TCF #011: What Happens When You Stop Fighting Your Own Mind

TCF #011: What Happens When You Stop Fighting Your Own Mind

Your mind is already obsessing - the only question is whether it's working for you or against you.

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Connection Fix, host Joey Klein breaks down why focus without vision keeps you stuck and how your mind's obsessive nature is actually a feature, not a flaw.

You'll learn why vision must come before focus, how to run a daily focus audit to catch misaligned attention, and discover the three practical steps to start training your intuition through focus, faith, and action.

Question of the Day 🗣️

If your current focus continued unchanged for the next 30 days, would it produce more of what you want - or more of what you've been trying to change?

Key Take-aways

• Vision must come before focus - without it, even intense focus keeps you lost
• Your mind is obsessive by design - leverage it instead of fighting it
• The brain doesn't distinguish good from bad focus - it just follows attention
• A daily focus audit reveals where your attention actually goes
• Outcomes are built in micro focus events, not big defining moments

Timestamped Outline ⏱️

00:00 - The GT3 RS and a question that changed everything
00:23 - Standing in dealerships as a kid in Wichita
01:55 - Training intuition without knowing it
02:20 - Recap - intuition as your internal GPS
02:46 - Element one: the intensity of your focus
03:36 - The mind is obsessive by design
04:18 - Your brain doesn't distinguish good from bad focus
05:29 - The focus audit - a daily awareness practice
07:37 - How to start: vision, faith, and action
10:04 - Power of Intuition Virtual Intensive
11:14 - Where did your attention actually go today?

Links & Resources 🔗

• The Connection Fix Podcast → https://open.spotify.com/show/3oMvTF6uHxAh5QQ8JezjEH
• The Connection Fix Blog → https://joeyklein.com/the-connection-fix
• Power of Intuition Virtual Intensive (May 2nd-3rd) → https://www.powerofintuitionintensive.com/
• Subscribe to The Connection Fix → https://theconnectionfix.com

Connect & CTA 🎯

👉 Enjoyed this? Subscribe & leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

🎁 Get practical frameworks for navigating the Connection Crisis every week - rebuilding your relationship with yourself so you can show up fully for the people who matter most: https://theconnectionfix.com

Credits

Host: Joey Klein © 2026 Inner Matrix Systems. All rights reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you happen to know me, then you know that I love fast cars. And I love something even more than fast cars, which is driving them really fast. And I just said goodbye. I just traded one in that I got to drive for a little over a year. I loved it. It was a GT3RS. I got to build it and pick it out exactly the way I wanted it. And it sort of got me to thinking and reminiscing a little bit about when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I used to go to the local dealerships and I would literally just stand there and stare at the fastest car in the showroom. And I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. And so these cars at that time were literally behind velvet ropes and signs that said, do not touch. And it was literally like for a 16, 17, 18-year-old kid, it was like untouchable, just not even possible. And I remember, you know, as I was watching it and looking at these cars, it wasn't casual for me. It wasn't like, oh, that's kind of cool. But I remember staring at these cars and going, like, how does that happen? It was very intentional. And there was a lot of energy sort of being placed on it. And I remember a lot of emotions in the space, everything from, you know, feeling super inspired and excited about what it would look like to have a car like that someday, to feeling, you know, a sense of like unworthiness and sadness because it just seemed like it would never happen. But I remember looking at it and I remember thinking to myself, like, how does that happen? How do I make that happen? Um, how do I get that? How does that become my reality? What is it that people do that drive cars like this? And so the thought process married to this intensity and this intentionality was how does it happen? And so, you know, at that time, you know, I had no framework for what I was doing. But when I look back, it's really obvious to me that I was training intuition. I was placing my attention over and over again on a very specific outcome, not on what I didn't have, not on why it wasn't possible, but on how do I create the resources to get a car like that. And that's exactly what we're gonna talk about today. In last week's episode, we introduced intuition as your internal GPS. We talked about how it's always operating and that it's either working by your design or it's working by its default. And so today we're gonna take the next step because there are three key elements that activate intuition, and the first one is this focus, more specifically, the intensity of your focus. And so let's start here. If there's one thing to understand about focus, it's this. Without vision, it's very difficult to know if your focus is actually useful or not. And so the first question isn't what should I focus on? It's what am I creating? What is my vision? Because once that's clear, everything else becomes much simpler. You can look where your attention is going and you can ask, is this moving me toward the outcome that I want or not? Without that context, the mind is going to get lost. You can justify almost anything, but with vision, focus becomes objective. It's either aligned or it simply isn't. Now the second thing to understand is the nature of the mind itself. The mind is obsessive by design. It's going to think about the same things again and again and again. That's not a flaw. That's simply a mental mechanism. The mistake that most people make is trying to stop that process. You're not going to stop that process. It's what the mind does, it's how the brain works. And so instead, we want to leverage it. Because if you don't train your focus intentionally, it will be trained on your behalf. It's going to be trained for you by other people, by the news, by social media, by past experiences, by fear. And so the goal is not to eliminate obsession, it's to direct it, to become obsessive about the vision that you're creating, the outcome that you want, and how you're going to produce it. And to do that under the assumption that it will occur, that the vision is going to happen with a sense of faith. Now, here's something that's really important to understand. The brain does not distinguish between good or bad focus. It doesn't say create this and don't create that. It simply responds to where attention is placed. So whatever you focus on, that's where energy goes. And that's what begins to take shape. If you focus on failure, you move toward failure. If you focus on fear, you reinforce fear. If you focus on what you don't want, you organize around it. The brain doesn't register, don't. It registers the target that you're focused on, which is why trying to avoid something rarely works, because your attention is still on it. So instead, focus needs to be placed fully on what you actually want to create. And now a really simple way to start building awareness around this is something that I call a focus audit. At the end of each day, just take a minute and ask yourself, where was my attention today? What did I focus on? What did the mind focus on? Did it focus on strategies to produce my outcomes? What was working? What has been working? Did it focus on negativity or maybe roadblocks? Did it focus on how hard things are? A victim mindset? Or did it focus on an empowered approach most of the day? And this isn't about judgment, it's just about clarity. Because once you see it, you can redirect it and you can say, tomorrow I'm placing my focus over here. Because here's the truth: most people think that outcomes are created in big moments and they're simply not. They're created in microfocus events that occur over and over again over time. The way you place your attention minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. And that then becomes your week, your month, your year, and your life. Focus is not a small thing, it's the mechanism that shapes everything. And this isn't just about external results, it applies to your internal experiences as well. If you're focused on why am I sad, your attention stays on sadness. And the system can't generate a solution. But if you shift the question to what can I do to feel happy? Where am I already experiencing joy in my life? What reasons do I have right now to feel good? Now your focus moves toward the outcome. The same thing in relationships. If your attention is on what's not working, what you don't like, what needs to change, you're going to reinforce all of that. But if your focus becomes what do I want to experience? How do I want to feel in the relationship? What would this look like if it was working? Now you're training intuition toward the relationship that you actually want. And so how do you actually start training this? Keep it simple. Start with vision. Write it down. Bullet points tend to be great. Then make it visible to you on a regular basis. Put it somewhere you're gonna see it and interact with it with regularity. Look at it first thing in the morning, make it the last thing you see at night, and then acknowledge it, look at it several times throughout the day. Five times is great, ten times is way better, 50 to 100 times a day, now we're really talking. Eventually, you want to get to a place where you're thinking about your vision and your outcomes constantly, where the mind just defaults to the vision and what you want automatically. The second piece is how you relate to that vision, operating from the assumption that it's going to happen, and then consistently ask, what can I do from here to produce this result? What's the next step look like? What's the path forward? Because when you ask those questions consistently, the mind starts working in the background on your behalf, and this is where intuition really begins to activate. And then the final piece is action. What is the best action that you can take right now that moves the needle in a meaningful way? Put it in your calendar and execute on it consistently. Because at the end of the day, vision without action is incomplete. And intuition works best when it has something to move through. And yes, in my case, that eventually looked like being able to own and drive the cars that I literally used to just stand there and stare at. And even in this moment, just now, I built the next one that should be here around June or so. But that's just a byproduct. Because here's the part that most people miss. Focus isn't just about noticing things like we talked about last week with the Subaru Outback example. It's about what you're training your system to move toward. For most people, that focus is scattered or it's reactive or pulled toward what they don't want. For me, it looked like standing in a dealership as a kid, obsessing over something I had no business owning yet, didn't have the ability to acquire. But asking a very different question than most. How do I make it happen? And that's the difference. Now, after last week's episode, a number of you reached out with questions about how to actually train intuition. And the good news is we have a place to do exactly that. At the beginning of May, we're hosting the Power of Intuition Virtual Intensive. And this is where we take everything that we've been talking about in this series and actually train it step by step in real time. Because what we're covering here is just one piece of a much bigger system. And next week we're going to build on this with the second element, intensity of emotion. Because focus tells the system what matters, but emotion determines how much it matters. And when those two align, things really start to accelerate. And if you prefer to read or listen in a different format, you can find these teachings on the Connection Fix blog and the podcast. You'll find the links below. Some people like to sit with it, some people take it on a walk. I personally love listening to it in the car. However, you train best, use that resource. So before we wrap, just take a moment and notice something today or yesterday if you're watching this in the morning. Where did your attention actually go? Not where you wanted it to go, but where it actually went. Was it aligned with what you want to create, or was it pulled somewhere else? And here's the real question. If that focus continued for the next 30 days, what would it produce? Would it produce more of what you want or more of what you've been trying to change? If you're willing, drop it in the comments. Please send me an email. I love reading and getting all of your feedback. What did you notice about your focus? And if you're ready to actually train this in real time, please join us for the power of intuition virtual intensive. It's May 2nd and 3rd more soon. Have a great rest of your day, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.