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- ✌️Inner peace for 2025: The most important thing
✌️Inner peace for 2025: The most important thing
Casey Means
December 31, 2024
🎉📚 Good Energy: START THE YEAR STRONG
Friends, if you’re looking for New Year’s inspiration that can potentially change your life for the better (or that of someone you love!), get yourself a copy of my book, Good Energy. With nearly 4,000 5-star reviews on Good Reads, a 4.6 rating on Amazon, and 28 weeks on the NYT Bestseller list, many are sharing in their reviews that Good Energy is what made health finally “click” for them: helping them understand the “why,” helping them sleep better, and literally allowing them to have more energy. Below are some reviews so you can get a sense of how this book could impact you or a loved one’s life. ♥️
I’ve said this before, and I MEAN it: The EASIEST way to jumpstart a life of Good Energy eating is to order a box of Daily Harvest, ASAP. Daily Harvest makes unbelievably delicious frozen REAL FOOD meals built on organic fruits and vegetables. 🥦
Daily Harvest has made a 5 Day Real Food Jumpstart Meal Plan of 14 dishes that makes it so simple to build (and stick to!) new whole food habits as we start 2025. With 1-click (and just about $25 a day! 🤯) you can add all the items to your cart and have healthy frozen food at your doorstep in days.
Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to learn much more about why I have been a loyal customer of Daily Harvest for 6+ years and so believe in this product.
Now, let’s get into this week’s newsletter! 👇
Inner Peace: Let’s make it POPULAR in the New Year!
A couple weeks ago I sent you my holiday gift guide, which contained 99 links for various things I love across food, kitchen gear, clean beauty, books, and more. I was perusing the data on which links got clicked the most, and as I looked at the most and least popular items, I saw something fascinating: the MOST clicked 2 items were a carry-on bag and an Away suitcase, and the LEAST clicked item was a book by Paramahansa Yogananda called Inner Peace. Here’s the data 👇
There is nothing wrong with this… Heck, I shared the luggage and I love both those travel items! They have been with me on some of my favorite trips over the past year (South Africa, Costa Rica, Santa Fe!) and all throughout my book tour. These trips that expanded my thinking and inspired several newsletters, like Newsletter #1, Newsletter #20, and Newsletter #21. Travel can be a transformational experience, and good gear helps us make it smooth!
BUT, what strikes me about the data is the symbolism…
Luggage is a thing we put other things in to go to a place where we are not now.
And I think travel - like all choices - is ultimately about learning and seeking a feeling. When we travel, I think we often seek freedom, wonder, excitement, connection, inspiration, growth, joy, adventure, ideas, and an expanded perspective.
And ultimately, what we’re always looking for - with any choice - is a feeling. I love how Cathy Heller, author of “Abundant Ever After” puts it:
“The happiness you’re looking for is a feeling of being connected to that part of you that is bigger than time, part of you that’s bigger than your story, part of you that is connected to God, connected to the oneness of all. And you can feel that all right now.”
And while travel can help us cultivate good feelings, the amazing thing about our powerful consciousnesses is that we can access all of those feelings inside too, without even stepping out of our homes. There are scientific principles of meditation and spiritual practices that allow us to access bliss, inspiration, and wonder at any moment, if we practice it. And that is the type of teaching that is in this book, Inner Peace by Paramahansa Yogananda.
When I was dealing with depression during my surgical residency, I took a trip of a lifetime to England and Scotland. And unfortunately, it was a miserable experience, because I was simply miserable. It was an important inflection point for me in my life journey because I realized that finding joy in anything - travel, money, experiences, accomplishments - ultimately comes from how I’m already feeling inside. None of those things can create the feeling; the feeling comes from me. And how we’re feeling inside comes from the dedicated work we put into shifting our emotional state and nervous system reactivity.
So, open your spiritual luggage closet, get out those bags, and take a trip inside your beautiful self.
The purpose of sharing my newsletter data is simply a “Yes, AND…” commentary… How can we – as a Good Energy community – contribute to the healing of the world by ALL committing to doing the scientific and spiritual work of cultivating our own inner peace in 2025? And how do we even do that? One of the most studied and traditional ways to do so is a regular meditation practice.
At the first spiritual lecture at Lake Shrine in the beginning of 2024, the monk challenged us… “Is THIS the year that you’re finally going to make meditation a regular habit, or is it going to be yet another year that you put it off and look back with regret? Let’s make this the year that you actually commit.” This hit hard. I have made meditation a New Years resolution so many times but have failed to commit. But 2024 did become the year that I made meditation a regular part of my life, very much because of being supported by my fiancé in this endeavor and the structured support of Lake Shrine.
And since I know many of you are here for health and wellness information, just know that this is ALL connected to health. Because inner peace is the biochemical state where biological healing can take place. As I’ve talked about on podcasts and in my book, inflammation is biochemical fear. Peace is equanimity with our circumstances, and is the antidote to fear. Peace in our hearts and minds - which is cultivated through practices like meditation, breathwork, nature, gratitude, and prayer - contributes to peace in our cells, because it’s all connected, and our thoughts translate into biologic reality through our hormones and neurons, which can be messengers of safety and repair or danger and war. We want safety and repair.
As inspiration to cultivate a 2025 of true inner peace, here are a few quotes from the “book-with-just-39-clicks,” Inner Peace. The key message is simple: Peace is the language of God. As the monks have said several times this year in lectures:
“When we’re looking for evidence of God in our lives, we can know God is present when we feel peace and joy in our hearts.”
Peace and joy in our hearts is the subtle (and powerful) reminder that God is with us, and we are on the right path.
15 POWERFUL quotes from Inner Peace to kick-start your meditation journey in 2025:
🧘♀️ “Those who are inwardly content are living rightly. Happiness comes only by doing right. Those who go against divine law pay for it by lack of inner peace.”
🌟 “If we connect a 120-volt bulb with a 2,000 volt source, it would burn out the bulb. Similarly, the nervous system was not made to withstand the destructive force of intense emotion or persistent negative thoughts and feelings of the modern world.” (We must set boundaries with the constant negative stimulation. So much of this comes from social media and click-bait news. Our nervous systems aren’t meant to handle this much. Limit it.)
💗 “If you spend your life in constant excitement, you will never know true happiness. Live simply and take life more easily. Happiness lies in giving yourself time to think and to introspect. Be alone once in a while, and remain more in silence.” (1000 Hours Outside is one of my favorite resources that reinforces this message).
🧠 “Merely ignoring problems won't solve them, but neither will worrying about them. Meditate until you become calm; then put your mind on your problem and pray deeply for God’s help.”
🎉 “If you are infected with the germs of worry you should go on a strict mental diet. You should feast regularly on the society of joyful minds. Every day, you should associate, if only for a little while, with joy-instilled persons - those who meditate and feel the joy of God as a reality. Seek them out and feast with them on this most vitalizing food of joy. Feast on laughter in the company of these really joyful people. Steadfastly continue your laughter diet once you have begun it, and at the end of the month or two you will see the change - your mind will be filled with sunshine.”
🕊️ “Never be afraid of anything. Fear is a form of nervousness. As long as you are not dead, you are alive; so why should you fear? And once you are dead it is all over and you cannot remember; so why worry?”
🫁 “Fear comes from the heart. If ever you feel overcome by dread of some illness or accident, you should inhale and exhale deeply, slowly, and rhythmically several times, and relax with each exhalation. This helps your circulation become normal. If your heart is truly quiet you cannot feel fear at all.”
🫧 “The delusion of matter, the consciousness of being only a mortal body, is overcome by contacting the sweet serenity of Spirit, attainable by daily meditation. Then you know that the body is a little bubble of energy in the cosmic sea.”
🌿 “A sage is content in the knowledge that the Lord is running the universe… He is free from rage, animosity, and resentment.” (This one is so similar to the Marcus Aurelius quote I shared a few weeks ago!).
✌️ “Peace (shanti) is a divine quality ... .One united to “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” is like a lovely rose, spreading around him the fragrance of tranquility and harmony.”
🙏 “Anger is poison to peace and calmness. Be indifferent to those who seem to enjoy making you angry. When anger comes, set your machinery of calmness in motion to manufacture the antidotes of peace, love, and forgiveness, which banish anger. Think of love, and reflect that.”
☮️ “Mentally destroy anger by saying, ‘I will not poison my peace with anger; I will not disturb my habitual joy-giving calmness with wrath.’”
🫶 “Remember that if you remain inwardly calm under all circumstances you can conquer anything. True calmness means that God is with you. Maintaining calmness does not mean that you should let others make you a doormat. Sometimes it is necessary to make others understand that you mean business; but you are a child of God and you should never be angry.”
🎵 “Sensitivity is an unspiritual habit, a nervous habit, a peace-destroying habit that takes away your control over yourself and robs you of your happiness. Whenever a mood of sensitiveness visits the heart, its static prevents you from hearing the divine song of healing peace that plays within through the radio of the soul.” (Ouch, I feel like he wrote this one directly to me 😆… Anyone else?).
🧘♀️ “Practice meditation regularly, and you will taste the wine of joy and pleasantness all the time, no matter what your outer circumstances.”
Self-Realization Fellowship, founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, teaches practical methods for achieving inner peace, joy, and a deeper connection with the divine—however one defines it. Rooted in universal truths and honoring all religions and saints, its teachings focus on meditation and self-realization as pathways to living with greater purpose, harmony, and love. Learn more about the teachings of Yogananda at the SRF website and Youtube here. I grew up Catholic but left the church in college, and have been fascinated how the spiritual lectures at Lake Shrine have helped me understand Christianity much more, as it explores the teachings of Christ in depth, along with many other religious figures and texts.
👀 In Case You Missed It
🎙️ My favorite conversation with soul-sister Cathy Heller
I hope you’ll listen to this conversation I did with Cathy Heller, which is one of my favorite conversations pretty much ever. It’s the only podcast I’ve ever cried in. I love Cathy, I love her message, and I love what we shared in this conversation that took place at her book launch event.
Some favorite points from the convo:
Casey: “Women who have the strength to know that their REST is a gift to humanity are going to heal and lead the awakening of the world. Be outside more and reflect on nature, which is never hurried and never rushed. The answers are all around us… we can literally ask the trees for advice. And I think what they would say is, ‘You must rest. You must take time to be still. It’s never going to work like this because the answers are going to come in the quiet.’ And as women - who are the creators of life - not resting will be the death of the world. There’s just nothing selfish about putting up boundaries to protect your peace and rest.
Cathy: “Anyone who has ever worked the land knows that you don’t have a harvest every day.”
Casey, sharing a message of one of her teachers: “The opposite of fear is not security. The opposite of fear is infinite possibility.”
Cathy: “What if your mic drop to the world is supposed to be what you sit with and simmer on and marinate, so when you go to speak you have something to say, when you go to post you have something to say, when you go to create you have something to say. What are you rushing to? First, REALLY fill up. Sit in it. Find the truth. Find your power, your spiritual power. Then speak.”
Casey: “What if the internet was created for a brief moment to be like a quantum field to spread the awakening? And then what if we all decide to shut it down? Anything is possible.”
Wise words paraphrased from Cathy Heller: “Light is organized and coherent and powerful. Darkness is disorganized and scattered. Light is always more powerful than darkness.”
🗞️ Article in New York Magazine
While it got a few things right, it’s interesting to see how mainstream print media has thus far almost universally missed the mark on the messages I’m really working to share in the world. My mission is simple: help spread the message that is emblazoned on the very first page of my book as the title of Section 1: Everything is Connected. This is the key point I’m here to share in hopes of contributing to human and planetary thriving.
While the media seems to love to report on polarizing topics, it would be great if there were an open mind to the most important issues: the interdependent relationship between physical, mental, planetary, and spiritual health, and the urgent need to broaden our global perspective on healing to include the Earth and our spiritual lives. In industries fueled by clicks, I don’t think accurate reporting is a goal worth hoping for. Regardless, this is why I am so grateful for this newsletter (and your readership) so that I can continue to explore and share themes of healing that I hope benefit you.
👃 Article in ENT Today
When I was an ENT resident, we often read ENT Today, so it's fun to be featured in it this week:
Newsletter Sponsor: Daily Harvest! 🥑
Sponsors ensure this newsletter remains freely accessible to everyone. All sponsors are brands I already use daily and absolutely love.
Friends, I am SO EXCITED to announce one of my FAVORITE companies in the world, Daily Harvest, is this week’s newsletter sponsor. Daily Harvest makes it SO MUCH EASIER to eat clean, organic, gluten-free whole foods by shipping frozen smoothies, breakfast bowls, harvest bowls, soups, flatbreads, pastas, and more straight to your door.
I have been a customer of Daily Harvest for 6+ years, and have often joked that I think at least 20% of the atoms in my body come from the Daily Harvest Cauliflower Rice + Pesto bowls and Blueberry + Hemp smoothies, which I adore and eat A LOT. 😀
🚀 JUMPSTART YOUR 2025 DIETARY GOALS 🎉
Friends, I truly can’t recommend this enough: start the New Year with a box of Daily Harvest foods to kick start the healthiest year of your LIFE:
Daily Harvest has put together a 5 Day Real Food Jumpstart Meal Plan of 14 dishes that makes it so easy to build (and stick to!) new habits as we start 2025. With 1-click (and just about $25 a day! 🤯) you can add all the items to your cart and have healthy frozen food at your doorstep in just days.
Check out this amazing 5-day plan 👇
This exclusive plan features 14 Daily Harvest dishes - everything from effortless breakfasts to low-key lunches to balanced dinners and actually good-for-you snacks.
The beauty of this collection is that you can add all 14 items right to your box, and the flexibility of your plan allows you to swap items in and out to suit your specific taste buds and dietary needs.
It takes all the guesswork and meal prepping out of the equation so you can jump start your healthy eating goals!
Many Daily Harvest customers like to add a protein like grilled chicken, shrimp, or tofu to their lunches or dinners, too – check out my reel where I show additions I’ll sometimes add to Daily Harvest meals!
💌 Reasons I personally am obsessed with Daily Harvest (aka my love letter to Daily Harvest!):
⏲️ CONVENIENCE: The food is so easy and quick to make on the stovetop, oven or toaster oven, or blender. The best smoothie of your life in 2 minutes? A steaming hot cauliflower rice and bean bowl in 5 minutes? Yes please!
👍️ ALL GOOD THINGS/NO BAD THINGS: Daily Harvest is built on organic ingredients, is fully gluten free, and uses no refined sugars, no ultra-processed grains, and ultra-processed seed oils. Adore.
💊 FOOD-IS-MEDICINE: When I was practicing Functional Medicine after leaving my surgical residency, I literally “prescribed” Daily Harvest to my patients to kickstart their healthy eating. I would ask my patients to get a month’s worth of Daily Harvest and commit to eating it as much as possible. For a few hundred dollars and incredible convenience, this delicious unlock can spark a lifetime shift in healthy eating. Daily Harvest has organized their items into various “Dietary Needs” categories, as well, so you can find items perfect for your goals.
✈️ POST-TRAVEL NOURISHMENT: Whenever I come home from a trip, I love knowing that there is Daily Harvest in our freezer so we have an easy-to-make, warm whole-food meal in minutes.
👨🍳 EASY SIDE DISH: For easy dinners in our house, I’ll often make a protein and then heat up a Harvest Bowl (or two) or a Flatbread as our side dish, making dinner prep seamless.
☃️ FROZEN + SUPER NUTRIENT DENSE: All Daily Harvest food is frozen, so it retains maximal nutrients and I don’t have to worry about it going bad or wilting.
👀 UNIQUE INGREDIENTS: Daily Harvest gets me to try new unique ingredients with healthful properties, like maca root, acerola cherry, moringa, haskap berry, nigella seed, and camu camu.
🤤 DELICIOUS: I can’t describe how delicious Daily Harvest food is. I’m obsessed with it. Many of my favorite items are in my curated Metabolic Health Collection, and I love the Bites (like cookie dough made with only whole food ingredients) for a little treat.
♻️ SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING: Much of Daily Harvest’s packaging is recyclable, and some is made of plant-based molded fiber which I tear up and feed it to the worms in my compost bin!
🌲 MISSION DRIVEN: Daily Harvest supports organic and regenerative farms, meaning you’re getting so many more sustainably sourced fruits and vegetables in your life.
🤝 TRUST: I have immense respect for the CEO, Ricky Silver, who is as mission driven as they come in working to create a more sustainable food system, and I’ve had the pleasure of being very close with food developers and senior product managers at the company for several years. This is a team with paramount integrity and values who is changing the world. Read the Daily Harvest Theory of Change here.