Avurudu awakening

We have just witnessed another avurudu celebration. Holidays give us time to refresh, reflect and renew. As Sinhalese and Tamils unite in enjoying the festive times together, it radiates the symbol of national unity. Today’s column on Humane Results is a relaxed reflection on the need to collectively move towards prosperity through productivity.

Significance of Avurudu  

Goodwill, happiness and joy fill the air and the hearts of people of Sinhala and Tamil homes during the New Year.

The familiar sound of the ‘koha’ and the rhythm of drums are heard. Old customs are revived and people exchange greetings. Age-old Sinhalese and Tamil traditions and popular customs which were meticulously observed by the ancients are revived, with the younger folks introduced to them by their parents in the past.

The timing of our Avurudu coincides with the New Year celebrations of many traditional calendars of South and South East Asia. The festival has close semblance to the Thai New Year, Bengali New Year and Oriya New Year festival in India.  Cultural anthropological history of the traditional New Year which is celebrated in the month of April goes back to an ancient period in Sri Lankan history. Various beliefs, perhaps those associated with the fertility of the harvest gave birth to many rituals, customs and ceremonies connected with Avurudu.

Awakening ourselves  

Avurudu invites us to awaken ourselves. It is the time to rejoice, relax, reflect and reinforce. Celebrating as Sinhalese and Tamils alike is the central factor. Collaboration, consensus and connectivity are all coveted concepts associated with Avurudu. A cheerful, optimistic and open mindset can be a good starting point. However, a challenge arises. Are we seeing the good in us as well as in others enough in a truly win-win sense?

We live in a time when meetings are started asking the question, “What went wrong during the last month?” We are very good at catching people doing things wrong. An institutionalised negativity is a common phenomenon in Sri Lankan workplaces. This is the time, I think, for us to change. We should catch people doing things “right.” We should more often ask the question “What went right?” Positive focus is one vital ingredient for consistent performance.

In order to change for the better, we need to recharge ourselves. There is no better time than this festive season to do so. I am talking of the need to take care of the physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions of our lives. This is an opportune time for renewal, an awakening to the reality with focus on being better. We need an awakening in each of the above facets to make the coming months a meaningful period of prosperity.   

Awakening physically

Avurudu games are an invitation for us to stay physically fit. The human body is the vehicle that takes us through the journey of life. Being healthy and fit are of utmost importance, despite our constant negligence of them. Finding quality time for physical exercises on a regular basis will be one sure cure for physical inactivity.

Having a healthy dietary pattern and opting to be fit rather than fat, is another vital need.  Now, make the decision to allocate time for it and to respect the commitment. That is what an awakening is all about.

 Awakening mentally

Avurudu invites us to sharpen ourselves. As Stephen Covey highlighted as one of the seven habits of highly effective people, “sharpening the saw” is essential for growth and success. Ensuring that knowledge and skills are regularly updated and upgraded is what we need to focus on.

Tom Peters gave US managers a challenge a decade ago. It was to look back over the past six months, and see whether you have acquired any new knowledge or skills. If the answer was “no”, it meant you were stagnating with a blunt saw.

With internet acting as a vast ocean of knowledge, offering a variety of informal learning approaches, learning has become part and parcel of our lives. As Socrates said a long time ago, we learn from “the womb to the tomb”.

Awakening emotionally

Avurudu is a time to strengthen positive, constructive emotions. There are people who have successfully passed their exams but have miserably failed in their lives. Being aware of the constructive emotions as well as destructive emotions surrounding our lives is the first step. Laziness and anger are two common examples of destructive emotions. Enthusiasm and determination are common constructive emotions.

As experts on emotional intelligence (EI) say, self-awareness should lead to self-regulation. That is when you are in control of your emotions and channel them towards achievements. This is especially true if you are in an organisational leadership position. As Daniel Goldman, who popularized the concept of EI advocates, leaders should be 70 per cent more emotionally intelligent than the others.  

Awakening socially

Avurudu unites the nation and bonds the country socially. As we know, no man is an island. Human beings are social animals. Human connectivity is an essential requirement for any community to foster. In a high-tech world where speed is a key factor, high-touch dimension of relationships should not be neglected. I have seen many achievement-oriented executives who are “married” to their jobs whilst their neighbours take care of their families.

A renewal should ensure the fostering of relationships with teams at work, and more importantly with teams at home. Building better relationships, taking quality time off from your work to be with your loved ones, getting involved in voluntary work are some popular activities in this respect.

 Awakening spiritually

Avurudu is very much associated with religion. Moving beyond rituals, it is a time where we revisit and reinforce our values. The four awakenings that we discussed above are not possible without the underpinning of one to all of them, which I call the spiritual awakening. There is a difference between being spiritual and being religious.

One can visit a church, temple, mosque or a kovil every day while being at constant loggerheads with neighbours. Being spiritual is much deeper; moving beyond rituals in being righteous. It requires a set of values that governs your behaviour. Honesty and integrity can be the commonest examples. Harmony between your set of values and the corporate values of your organisation will ensure long term association between you and your organisation.

Awakening to awesome results

Awakening of one’s physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions should lead to better understanding of oneself. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their seminal HBR article titled “Making of a Corporate Athlete,” describe vividly the importance of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual “capacities.” According to them, organisations can not afford to utilise their employees’ capacities while ignoring their physical, emotional and social wellbeing. They offer us further insights in these aspects:

“In a corporate environment that is changing at warp speed, performing consistently at high levels is more difficult and more necessary than ever. Narrow interventions simply aren’t sufficient anymore. Companies can’t afford to address their employees’ cognitive capacities while ignoring their physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. On the playing field or in the boardroom, high performance depends as much on how people renew and recover energy as on how they expend it, on how they manage their lives as much as on how they manage their work. When people feel strong and resilient – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually –they perform better, with more passion, for longer. They win, their families win, and the corporations that employ them win.”(Loehr and Schwartz, 2001)

The key point here is the need have a balanced approach towards performance. Awakened employees will assure their commitment towards assigned tasks in achieving the expected results.

The way forward

We need to go beyond festivities to ensure focused action leading to fabulous results. Awakening to realties can be the beginning in this endeavour. Avurudu is an opportune time for us to accelerate the national reconciliation. Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers should all live in harmony on this island nation.

May Avurudu herald an era of prosperity through productivity. That can only be made possible by having the rigour of going for stretched targets with a renewed commitment as a well-balanced person, in delivering humane results.  

(Dr. Ajantha Dharmasiri is a learner, teacher, trainer, researcher, writer and a thinker in the areas of Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour. He can be reached on [email protected].)