as a person, a team player and definitely a human being. RAMESH MATURU PRESIDENT, ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS PYRAMID CONSULTING This book fosters the thoughts of readers with an introspection of their life. This collection of wisdom of the ages coupled with the stories and incidents carefully assembled together to make a tool for chiselling ones' soul and mind is what everyone can expect from this book. With his experience and expertise of guiding or influencing, this veteran professor and chess player, hauls the thoughts of the readers, as he did for the juvenile minds around him, in taking the right decisions and making the right choices. Being a public speaker, I am overwhelmed with the great insights this book offers me to share with my audience. A comprehensive read of this book moved my thoughts in a compelling yet calm way. As I turn the last page, I discover my image, brighter and enlightened in the mirror of self-examination.

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IMRAN SYED FORMER PRESIDENT OF PSCMR TOASTMASTERS, QA/QC ENGINEER, APILIP-II, NIPPON KOEI INDIA PMC, VIJAYAWADA I started reading the book ‘Self-esteem’, with preconceived notion that the book was written for benefit of those who are having suicidal tendencies. But once going through the book, I appreciate the central idea of the author that this book is panacea for various issues that intimidate the Society as a whole. We might have seen those personalities as stated in different chapters of the book. Certainly the book gives guidance to help those who want to come out of destructive behaviours such as smoking, drinking, drugs, gambling, overeating, emotional dependency, etc. By defining SelfEsteem as the immune system of consciousness, the author stresses its importance for everyone. The twelve chapters and the three appendices of the book, some directly and some subtly, help the reader to raise his or her Self-Esteem to an unprecedented level and thus live a life of inspired consciousness. CH. DURGA PRASADA RAO FORMER ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER, RESERVE BANK OF INDIA, HYDERABAD This book is well worth the time and thinking that I put into reading it. The author puts together an organized, insightful look into self-esteem and all that it relates to. It has real life-changing material in it. With subtle negativities surrounding us, bombarding us, affecting our immune system of consciousness, unable to decide what we should do and should be - a good selfesteem is more important than ever. The six components of selfesteem, the ten positive and the ten negative emotions are thoroughly explained in this book. The in depth coverage of healthy living and techniques for high achievement, are highly

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insightful. Anyone who reads this book will be changed by it (for the better). This book has been helpful to me personally, as well as making me think deeper about the software industry that I work in. SASI REKHA LINGAM ADVISOR PROGRAMMER ANALYST, GAINWELL TECHNOLOGIES, U.S.A. This book contains so many revolutionary ideas presented in a captivating, yet crisp manner. We are really amazed how the author managed to cover almost all the zoners of self-help topics which help the reader to raise his or her Self-Esteem in this small book. Professor Lakshmi Narayana, may be, by the virtue of his profession, presents the most complex aspects of life in the simplest way possible. He starts to uncover the greatest truths of life - layer by layer - and busts the myths and inhibitions we have been carrying throughout our life. Read this again and again to assimilate these profound ideas and insanely practical solutions into your subconscious mind, so that they can stay with you forever. Dear readers, we promise you, this book is going to transform your life. Especially for those, who want to improve their self-esteem, this book is their BODHI TREE. S.N.BHARGAVI PRABHU AND P.PRABHU TEJA ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CIVIL ENGINEERING AT PSCMRCET AND ASSISTANT EXECUTIVE ENGINEER, WATER RESOURCES DEPARTMENT, GOVERNMENT OF A.P. The author of the book, though a professor by profession and a passionate chess player, is my first business mentor. His thought process of motivation helped me in coping up with various challenges and dealing with people in my chain pharmacies. The subject of Self-esteem is really complicated and puzzling and

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requires the expertise and experience to investigate and untangle it. To solve and explain this challenge of unravelling Self-Esteem, I strongly believe that Professor Lakshmi Narayana is as competent as any other expert over there, if not better. I am glad he has taken up this job and it is a delight for readers like me. This book is written in simple English and has lot of practical insights. This book is a must read for those who want to uplift their SelfEsteem. I really like the two fictional stories and the solutions from Bhagavad-Gita given in the Appendices. T.V.SURYA PRAKASH OWNER OF A CHAIN OF PHARMACY STORES, VIJAYAWADA The author being a wonderful teacher with burning desire to serve the society did a great job in bringing out this book. It helps the reader to understand the gamut of life and face the situations and overcome or mitigate the challenges of life in a methodical way with courage and wisdom. This book is for people of all walks of life and at all stages of life. This is the right book for developing positive emotions and handling negative emotions with balance. But the concepts in this book cannot be read casually or by gulping down the whole book in just one go. The right way to unleash the power of this book is to read it multiple times as needed and start implementing them. Above all, this is a step by step guidebook that will help one to lead a life of everlasting happiness and achieve the purpose of life. DR.P.S.SRINIVAS PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AND VICE-PRINCIPAL AT PSCMRCET, VIJAYAWADA

CONTENTS

Foreword Preface What is Self-Esteem? Self-Image 3. Delusions 4. Mindfulness Meditation 5. Handling a Crisis 6. Changing for the better 7. Happiness and Mindset 8. The Ten Positive Emotions 9. The Six Components of Self-Esteem 10. The Ten Negative Emotions/Feelings 11. The Four Things for A Healthy Living 12. The Three Techniques for High Achievement 1. 2.

Appendix 1: The Hedonist Appendix 2: Every Rose Has its Thorn Appendix 3: 20 Problems - Solutions

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FOREWORD

Prof. KV Lakshmi Narayana, in his book, “SELF-ESTEEM UNRAVELLED - Insanely Practical Insights to Build Lasting SelfEsteem”, has presented the topic in a structured way. For students (and he has thousands of those!) of Self-Esteem, this is a musthave book. As he states very lucidly in the Preface to the book, his writing journey started because of a tragic event that happened in his daughter’s Institute. His objective in writing this book is to help prevent such tragic incidents from occurring. KVLN has brought to bear his decades of experience as a teacher in the tone and tenor of the book. As the by-line of the book suggests, the book is insanely practical. Interspersed with highly relevant quotes from ancient China to Michelle Obama, the book presents many concepts in a manner that makes it easy to remember them, and implement them. The coverage of content by the book reveals how well-read the author is, and his weakness for chess, a game we know he loves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND THE BOOK K. V. Lakshmi Narayana has done M.S. in Engineering by Research from IIT Madras in 1986 and is in the profession of teaching Engineering (as a professor and Head of the Department now) for more than three decades. He has a lot of experience over the years in counselling a number of students of different degrees of self-esteem (ranging from highly introverted and shy with low self-esteem to aggressive and domineering in nature; from students with serene indifference to everything to those who are overindulging). He also has good experience over the years in counselling his associates on personal and emotional issues. He loves selective intensive study of various subjects. He has written various articles about Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology etc in Academic writing websites. His article “Understanding My Passion with Philosophical Depth,” (https:// chessbase.in/news/Passion_for_chess) is well acclaimed. Studying in depth of various subjects of Self-Help is one of his strong passions. He was very much touched by the news of Sushant Singh Rajput, (the hero of the biopic of the famous Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni) committing suicide and made him to study, deeply, the subject of SELF-ESTEEM and the result of that work is this book. It is the wish and hope of the author that this book will help many a reader (whatever may be the level of his or her Self-Esteem) to live a wholesome and fruitful life by raising their self-esteem which will last for the rest of their lives.

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