Do you tend to think of the beginning of January as the time to get back to work, face Christmas shopping bills and dark mornings? Do you find that New Year’s resolutions tend to take on a feeling of “should”, even if they’re meant to lead to something you’ll feel better about? What if it doesn’t have to be that way? What if 2012 was about making the most of fun?

A curious phenomenon snuck into my life last autumn right after I’d done my Karuna Reiki training. I met an interesting half-Swedish guy with a band called Wake the President, which it turned out was exactly the sort of music I love.  Having drifted into mostly only hearing therapy music, it was so nice to listen to something for fun.  In fact, I’ve ended up listening to their music a lot. Whenever I hear it, it seems to seep into my soul and get to work rearranging things. It’s been so powerful and insistent that I’ve kept asking myself, “What IS this??”  One of my Karuna students in November passed on the message from one of my spirit guides: “It’s complicated.” Ah.

I think I’m unravelling the answers now. Aside from helping integrate my love of Glasgow with my love of Sweden, I think the music has been “waking up” lots of good things in life that I had put away to be better able to relate to people’s problems. Fun, pleasure, success. We often think of Reiki and other personal development or even employability tools as addressing problems or weaknesses in life. But what if we thought of them as revitalising fun?  (The band actually has a song called “Remember Fun.” How good is that?)

At last week’s Reiki Master share, we did Oneness Empowerments, mostly with Karuna Reiki. “Oneness” sounds very quiet and serious, but I have to tell you I went quickly from feeling exhausted to glowing with joyful merriment, and I had a very happy time in the pub afterward, chatting in Swedish with two Reiki Master friends (who do speak Swedish, if you’re wondering!).

It was such a merry and refreshing experience that I decided to try the Oneness Empowerments every day, despite my no-discipline policy over the holidays. This joyful, merry feeling was too good to miss! I also sent Reiki to my Hogmanay night out. I’d been looking forward to it anyway, but figured a little extra goodness would be handy to make sure everyone had a good time.

The result? What an amazing good time it was! It was a huge, conscious pleasure to enjoy my friends, to laugh, to let the live music sink in and dance loads to the djs’ good mix of songs, familiar and new.  It was SO good – the kind of warm-hearted, life-works-out-amazingly-well good that can only be the work of Reiki.

So all this is making me think, why not make 2012 the year to convert our work ethic into a fun ethic? What if instead of focusing Reiki on our problems, we focus it on what we want to be sure to enjoy? Fun, after all, is motivating and creative and makes life far more satisfying.  Enrich your sense of fun first and the other things in life are far more likely to fall into place. The Reiki principle “Do your work earnestly” is about mindfulness, which is effectively aproaching work with love, so fun would just demonstrate you’re really succeeding with that.

As I’m thinking about leaving my two wks of relaxation and getting back to work on Monday, I’ve had to ask myself what Light on the Path is all about. I was relieved to realise it’s actually about helping to increase the fun in life.  Whether it’s through learning Reiki to let good feelings work in your life, work placements in other countries to give you whole new insights and new friends, or the new EGUIDE tools we’re going to start offering from the end of the month, it’s all about enriching life… and making it more fun. Which makes it fun for me too. To focus on that – and make time for music and other leisurely pleasures – has got to make for a more balanced and richer life.

So here’s to a fun-filled 2012!

If you fancy expanding your musical horizons, the guys at Wake the President also run monthly club nights at Mono in Kings Court through We Can Still Picnic, with the premise that you can always enjoy great music no matter what’s going on in the world.   And they organise Radio Magnetic to introduce you to all sorts of interesting music.  Enjoy!