Episode 13: Completion is the Key to Connection
In this solo episode of the Super Connections podcast, host Jennifer K. Hill explains why many people get stuck in their personal, professional, and romantic lives: they have not achieved "completion" with past relationships or experiences. She frames this within her "Golden Triangle of Connection"—connecting to yourself, to others, and to your purpose—arguing that unfinished interactions create a cluttered emotional space that blocks new, desired connections. Hill uses several vivid analogies, such as a letter that keeps returning when you refuse to open it and the dangling thread of a ghosted relationship that can unravel later. She introduces a practical toolkit for breaking these patterns: (1) auditing the specific words, situations, or memories that trigger you; (2) recognizing which of four relational "stances" you habitually adopt—mother‑child, father‑child, playmate‑sibling, or admirer‑admirer; and (3) consciously shifting from a triggering stance to a healthier one (playmate‑sibling or admirer‑admirer). Through personal anecdotes (e.g., a disappointing boss named Karen) and a story from a Kabbalah‑center podcast, she illustrates how the stance framework reveals hidden childhood dynamics that fuel current triggers. Hill concludes with a four‑step action plan: identify who you are incomplete with, map your dominant stances, choose a replacement stance, and, when emotionally ready, have a completion conversation. She also promotes the OptiMatch survey (om.app/survey) for deeper self‑motivation insight.
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Welcome to Super Connections. I am your host, Jennifer K. Hill, helping you with the Golden Triangle of Connection, where you will super connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Join me each week as I will share from some of my favorite tips and tools for super connecting, and I'll bring in some of my favorite friends and thought leaders to help support you on your journey to Super Connecting to the life of your dreams. Hello friends, and welcome back for episode 13 of the Super Connections Podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer K. Hill, here to offer you tips, tricks, and tools on how to Super Connect to yourself, others, and your purpose. Today's episode is a special episode That we're gonna talk about where we get stopped in super connecting to ourself, others, and our purpose. And one of the main reasons that this happens in our lives, whether it's personally, professionally, romantically, is due to a lack of completion. So I can feel you thinking out there, some of you might be scratching your head saying, what the heck is Jennifer talking about? Let's imagine that you had a boss And this boss was a jerk. Boss, business partner, take your pick. We'll just call it a boss for the sake of this conversation, right? And let's imagine that this person who is your boss really irked you. You were extremely frustrated with this person and you kept resisting them and wishing that they would change. So one day something happens and you finally say, ah, I'm fed up. I'm done with this person. I'm out. And you leave that job or that position, whatever it is, out of spite, anger, fear, malice, whatever it is, or just general frustration during due to incompetency. Whatever it is, your reason is for being upset with that person and leaving. Let's just say you leave, and then fast forward, you go find a new job, and you're extra careful now. You want to be sure you don't wind up. I don't want that thing I had last time. I don't want that boss who's going to micromanage me, or that person who, as we might say in our. Our mind is incompetent, whatever our story is about the person, right? So we're extra careful to be sure that we don't wind up in that same situation. Yet what happens? 9 times out of 10, what winds up happening if we didn't get complete with our prior boss about whatever was missing or what didn't work, if we did it out of frustration or anger, then we need to, from a life lesson standpoint, Encounter that same person again. Now, it might be in the form of a boss, it might be in the form of a new friend, but one way or another, it's like we're being given a letter. This was a beautiful analogy years ago one of my Kabbalistic teachers gave to me. It's imagine that you have a letter and it's addressed to Jennifer K. Hill, and I get this letter in the mail, and this letter is in the shape or form of this person that I'm not happy with and I want nothing to do with, right? And then you get the letter and you say, no, this person is not meant for me, return to What happens if, let's just call it the universe, sends you a letter that is directly written to you and you say, not for me, I don't wanna deal with this, not my problem? What's the universe gonna do? It's gonna send you more of the same letter, and that letter is a metaphor for the person or experience that you're resisting, right? And it's gonna send you more and more until all these letters are piling up. And one day you have to confront this pile of letters, i.e., these people or situations in your life. That you might find frustrating, upsetting, or angering. What happens when this happens? What if instead of getting angry and resisting the person or thing or situation that's driving you bonkers, what if instead you just opened the letter and you asked yourself, how is this for me? What is the lesson that is in this person, in this letter, in this form of a person? That is for me, and what am I meant to learn? How does this tie into completions? Let's take it back to this idea of relationships. When a lot of us end a friendship, a romantic partnership, a business partnership, sometimes we can get so fed up and frustrated that we just throw our arms up in despair and say, oh, I'm just not gonna deal with you anymore. Now that can look like a lot of things. How many of you out there have ever ghosted somebody? Maybe it was ghosting somebody in the dating world, or maybe you even ghosted somebody for a job that you were supposed to start. When we ghost one another, it's like this thread that's hanging off the edge of our garment and it's there. It's not really gonna be bothersome, but that thread can get caught on stuff and can unravel in the most unexpected ways. What do we do? Let's imagine that right now in this moment, you are dealing with somebody who's frustrating you. And the last thing you wanna do is have a conversation with this person. What if instead you could sit down and you could write about what are the things that you're allowing yourself to be triggered by this person around? Is it that they remind you of your mother, your father, your ex, your child, whoever it is? Go ahead and just make a list on a sheet of paper of what are the things that you are allowing yourself to get triggered by. Now, this is a very important distinction that I always like to differentiate. Mm-hmm. Is that when I say you triggered me, that's not quite the truth. In order to be triggered, we have to allow ourselves to be triggered. One of my favorite techniques around this is something called stances, where if we look at— if I did, forgive me and stick with me. If this is a new episode for you, then it'll be new to you either way. But let's talk about stances for a moment. A lot of the reason that we all get triggered by other people in our lives is that It might be one of the 4 main stances that we find ourselves falling into. So you have mother-child, father-child, playmate-sibling, and admirer-admirer. Now, the playmate-sibling and the admirer-admirer one, those can be really soft and light and fun. In fact, those are the ones that are healthy often to go to when you notice yourself getting triggered. For me, I noticed long ago, I remember sitting there across from my boss, Karen, who was one of my first real managers ever in my life. And something that I used to allow to really trigger me with people, and particularly with bosses, is if somebody said, I'm disappointed in you. How many of you can relate out there where if somebody says, I'm disappointed in you, you either cry, you get angry, you get defensive? I'm speaking for myself. Often all three would happen to me. It turned out after many years of reflection and learning a lot of these different techniques and technologies, I could see That what was really triggering me was this thing that was father-child, that I really just wanted to be loved and respected by my father. And anytime I saw somebody who was an authority figure, that person then was a substitute for my father. And if somebody said they were disappointed, it took me right back to that old trigger of the father-child. I went into the child. Some of you, it might be mother-child. You might have it where you go into mothering somebody else when you're triggered, trying to control or nurture people. people or overly give to them and coddle them. Or you might be the child in mother-child where you really just want to be held, and if somebody doesn't give you that nurturing love, that can allow you to be triggered. Whatever it is, I invite you, number one, to look at what are the things that trigger you? What are the key words that trigger you that cause separation between you and someone else? And what are the things that You allow yourself to get activated by. Number 2, ask yourself, get curious. Do I go into mother-child, the mother or the child? Do I go into father-child, the father or the child in that circumstance? Or what could you do? What's another way that you could engage with somebody when you notice you're getting triggered? Could you shift stances and actively, consciously choose to switch from going into the child or the mother or the child or the father? And instead do playmate sibling. So I'm gonna give you a real life, real time example of how this looks. Let's say somebody says they're disappointed in you, and if that were to happen and say that was one of your triggers, then instead of ghosting the person, never talking to them again, leaving in an angry or frustrated way, the relationship, the business partnership, et cetera, what if instead you could go to playmate sibling? So that's one of my favorite vaults is when you think of 2 siblings, Playing together, joking around and jesting and being playful with one another. How that might look, let's imagine. So here I am years ago, I'm gonna rewind and go into my imagination of this time where one of my first bosses, Karen, I'm sitting across from her and she gives me that stern knowing look. Jennifer, we're very disappointed in you. And in that moment, what could I have done instead of getting sad and crying or angry or defensive? What could I have done now, having looked back with perspective? If I could have come from Playmate/Sibling or Admire/Admire, where there's a mutual respect, where both parties are on equal footing, I'm gonna tell you how both might look. If I was coming from Playmate/Sibling in this situation many years ago with Karen, I might've been like, oh, got it. Oh my gosh. Wow. Like in a playful way. Wow. Thanks so much. I had no idea. Tell me more about that. What does that look like? Do you see how there's that sense of awe and play and curiosity? When I was coming from the child in that scenario, it was like head down, being reprimanded and being afraid, as opposed to, oh cool, tell me more. What does that look like? Like you're showing your best friend or your sibling something really cool that you wanna share. So that's one way you could do it is you could go playmate sibling. Now, another way that you could do this is you could also do the admirer. And that's a place of mutual respect. So instead, again, if I were in a healthy state, I could say, huh, wow, Karen, I really respect and admire you. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that occurs for you? And I'd love to better understand what's missing and what you'd like to see more of so we could have a more trusting relationship. So that would be coming from a place of admirer-admirer, where there's mutual respect. None of these are good or bad or right or wrong. What I do invite us to look at though, is go through these relationships, the people where it's either current people in your life that you're noticing that you're triggered by, maybe past relationships that are incomplete that you haven't spoken to. And then go ahead and ask yourself as you look into these relationships, which of these stances am I or was I coming from? And then once you get curious about that and you begin to understand, What your triggers are, what your trigger words are, which stances tend to be the most triggering for you, and then what your ideal stance would be going forward, then that gives you a whole new access to doing things in a new way. I'll share with you, and then go out and maybe get complete with these people, have conversations and say, oh gosh, maybe it's somebody you haven't talked to in 2 or 5 years and say, gosh, I realized looking back that you said something to me 5 years ago and I allowed myself to get triggered. And I took it really personally, and that's not what I'm committed to. I'd love to hear your perspective of how that went for you. Yeah, I'm actually gonna tie this into an earlier episode we did on inner child work. Be sure you have the emotional bandwidth to do this. So if you are going to have this conversation, be sure you've slept well enough, you've drank enough water, do it while you're sober. People, I'm totally fine, drink, do whatever you wanna do drugs-wise, totally okay. Not here to tell people to do something or not do something, but I do encourage you to have these important sorts of conversations when you're in a clear-headed framework. So number 1, look at who are you incomplete with. Number 2, look at what are the stances that you find most triggering. And number 3, ask yourself, what's a replacement stance? And number 4, if you wanna get 100 million bonus points, go find one of these people on your list who you're feeling incomplete with. And see if you can have a conversation to get complete with them when you're in a healthy emotional state. I'll share with you a funny story I heard years ago on a podcast about this. One of my favorite podcasts that I listen to, in addition to the David Guillaume podcast, who I've mentioned before as one of my favorite teachers, he used to be on a podcast called The Weekly Energy Boost. And one day they were sharing a story, another woman on the show, the co-host Elise Sheva, was sharing a story of a student of hers at the Kabbalah Center. And this student knew all these spiritual techniques and all the things, and she comes to Eliseva and says, oh, I need your help. I have this woman who is so annoying me. She's driving me crazy, and I just want nothing to do with her. Every day she talks like this, and she pops her head over at my desk and says, let's grab lunch. And this woman's just driving her crazy. So Eliseva, her teacher, is sharing this on the show. And says, oh, can you see where maybe you are this person to someone else in your life? And the woman crosses her arms and says, no, I'm definitely— I've looked at every relationship I have. There is no circumstance where I would ever do that to somebody else. I find it so annoying. It might not be a big deal. It might not be a big blowup fight. You might just find somebody annoying or frustrating. After a couple of weeks of feeling wildly frustrated by this woman, the woman in the show keeps Inquiring and reflecting and inquiring and reflecting. And at the end, one day she comes back to Eliyosheva, the woman who is hosting the show, and says, I have it. I figured out what is happening. And Eliyosheva says, yes, what is it? She said, all of a sudden, the other day, I came home, and I am at work all day, and my husband works from home. And I realized I was the annoying person to him because I was always popping my head over his desk and saying, hi, honey, what do you need? Hey, honey. I need time, I need attention. And I realized I was being the needy one when it came to my husband. And not less than a week later did that annoying woman who was working with this woman get transferred to another office. We began today by talking about how people can often trigger us and can cause us to feel a sense of separation or frustration or anxiety. Could we look at these people and one by one begin to get complete, get curious, are we that person to somebody else? What is allowing us to get triggered about this person? What stances that we're taking with ourselves, with others around this? And what if we could begin to complete some of these relationships to make space for what we really want? Because so many of you out there, I know you're dying to call in Your dream soulmate, your dream best friend, your dream business partner. But as long as we have this clutter in our emotional space of these old relationships we haven't completed, we're never going to be able to see the people and make space for the people who we really want to have in our lives. Go out there, do an audit, figure out what are your triggers, get curious, play with them, examine them, And then see where you can get complete in your life. I am Jennifer Cahill. It's always a pleasure to be here with you. If you want to deep dive more into understanding yourself, you can always go to om.app/survey, which is our company OptiMatch, and you can find out for free how are you motivated. Find out. It even gives you a free report of how you're motivated with potential things that might be opportunities for growth for you. Or perhaps some, even some of your strengths. Something happens and you finally say, ah, I'm fed up. I'm done with this person. I'm out. And you leave that job or that position, whatever it is, out of spite, anger, fear, malice, whatever it is, or just general frustration during, due to incompetency, whatever it is your reason is for being upset with that person and leaving. Let's just say you leave. And then fast forward, you go find a new job and you're extra careful now. You wanna be sure you don't wind up— I don't want that thing I had last time. I don't want that boss who's gonna micromanage me, or that person who, as we might say in our mind, is incompetent, whatever our story is about the person, right? So we're extra careful to be sure that we don't wind up in that same situation. Yet what happens? 9 times out of 10, what winds up happening if we didn't get complete with our prior boss about whatever was missing or what didn't work, if we did it out of frustration or anger, then we need to, from a life lesson standpoint, encounter that same person again. Now, it might be in the form of a boss, it might be in the form of a new friend, but one way or another, it's like we're being given a letter. This was a beautiful analogy years ago one of my Kabbalistic teachers gave to me. It's imagine that you have a letter and it's addressed to Jennifer K. Hill, and I get this I get this letter in the mail, and this letter is in the shape or form of this person that I'm not happy with, and I want nothing to do with, right? And then you get the letter and you say, no, this person is not meant for me, return to sender. What happens if, let's just call it the universe, sends you a letter that is directly written to you and you say, not for me, I don't wanna deal with this, not my problem. What's the universe gonna do? It's gonna send you more of the same letter, and that letter is a metaphor for the person or experience that you're resisting, right? And it's gonna send you more and more until all these letters are piling up. And one day you have to confront this pile of letters, i.e., these people or situations in your life that you might find frustrating, upsetting, or angering. So what happens when this happens? What if instead of getting angry and resisting the person or thing or situation that's driving you bonkers, what if instead you just opened the letter and you asked yourself, How is this for me? What is the lesson that is in this person, in this letter, in this form of a person that is for me, and what am I meant to learn? So how does this tie into completions? Let's take it back to this idea of relationships. When a lot of us end a friendship, a romantic partnership, a business partnership, sometimes we can get so fed up and frustrated that we just throw our arms up in despair and say, oh, I'm just not gonna deal with you anymore. Now that can look like a lot of things. How many of you out there have ever ghosted somebody? Maybe it was ghosting somebody in the dating world, or maybe you even ghosted somebody for a job that you were supposed to start. When we ghost one another, it's like this thread that's hanging off the edge of our garment, right? And it's there, it's not really gonna be bothersome, right? But that thread can get caught on stuff and can unravel in the most unexpected ways. So what do we do? Let's imagine that right now in this moment, you are dealing with somebody who's frustrating you, and the last thing you wanna do is have a conversation with this person. What if instead you could sit down and you could write about what are the things that you're allowing yourself to be triggered by this person around? Is it that they remind you of your mother, your father, your ex, your child, whoever it is? Go ahead and just make a list on a sheet of paper. Of what are the things that you are allowing yourself to get triggered by? Now, this is a very important distinction that I always like to differentiate, is that when I say you triggered me, that's not quite the truth. In order to be triggered, we have to allow ourselves to be triggered. So one of my favorite techniques around this is something called stances, where if we look at— I might've mentioned this before. If I did, forgive me and stick with me. If this is a new episode for you, then it'll be new to you either way. But let's talk about stances for a moment. A lot of the reason that we all get triggered by other people in our lives is that it might be one of the 4 main stances that we find ourselves falling into. So you have mother-child, father-child, playmate-sibling, and admirer-admirer. Now, the playmate-sibling and the admirer-admirer one, those can be really soft and light and fun. In fact, those are the ones that are healthy often to go to. When you notice yourself getting triggered. For me, I noticed long ago, I remember sitting there across from my boss, Karen, who was one of my first real managers ever in my life. And something that I used to allow to really trigger me with people, and particularly with bosses, is if somebody said, oh, I'm disappointed in you. How many of you can relate out there? Where if somebody says, I'm disappointed in you, you either cry, you get angry, you get defensive. I'm speaking for myself. Often all 3 would happen to me. It turned out, after many years of reflection and learning a lot of these different techniques and technologies, I could see that what was really triggering me was this thing that was father-child, that I really just wanted to be loved and respected by my father. And anytime I saw somebody who was an authority figure, that person then was a substitute for my father. And if somebody said they were disappointed, it took me right back to that old trigger of the father-child. I went into the child. Some of you, it might be mother-child. You might have it where you go into mothering somebody else when you're triggered, trying to control or nurture people or overly give to them and coddle them. Or you might be the child in mother-child where you really just want to be held, and if somebody doesn't give you that nurturing love, that can allow you to be triggered. Whatever it is, I invite you, number one, to look at what are the things that trigger you? What are the keywords that trigger you that cause separation between you and someone else? And what are the things that you allow yourself to get activated by? Number 2, ask yourself, get curious. Do I go into mother-child, the mother or the child? Do I go into father-child, the father or the child in that circumstance? Or what could you do? What's another way that you could engage with somebody when you notice you're getting triggered? Could you shift stances and actively, consciously choose to switch from going into the child or the mother or the child or the father and instead do playmate sibling? So I'm gonna give you a real-life, real-time example of how this looks. Let's say somebody says they're disappointed in you. And if that were to happen and say that was one of your triggers, then instead of ghosting the person, never talking to them again, leaving in an angry or frustrated way the relationship, the business partnership, et cetera, what if instead you could go to Playmate Sibling? So that's one of my favorite Faulties. When you think of 2 siblings playing together, joking around and jesting and like being playful with one another. How that might look, let's imagine. So here I am years ago, I'm gonna rewind and go into my imagination of this time where one of my first bosses, Karen, I'm sitting across from her and she gives me that stern, knowing look. Jennifer, we're very disappointed in you. And in that moment, what could I have done instead of getting sad and crying or angry or defensive? What could I have done now, having looked back with perspective? If I could have come from Playmate/Sibling or Admire/Admire, where there's a mutual respect, where both parties are on equal footing, I'm gonna tell you how both might look. If I was coming from Playmate/Sibling in this situation many years ago with Karen, I might've been like, oh, got it. Oh my gosh. Wow. Like in a playful way. Wow. Thanks so much. I had no idea. Tell me more about that. What does that look like? Do you see how there's that sense of like, Aww, and play and curiosity. When I was coming from the child in that scenario, it was like head down, being reprimanded and being afraid, as opposed to, oh cool, tell me more. What does that look like? Like you're showing your best friend or your sibling something really cool that you wanna share. So that's one way you could do it is you could go playmate sibling. Now, another way that you could do this is you could also do the admirer, and that's a place of mutual respect. So instead, again, if I were in a healthy state, I could say, huh, wow, Karen, I really respect and admire you. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that occurs for you? And I'd love to better understand what's missing and what you'd like to see more of so we could have a more trusting relationship. So that would be coming from a place of admirer-admirer, where there's mutual respect. None of these are good or bad or right or wrong. What I do invite us to look at though, is go through these relationships, the people where it's either current people in your life that you're noticing that you're triggered by, maybe past relationships that are incomplete that you haven't spoken to. And then go ahead and ask yourself as you look into these relationships, which of these stances am I or was I coming from? And then once you get curious about that and you begin to understand, What your triggers are, what your trigger words are, which stances tend to be the most triggering for you, and then what your ideal stance would be going forward, then that gives you a whole new access to doing things in a new way. I'll share with you, and then go out and maybe get complete with these people, have conversations and say, oh gosh, maybe it's somebody you haven't talked to in 2 or 5 years and say, gosh, I realized looking back that you said something to me 5 years ago and I allowed myself to get triggered. And I took it really personally, and that's not what I'm committed to. I'd love to hear your perspective of how that went for you. Yeah, I'm actually gonna tie this into an earlier episode we did on inner child work. Be sure you have the emotional bandwidth to do this. So if you are going to have this conversation, be sure you've slept well enough, you've drank enough water, do it while you're sober. People, I'm totally fine, drink, do whatever you wanna do drugs-wise. Totally okay. Not here to tell people to do something or not do something, but I do encourage you to have these important sorts of conversations when you're in a clear-headed framework. So number 1, look at who are you incomplete with. Number 2, look at what are the stances that you find most triggering. And number 3, ask yourself, what's a replacement stance? And number 4, if you wanna get 100 million bonus points, go find one of these people on your list who you're feeling incomplete with. And see if you can have a conversation to get complete with them when you're in a healthy emotional state. So I'll share with you a funny story I heard years ago on a podcast about this. One of my favorite podcasts that I listen to, in addition to the David Guillaume podcast, who I've mentioned before as one of my favorite teachers, he used to be on a podcast called The Weekly Energy Boost. And one day they were sharing a story, another woman on the show, the co-host Elise Sheva, was sharing a story of a student of hers at the Kabbalah Center. And this student knew all these spiritual techniques and all the things, right? And she comes to Elie Sheva and says, oh, I need your help. I have this woman who is so annoying me. She's driving me crazy and I just want nothing to do with her. Every day she talks like this and she pops her head over at my desk and says, let's grab lunch. And this woman's just driving her crazy. So Elie Sheva, her teacher, is sharing this on the show. And says, oh, can you see where maybe you're this person to someone else in, in your life? And the woman crosses her arms and says, no, I'm definitely— I've looked at every relationship I have. There is no circumstance where I would ever do that to somebody else. I find it so annoying, right? Might not be a big deal. It might not be a big blowup fight. You might just find somebody annoying or frustrating. So after a couple of weeks of feeling just wildly frustrated by this woman, The woman in the show keeps inquiring and reflecting and inquiring and reflecting. And at the end, one day she comes back to Elisheva, the woman who is hosting the show, and says, I have it. I figured out what is happening. And Elisheva says, yes, what is it? She said, all of a sudden the other day I came home and I am at work all day and my husband works from home. And I realized I was the annoying person to him because I was always popping my head over his desk and saying, hi, honey. What do you need? Hey honey, I need time, I need attention. And I realized I was being the needy one when it came to my husband. And not less than a week later did that annoying woman who was working with this woman get transferred to another office. So we began today by talking about how people can often trigger us and can cause us to feel a sense of separation or frustration or anxiety. Could we look at these people and just one by one begin to get complete, get curious? Are we that person to somebody else? What is allowing us to get triggered about this person? What are the stances that we're taking with ourselves, with others around this? And what if we could begin to complete some of these relationships to make space for what we really want? Because so many of you out there, I know you're dying to call in Your dream soulmate, your dream best friend, your dream business partner. But as long as we have this clutter in our emotional space of these old relationships we haven't completed, we're never going to be able to see the people and make space for the people who we really want to have in our lives. So go out there, do an audit, figure out what are your triggers, get curious, play with them, examine them. And then see where you can get complete in your life. I am Jennifer K. Hill. It's always a pleasure to be here with you. If you want to deep dive more into understanding yourself, you can always go to om.app/survey, which is our company OptiMatch, and you can find out for free how are you motivated. Find out. It even gives you a free report of how you're motivated with potential things that might be opportunities for growth for you. Or perhaps some, even some of your strengths. So have fun playing with this and have a beautiful rest of your week.
More from Jennifer
Episode 33 - Stillness, Power, and the Art of Transformation with Marcia Martin
Episode 32: Three Seconds of Courage & Turning Reactivity into Creation with Josselyne Herman-Saccio
Episode 31: Your Spiritual Heartbeat & Aligning Your Inner Truth with Outer Success with Liv Fisch
