Complete to Create: How to Stop Having Unfinished Business w/ Gay Hendricks
Release Date: 08/19/2025
Be. Play. Love.
Most people wait for burnout, conflict, or disaster before ending something that’s no longer in alignment. We’ve both done that in the past, pushing forward because things were “still going well,” even when a quiet inner voice was saying it was time to move on. But sometimes, the most life-giving move is to complete a chapter while there’s still joy, ease, and connection in it. In this special final episode, we pull back the curtain on our decision to end the podcast, while it’s still thriving. We explore why completion can be the most creative act of all. For us, it’s been about...
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Most people are either rehashing the past or obsessing over the future - never living in the present moment. The result? Walking around with major incompletions that keep us from connection, creativity, and wholeness. Carrying unfinished conversations, unspoken words, unresolved feelings, and unfelt experiences. And that robs us of something precious…all the incredible things we could be creating right now! Completion isn’t about perfection or checking every box. It’s the deep, often uncomfortable practice of letting go of past regrets, imagined futures, buried emotions, and the need to...
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We think our voices are just how we speak, how we communicate, how we’re understood, but they are so much more than that. They are our own unique vocal fingerprint, our own frequency, and a way people identify us, but it goes even deeper. Our voices are instruments that communicate our inner landscape, and they can be vehicles for aliveness, creativity, healing, and wellbeing. What’s funny is that we talk all the time, but many of us have never really heard our own voices. That’s because our true voices often get lost in society’s rules about what sounds wrong or right, or the polite...
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We live in a world that trains us to focus on negativity. A world that wants us to contract, to judge, and expect the worst from ourselves (and others). That’s why being self-critical is our default. We absorb the script early: that we’re not good enough, not lovable enough, not deserving of ease or joy. Over time, that internal voice becomes automatic, so automatic that we don’t even hear it anymore. Then your inner landscape shifts into wholeness, and you start to notice it more. How do we shift ourselves out of that default state of negativity? Sometimes, it’s as simple as anchoring...
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For so many people, excess weight isn’t about laziness or lack of willpower — it’s about carrying unspoken stories. It’s about living in a body that holds the weight of feelings your voice never got to share. Because when you can’t tell the truth — or even acknowledge what’s real — your body will speak for you. But what if the path to healing and releasing the excess weight is actually about allowing yourself to feel what you’ve buried? When you finally let yourself feel the big feelings, you stop accumulating them. You don’t have to numb out. You don’t need to overeat,...
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Fear isn’t just a fleeting feeling that visits quietly. It hijacks your nervous system, clouds your judgment, and makes even the smallest decisions feel paralyzing. It’s a fog that clouds your decisions, disconnects you from your body, and shuts down your creativity and sense of possibility. Triggered by something unexpected, challenging, or painful, fear can make us feel stuck, but there is a way out. There’s a surprisingly simple but profoundly transformational framework we can use to regain clarity, agency, and aliveness, even in moments of deep uncertainty. FACT is a way to access...
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What if the aches in your body aren’t entirely yours? The shoulder pain, the gut tension, or the sense of incompletion might not just be physical. It could be the echo of a secret held for decades, maybe even generations? Because here’s the thing: families hold secrets, but those secrets have a way of leaking out or leaving breadcrumbs. And if you’re connected to your intuition, you can sense that there’s something that’s not being said. Most of us were taught to look forward, to toughen up, to leave the past behind. But what if that very suppression is why we can’t move forward?...
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We all have secrets, painful experiences, and even childhood challenges that affect us to this day. What if keeping them is what’s keeping us unwell? Our culture teaches us to bottle in our truth, mask our emotions, and manage our image. But the body keeps score, and over time, that suppression turns into stress, disconnection, and even illness. What if healing is about processing these things through our bodies? That’s the lens Katie brings, not just as a psychologist or embodiment teacher, but as someone who’s lived it. Katie grew up in an environment where expression wasn’t welcome....
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Most people don’t think of themselves as creative. We say, “I’m not artistic,” or “I can’t perform,” and leave it at that. But the truth is, creativity isn’t reserved for the select few. It lives in everyone. It’s baked into how we think, feel, dream, and respond to the world. The problem is that most of us were taught to shut it down. We were told to color inside the lines, follow the rules, and keep things appropriate. Over time, we stopped expressing the weird, wonderful parts of ourselves and started believing that creativity belonged only to the professionals. But...
info_outlineBe. Play. Love.
In a world that worships productivity, we’ve traded our inner spark for efficiency and completely lost the creativity that’s vital to flow. For many of us, this disconnection with our creativity goes back to childhood. This is where we were taught not to be weird. Where we were trained to do things in one specific way, and forced to correct ourselves when we didn’t. For years, we’ve heard negative things that have shaped how we feel about our creativity, so no wonder we’ve suppressed it. But without play, coloring outside the lines, and trusting the parts of ourselves that don’t...
info_outlineMost people are either rehashing the past or obsessing over the future - never living in the present moment.
The result? Walking around with major incompletions that keep us from connection, creativity, and wholeness. Carrying unfinished conversations, unspoken words, unresolved feelings, and unfelt experiences.
And that robs us of something precious…all the incredible things we could be creating right now!
Completion isn’t about perfection or checking every box. It’s the deep, often uncomfortable practice of letting go of past regrets, imagined futures, buried emotions, and the need to control what can’t be controlled.
When we learn how to complete and release, we create space for what’s trying to emerge right now, and that’s where the richest experience can be found.
Why is it so hard to live in the present moment? How do we detach from the past and the future?
In this episode, Gay Hendricks returns to talk about one of life’s most powerful skills: knowing how and when to let go. We discuss how to complete things and why that makes room for essence, energy, presence, and genius.
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Why we stay in the past (or worry about the future)
What’s really behind our resistance to being in the present moment? Why are the past and future safe distractions from the wild creativity of now?
-The hidden cost of incompletions
How do unspoken feelings, unfinished business, and mental replays block our ability to manifest new ideas, deepen relationships, and feel fully alive?
-The 10-second sweaty conversation that changes everything
What’s the one unarguable sentence that can complete years of stuck emotion, tension, or confusion in a relationship, in just seconds?
Guest Bio
Gay Hendricks has served for more than 30 years as one of the major contributors to the fields of relationship transformation and bodymind therapies. Along with his wife, Dr. Kate Hendricks, Gay is the author of many bestsellers, including Conscious Loving, At The Speed Of Life, The Big Leap, and the New York Times bestseller, Five Wishes. Dr. Hendricks received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Stanford in 1974. After a twenty-one-year career as a professor at the University of Colorado, he founded The Hendricks Institute and later co-founded its charitable organization, Foundation for Conscious Living. He was also the founder of a virtual learning center for transformation and a publishing company, and was a co-founder of a conscious entertainment company. Throughout his career he has done executive coaching with more than 800 executives, including the top management at such firms as Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and KLM. His book, The Corporate Mystic, is used widely to train management in combining business skills and personal development tools. Gay is also a mystery novelist, with a series of five books featuring the Tibetan-Buddhist private detective, Tenzing Norbu. In recent years, he has co-created a popular podcast called The Big Leap with Gay Hendricks and Mike Koenigs. He has appeared on more than 500 radio and television shows, including OPRAH, CNN, CNBC, 48 HOURS, and others. Learn about the Coaches Portal here.
About Your Hosts
Katie Hendricks, Ph.D., BC-DMT, is a pioneer in body intelligence and conscious loving with over 40 years of experience. Known internationally as a presenter and seminar leader, she focuses on authenticity, responsibility, and appreciation in conscious living. She co-authored 12 books, including best-sellers Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After, and she has appeared on over 500 radio and TV programs.
Sophie Chiche is a seasoned coach and consultant who has worked with thousands of individuals and teams globally. With a focus on helping people live fully expressed lives, she guides clients and facilitates group sessions to remove obstacles and design meaningful lives. Sophie has developed unique methods, mindset shifts, and healing modalities to create lasting change.
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