Longevity Series – Vitamin L

There certainly are plenty of vitamins you can get from a balanced diet that will go a long way towards seeing you live to be healthy at 100. But there is one vitamin starting with L that you can’t find in food which is an essential ingredient in our happiness.

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Episode Resources

Welcome back to The Nick Broadhurst Show. I’m your host, Nick Broadhurst, and you can check out all of my new music, my music videos, my podcast episodes, everything that I do, I share on my website at www.iamnickbroadhurst.com, and if you head to iamnickbroadhurst.com/Spotify it will redirect you to my artist profile on Spotify where you can hear all of my music.

But never fear, no matter where you listen to music, you can definitely check out all of my tunes just by searching for the word Nick Broadhurst. That’s on iTunes, YouTube, Deezer, Google Play, Spotify, everywhere. And that song you were listening to is called “The One”. It’s a song about my wife, Melissa, and it comes with a really stunning music video.

Stunning because she’s in it and she’s beautiful but stunning because, you know, it’s just an amazing team that created this music video. I’m so grateful for the stuff that we’ve created together; we did “Little lover”, “Take me down”, “Bones” and “The One”. And you’ll see when you watch these music videos just how incredible they are. And you can check out that song and the music video at iamnickbroadhurst.com/48 in today’s show notes.

So before we get started, definitely listen to this longevity series in order starting at iamnickbroadhurst.com/40, and that’s going to give you a really good overview of what this longevity series is all about. And I refer to the blue zones of this world and I give you a good description of what those blue zones are all about because I will reference those cultures in this episode.

And in episode 41 we go and talk about Moving Naturally; 42, Eat Until 80%; 43, Eat More Plants; 44, Get Your Antioxidants; 45, Know Your Purpose; 46, Slow Down; 47, Live A Spiritual Life, and 48, today, is Vitamin L. The eighth pillar of longevity is all about making family a priority, which is why I’ve called this episode Vitamin L; L for Love.

And in the blue zone cultures of the world family is a really, really big deal. They put family first and the idea of putting their parents in a retirement home is basically looked at as a dishonor. In fact much of what they do is solely for their families, their whole lives revolve around their families. And elders who live with their children are statistically mentally sharper, they have better social skills, less disease, better diets, less injury from falls and lower stress.

I mean, we all want that for our parents, right? And being around our children and our grandchildren provides a sense of purpose which we spoke about in episode number 45, Know Your Purpose. So we know how important that is an ingredient in living a long and healthy happy life.

There was actually a study done in rural Poland that showed that every daughter increases a man’s life expectancy by 75 weeks. How cool is that? Definitely have to pump out some daughters one day.

Anyway, so I’ve always wondered about family; you know the saying, “You can’t choose your family,” well it’s kind of true but why are we here in this lifetime, with this family that you have right now? You have an amazing family who… no sorry, you may have an amazing family who you get along with famously and openly express love towards each other, or you may have experienced the complete opposite where family has caused you great pain.

The important thing to remember is that we did choose our family. Our consciousness, our soul knew exactly what environment it needed in order to grow. This is not random, you chose the childhood environment and surroundings that is most effective for you, the most effective spark, the most powerful reminder of the things that you need to focus on in this lifetime. And that may sound woo woo, but how else do we get here? Is it totally random? I’ll let you ponder that.

But it’s certainly my belief that our consciousness knows what it needs in order to evolve and to grow. Your consciousness is exactly where it belongs. It can be no other way; if it did not, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.

And I look at my family and I see love, I see respect. My brother and I are so different and we don’t speak very often because we don’t need to. There’s almost an unspoken code between us which deep down is rooted in love for each other and our family. We may never have verbally expressed this, I’ve never told my brother I love him and I’m sure one day I will, I hope I do. But it’s there.

The key for my family, I believe is having no expectations of each other. It’s a really big thing, I see it in, sometimes in more ethnic families; much bigger expectations. And this can be a good thing, it can be a double edged sword as well. I think if we naturally show up and naturally are there for each other that’s a beautiful thing, but if we expect things of each other, it only leads to disappointment.

I didn’t grow up in an environment where love is verbally, freely expressed, although I know it’s always there and it’s very strong; and perhaps that’s why I end every episode of The Nick Broadhurst Show with ‘I love you heaps’. Maybe I just want to express that to the world because I didn’t hear it very much.

But that doesn’t mean my parents don’t love me, they do, very much. It’s just not how we express it. But it’s how we express it in my family, I love it. I say it to my friends, my mates, my soul sisters, everyone. I tell everyone, including you, that I love you.

Family is just like marriage, it’s a sacred container which gives us the opportunity to grow. So if we ship our parents off or distance ourselves from our family, are we missing the gold? In some instances, it may not be possible to be close to your family, yet don’t make that distance or don’t mistake that distance as separation. You are always connected and the lessons are always there.

Melissa and I are building our future to be closer to our families but for now we don’t have blood family in Sydney, so we create it. Well, we don’t create blood family, but we create family. Every fortnight we have what we call a soul family dinner at my soul sisters house, Soulla Chamberlain.

This is where we get together, mainly the same people, but each time someone new may come in for the experience. We bring food, we all eat together with the kids, we don’t ship the kids off to a kiddie table. They get to be there, they get to listen to us and tune in and witness and take part in open expressions of love and gratitude. It’s really important, it’s so beautiful. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Last year, in my year of fear, I kind of locked myself away from friends and family, and went through that deep purification process which I spoke about yesterday in episode 47, but I still went to the soul family dinners. I wasn’t in the best form or the best company, but knowing that I had my soul family, and my real family for that matter, it made a huge difference.

I could feel all that love always. And just knowing we have that support network is a beautiful thing. I’ll do just about anything for my family and my soul family, and I hope that brings them a sense of peace and knowing that whatever they go through, I’m always there for them and we always have each other.

And I believe that’s a huge ingredient in these blue zone cultures of Ikaria, Nicoya, Loma Linda California, Okinawa, and I’ve forgotten the other one. What’s the other one? Sardinia. I think it’s a huge part of it because knowing that you have support, knowing that there is that support network and knowing that no matter what happens someone is there to catch you, brings great peace. Great peace, right?

Now, at our soul family dinners one thing that we do is we draw a card from a deck of cards and each card has on it a question that encourages us to share something openly. There are questions like, “Who do you most admire?” “What are the best days of your life so far?” “What is something that no one knows about you?”

And at a recent soul family dinner it ended up being five men and two women. Melissa couldn’t make it that night and it was really interesting because these particular questions that came out really opened up all of us but two of the men, two of my brothers just balled their eyes out. It was really beautiful to just sit back and witness this open expression of vulnerability in front of people that they hadn’t met before as well, like real real tears. It’s very cathartic, it’s beautiful beautiful stuff.

I can’t remember the exact brand of cards that we used, but there is one I just looked up and it’s call FuelBox. I’ll put a link to it in today’s show notes at iamnickbroadhurst.com/48, and there’re questions like, “What would you like us as a family to do more?” “What are you most proud about when it comes to our family?” These sorts of questions, which really makes you sit and consider and just appreciate what you have around you and not take it for granted.

In this episode I just want to leave you with a question and that is, “How are you creating family in your life?” “What can you do to take it deeper, to take it to another level?” If there are fractures in your family, is it time to start healing them? And time to see our family not as a burden, but perhaps as the family that we chose to teach us what we most need to learn in this lifetime?

This is a very personal question and only you will know when the time is right if you do have pain in your family. But if you have a close family, how can you take it deeper? How can you start now to plan for the future so that your parents are never alone? We invest in our children so much, your parents most likely invested a lot in you as well. So as a parent I hope that comes back to me one day and I’m surrounded by my family, that my kids and my grandkids take care of me.

My ultimate wish is that they don’t need to take care of me, that the lessons that I’m learning in this longevity series are things that I apply every day for the rest of my life so I can live to be healthy and happy at 100 or beyond or however many years I’m supposed to be on this earth for, I accept.

That my friends is Vitamin L. Let this essential ingredient be infused into all your days, and I have a favor to ask you. Please today send this podcast to all of your family, share it on social media and tag me at @IAmNickBroadhurst so I can send you back a love heart and a little prayer hand emoji because I love sending back little prayer hands.

The reason I ask you to share this is because I know what a profound effect this has had on my life, and my son’s life, and my wife’s life, and the lives of those people in our soul family. And I just want that for you. I’m not doing this to get more downloads, I’m doing this because it’s changed my life and I want it to have a positive impact on your life as well.

For all the show notes today, head to iamnickbroadhurst.com/48, and you can also get a full transcript of the show. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on your podcast app so that you don’t miss an episode of The Nick Broadhurst Show.

And please, another favor. Head into iTunes and please leave me a 5 star review, but most importantly, tell me what you love about the show or what you want to hear more of because I, my friend, am at your service.

And remember today to look up, see the beauty around you, see the beauty within you. Be gentle with yourself today, be love towards yourself, be love towards others. Don’t miss the lessons that our family affords to us. Go deeper, with your family. Create your own soul family dinners, listen to your intuition, and as always, have a beautiful day. I love you heaps. Ciao!

I would love to hear from you, so please tag me @IAmNickBroadhurst on social media, and use the hashtag #TheNickBroadhurstShow, or leave me a comment below (I read every single one!). And if you could take a minute to leave me a 5 star review on iTunes I would be very grateful.

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