Episode Resources
- Blue Zones by Dan Buettner
- Just Us on Spotify
- Just Us music video
The meaning of life according to Nonna:
- God (faith, spirituality)
- Family (not just immediate family, community)
- Love like there’s no tomorrow (love everyone you meet)
Welcome back to The Nick Broadhurst Show. I’m your host, Nick Broadhurst. You can catch all of my music at iamnickbroadhurst.com, and all the show notes for this episode are at iamnickbroadhurst.com/7. And that song you were just listening to is a song called Just Us, which is currently playing on radio around Australia. And I chose that today because it’s very fitting with today’s topic.
Some of those lyrics were, “The greatest lesson is to give.” I mean I totally agree with that, and today’s episode will speak about that. And, “Sing hello, hello, hello, it’s just a game we’re playing; the clock is ticking; what are you waiting for?” So, I cannot wait to speak about today’s topic because, you know, this is really simple stuff; it’s really powerful. And it comes from a funeral that I went to yesterday, which was Melissa’s Nonna, 95 years old, lived an incredible life, and had three basic pillars that she lived by.
So number one was God, number two was family, and number three was love like there’s no tomorrow. And I just love this because, you know, it’s really easy for us to get caught up in the next big thing, the next cool thing, but this was a reminder for me that there are some very simple pillars in our life which we can follow, which can give us so much. It’s easy for us to strive for career, and health, and relationships, and all these things, which is great, and it’s easy for us to look for the latest bio hack, the latest book, the latest greatest podcast, but right in front of you, right within you, is the capacity and everything you need to live a meaningful life.
Interestingly enough, if you look at the blue zones of the world, the cultures of longevity, where people live the longest in the world, these are actually part of the nine pillars of longevity. So, it really struck me, she was 95 and she had the same core messages that she wanted to live by. So I just wanted to go through each one very quickly and give my take on it, and the first one was God.
And Nonna was a Catholic, and for her, that was the way that she connected to her source, was through her faith; and whether you are religious and you’re part of a church, of an organized religion, or whether you’re just looking for a way to connect with yourself more deeply through spirituality or meditation, whatever it is, there is an element of being connected to a higher purpose, which is incredibly important for living a long, happy live.
And I think Nonna, what struck me about her, was she was a devout Catholic, she was that way from when she was young, all the way until she passed, and it just gave her this sense of purpose and it really tied into the other two core points, which we’re going to discuss.
The next one is family. Family doesn’t just have to be your immediate family, and this is something I’ve learnt living in Sydney, away from my family. What Melissa and I have realized, is that we have the ability to create our own family. Now, of course we have our blood family, but what about our community? How are we connected to our community?
And one thing that we have done, is every second Friday, we have what we call a soul family dinner, and this is people who we really feel like are family but they’re just not blood relatives, they’re our soul family. And connecting to your community, connecting to people around you, is incredibly important, so we’ve always had this urge to want to move to LA or move to different parts of the world, but really, what’s become more important is laying down our roots and our foundation, where we live in Bondi and creating a more thriving community.
And again, this leads into the next one, which is love like there’s no tomorrow. Now, she actually said this. God, family and love like there’s no tomorrow. How cute is that? She was so sweet. Nonna basically, what struck me was that whenever you met her, she just radiated love and I wish I had a fraction of what she has in that department. She was just love for everyone. When you met her, she made you feel so incredible because she was just beaming with love, and at the funeral yesterday, what I took from it was, I want to carry more of that through.
And I know I speak about this a lot, I know that my logo is a red geometric heart and my music is about heart, but as I always say, we teach what we most need to learn and I want to live way more than I do from the heart and be way more love towards everybody in my life. When she says love like there’s no tomorrow, she didn’t just love her family and her friends, she loved everyone, whether it is a stranger, your partner, your family members, the local priest, walking past someone in the street, she was always radiating love, which was really beautiful.
Those are the core pillars for Nonna, was God, family and love like there’s no tomorrow. So I would love to not set a challenge but just be a little reminder today of if we can do one thing today better, I would say, it would be to give someone love with no expectation of anything in return.
So, I think today what I would like to do is treat strangers with way more love, and that for me is probably just going to be giving them a nice smile, or doing something nice randomly for someone, it could be paying for someone’s drinks anonymously at a café or whatever it is, but today my challenge is to be more love, to love like there’s no tomorrow. And I would love to hear your thoughts on this, and if you do try it, tell me on social media what you actually did, what did you do today that was more love and how did that make you feel.
So that is today’s podcast. That is the meaning of life according to Nonna, this is episode number seven. You can get all the show notes at iamnickbroadhurst.com/7. It’s very early here, so I’m stumbling on my words a little bit, but that’s okay, you get the main point. Please do share with me on social media @IAmNickBroadhurst and if you enjoyed this podcast, please do go and checkout the podcast in the iTunes store, which is now live, which is super exciting.
I would love it if you gave me a five-star review because the faster this grows, the more people we can get this information to, which is the whole reason I’m doing this. I don’t have anything to sell you. I’m not here to do anything other than to share. For me, my fair exchange would simply be that you do share this with someone else and if you feel compelled that you give me a five-star review and leave me a comment in the podcast app, so you can tell me exactly what you love and more of what you want.
That’s today’s episode. Have a beautiful day, and as always, I love you heaps. I’m here for you and I can’t wait to chat tomorrow. Thanks.
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