Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast and this very special Thanksgiving episode, which is solo podcast. Just me, no guest. I'm gonna be talking about the one word, and I think you guys are gonna love it. Either you're gonna get a lot out of it. You're gonna wanna share it with your friends, and I hope you do. Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn and check out all of the content and announcements coming up, including there's a great conference happening January 28th 29th.
It's AI in Medical Affairs, and that's through Momentum Events, our friends at Momentum Events. And you'll get a 15% discount when you register using the code MSL 15. So we're excited to co promote this. Great conference. For more information, go to aimedicalaffairs.com or check out my announcement announcements on LinkedIn so that you can register, and I hope to see you there. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical.
Okay, guys. Welcome. I am very excited about this Thanksgiving special episode, solo episode with me, Tom Caravella. I'm your host. And for those of you that don't know me, I'm a recruiter, and I'm the owner of the Carolyn Group, and I'm a partner in MSL Mastery. If you're not familiar with that, go to mslmastery.com. Bestselling author of Job Search Mastery, How to Win Your Dream Job. I'm also a speaker, trainer, and coach.
The reason I'm introducing myself is there's a lot of new listeners, and a lot of people don't know that I'm a recruiter by day and that I wrote a book and that I do all this other stuff. So just wanted to throw it out there, and I wanna thank you guys all for your support. Everybody that's been listening and all of the new listeners, really, truly, truly appreciate all of you. And I'm thankful for you. It's Thanksgiving time. This is a Thanksgiving episode, and I'm really thankful for you.
And I'm going to talk to you guys and take a little bit of a different angle. Each year during this Thanksgiving season, we talk about how important it is to be thankful and celebrate gratitude. And if you haven't listened to my past episodes, Thanksgiving episodes on gratitude, you should. I think it's really important, but I'm gonna do something different this year. Will it take a little bit of a different approach and cover it a different way. So bear with me.
I think you guys are gonna love this. It's not gonna be very long, and you're gonna wanna share this with your friends. So first and foremost, let's start with this year, this Thanksgiving. As I say every year, I'm gonna say it again, take some time to reflect and practice gratitude and be truly thankful for what you have accomplished this year, what you're grateful for the over the course of this year. It could be the smallest thing. It could be the biggest thing.
It's really important to find some quiet time away from distractions, noise, work, kids, cats, dogs, spouses, whatever it might be. Just give yourself some alone time and really think about all of the things that you're grateful for and celebrate this Thanksgiving by truly giving yourself the gift of gratitude. Receive the feeling. Gratitude is a feeling. It's an emotion. Receive the feeling of gratitude.
Feel good about all of the great things that you have going on in your life, and just take a moment to recognize that and be grateful and be thankful for it. It's it's it's not just a verb of practicing gratitude. It's the verb of receiving the emotion of gratitude. So I wanna just stress that first and foremost. Here's where this gets different. I want to take a totally different approach post Thanksgiving.
I wanna give you guys some homework, and I want you to put time on your calendar between Thanksgiving and New Year's to sit down and do something as you prepare your goals. I'm a big I'm big on taking time to establish goals for the year. And if you're listening to this and it's not and it's, I don't know, middle of the year, it's July and you're listening to this, you could still do this. You could do this at any time.
But at some point, put time on your calendar to maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe it's 30 minutes, to be alone with your thoughts. Get a pen and a piece of paper because I want you to commit to this and write this down. But the idea is to think about what is it that you want to be thankful for next Thanksgiving? What is your goal for the coming year, and what would you be truly grateful for as you sit down and reflect a year from now?
I want you to visualize what it is that you want in the new year, what it is that you want to be grateful for this time next year. I wanna get that into your heart and into your soul. And you're probably like, well, Tom, I don't understand. The title of this podcast episode is what's the one word. Well, that's where this comes in, is I want you guys to establish your word for 2025.
And if you're listening to this a whole another year from now or 10 years from now, establish the word that is going to trigger the reminder of what you want to celebrate on Thanksgiving that coming year. The word is a trigger, and it's gonna trigger you and remind you of what you want and what you're working for. It's very powerful. Let me give you an example. Let me tell you how it works.
And I I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about me, of course, course, because I like to do that and just give you my own personal word and how I'm going about it. But I'm actually gonna start with so I had a conversation with Petrina Pellet. If you guys don't know Petrina, she's amazing. She's a big part of our MSL mastery program. She's such a brilliant mind. Her content's amazing. So if you don't know who she is, it's Petrina Pellet, p e l l e t t. Follow her on LinkedIn. She's awesome.
So I'm talking to Petrina, and she told me that her word for next year is abundance. So she's already done this. And I like to do this every year. She was way ahead of me, and she's already done this. So one of the things that has to happen is you pick a word, but then you have to have a definition for that word. So what what what does abundance mean? And I didn't ask Katrina this, but I'm telling you how this works. So for for the word abundance, you want there to be a definition around that.
That means you want to live a life of abundance in your career, in your finances, in your health. What would you like to see happen in your health this coming year? What would give you the feeling of abundance? Attach this to an emotion. Abundance is is an emotion. It it's feeling the opposite of lack. It's feeling and enjoying an abundant life, abundance in your finances, abundance in your career, abundance in your relationships.
You want to find a word that you can attach an emotion to because when you're going through your day, you're going through your year, you're going through those tough moments, and it's going to happen, think about your word and let that word sit inside you in your heart and and let that draw the emotion that's tied to that word. So my word for the next year is freedom, and I know that that's very William Wallace of me.
If any of you Braveheart fans out there, you probably know what I'm talking about. Freedom. But freedom and it that might you might think that that's a weird word. It's like, Tom, where did you come up with that? Why freedom? And what's the emotion? And and what does it mean to feel freedom?
And the definition for me is that next what I want to accomplish and what I want to happen on Thanksgiving next year is I want to reflect back on the year and think about the fact that I was able to celebrate freedom from negativity, freedom from uncertainty, freedom from worry, freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, financial freedom, being able to not worry about finances and really just kind of spend without worrying and not second guessing it.
You know, guys, you have to really decide what's important to you for now and for your future. I mean, I'm as you guys know, I'm I talk about talked about this. I get very personal sometimes. I'm getting older. I'm getting I'm close to 60 now. I just celebrated a birthday, and I'm I'm way past the 50 yard line, and, you know, I'm getting to the point where I have to really start thinking about what is my life gonna look like later on. I don't ever plan on retiring. It's just not in me.
I feel like I'm just gonna be working for the rest of my life in some capacity. So I don't look at the word retirement, but I also wanna live a certain lifestyle. And to live that lifestyle, you have to have a certain amount of money available and a certain amount of money saved. So freedom in knowing that my future is secure. The feeling of freedom for me is the feeling of peace. It's the feeling of excitement and exhilaration and fulfillment and satisfaction. It's abundance. It's prosperity.
It's success, all wrapped up under the umbrella of the word freedom. So here's what I want you to do. First of all, I want you to make sure that you spend time being grateful this Thanksgiving, reflect on all of the things that you're thankful for, and don't miss an opportunity. Don't let this holiday go and be like, man, you know what? I really didn't spend enough time with myself giving myself the gift and receiving that gift of thanksgiving, that gift of gratitude. So definitely do that.
The second thing I want you to do is I want you to put time on your calendar, and I want you to establish your word for next year. And if you're watching this a year from now, 2 years from now, 3 years from now, it's never too late to establish that word, and I want that word to be attached to the emotion that you wanna feel when you're celebrating next Thanksgiving, and you're in that state of gratitude, and you're reflecting back on everything that you're thankful for.
I want you to and you're reflecting back on everything that you're thankful for, I want you to be able to have that emotion of that word tied to that experience and to your goals. Let this drive you and drive your actions and your goals so that it's a constant reminder. One of the things that makes this effective and makes this so powerful is that right now, I don't care who you are. If you're if you're breathing and living, you are getting distracted every day.
There's just a ton of distractions. And this is not just I'm not just talking about for my American friends and everybody that's listening to this in the US. There are people that listen to this podcast in 90 different countries. This goes for everyone. This is a universal theme. We all are hammered with distractions all day long. Our phone, text, email, WhatsApp, what's this, what's that, Facebook, social media, LinkedIn, You name it. It's hitting us from all different angles.
It really, really is important to just turn it all off sometimes. Turn it off even if it's for 15 minutes a day. Give yourself some grace. Give yourself the gift of just some alone time, time to reflect. I know I I've talked about meditation, but, like, guys, I I'll be honest with you. I'm not very good at meditation because my mind goes so fast that I can't it's very hard for me to slow it down. I attempt it. I try it. I do it.
But I could tell you one thing that I'm consistent with is I do set aside time several times a day to turn everything off and just give myself some time to reflect and to think, some some free thinking time to make sure that I'm concentrating and focusing, getting myself back to a place of getting in touch with the emotions that I wanna feel throughout that day or that week or whatever it means. Recalibrate. Give yourself 15 minutes, 30 minutes in the morning, or whatever it is.
I know everybody's busy. You're getting your kids off to school. You're doing all this stuff. You're working hard. You're trying to get find that job. You're trying to get that promotion. Whatever it is, I understand that there's priorities that are gonna take precedent, but you should give yourself the gift. That should be a precedent for you. Give yourself the gift of alone time, 15 minutes, 30 minutes. And during that time, reflect and and you could practice gratitude every day.
But try this concept of tying a word to this practice. I told you my word. My word's gonna be freedom. Next year is gonna be actually right now. Am I I'm starting now. Right now, I'm looking to live a life of peace and freedom. I wanna be free from all of the negativity that's out there and things that are bombarding my mind. That's my goal. I know my buddy, Katrina, she is focused, locked into abundance. What is it that's going to bring her abundance?
What is that definition of abundance for her? She's got that figured out. What's your word? What's the emotion you want to attach to it? What is the definitions that you're going to attach to that word? Give this to yourself. It's a gift. Give it to yourself. And you know what? If you think of it, hit me with your word. Hit me with it. Send me a you know, when I do the posting on LinkedIn, send me your word.
After you listen to this, if you see the posting or if you wanna send me a direct message on LinkedIn, hit me with the word. If this helped you, if this resonated with you, hit me with your word. I wanna celebrate it with you. You're not the only one that's gonna be doing this. I'm doing this. I told you Patricia's gonna do it. I know Sarah's gonna do it, Sarah Snyder. If you aren't following Sarah Snyder on LinkedIn, you absolutely need to do it. She's the most brilliant mind in our business.
I know she's doing it, so let's all do it together. Let's have an amazing, amazing Thanksgiving. I'm grateful for every one of you guys. I love doing this. I love this podcast. I love what it's been able to accomplish for a lot of people, but I love for love what it has helped me how it's helped me grow as well. And I I can't do this without you, and I wanna thank you guys for your support and for for making this so successful.
So during this Thanksgiving time and whenever you listen to us, understand that I am truly, truly grateful for each and every one of you guys. I can't state that enough. Give yourself the gift of thanksgiving. Give yourself the gift of gratitude. Come up with that one word, tie it to an emotion, and let me know how it goes for you. But I love you all. Thank you guys for listening, and have an amazing Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for listening to the show.
If you've enjoyed it, please subscribe so that you don't miss episodes in the future. And feel free to leave a rating or a review or a comment. Thanks again, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.