What should your mindset be when markets feel uncertain and life does not go according to plan?
Many people assume their financial success is driven mostly by market performance, timing, or access to the right opportunities. But what if one of the bigger influences on your long-term net worth is actually the mindset you bring to everyday decisions, setbacks, and uncertainty?
In this episode of Retire in Texas, Darryl Lyons explores the role optimism plays in your financial life and why it may matter more than you think. He shares practical ideas for identifying automatic negative thoughts, challenging the stories you tell yourself, and shifting from a mindset of frustration and comparison to one of progress and perspective.
You’ll learn:
• Why optimism can play an important role in your overall financial well-being.
• How automatic negative thoughts can affect decision-making and long-term progress.
• What it means to live in the gap versus living in the gain.
• Why comparison and regret can lead to poor financial choices.
• Why serving others can shift your perspective in a healthier direction.
• How mindset can influence your investment behavior more than market headlines do.
Whether you have been feeling discouraged by the markets, frustrated by past decisions, or simply want a healthier framework for thinking about money and progress, this episode offers a practical reminder that your biggest financial obstacle may not be external at all.
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Transcript:
Hey, this is Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group. And you’re listening to Retire in Texas. This information is general in nature only. It’s not intended to provide specific investment, tax, or legal advice. Visit PAXFinancialGroup.com for more information. So, I’m going to talk about optimism. I think it’s important that you listen to this because I think it’s a bigger factor in your investment experience than you might think and your overall net worth.
I often think about investments as one part of your financial life, but if you really want to measure it, you measure net worth. And that includes much more comprehensive items like your real estate, your house, cash reserves, debt management. So not just your investment. So, I want to talk about how optimism impacts your net worth.
I think about, so we’re getting close to July. I’ve got some events I’m already putting on my calendar in July, and I think about several years ago, a 4th of July. Kind of embarrassed to say, but I was cooking a brisket, maybe my third brisket, and so had already achieved my Texas card for cooking a brisket.
And, you know, I did okay. But I’m going to do one for, I’m having a big group of people come over and just to tie me with my schedule, I had to get up really early in the morning, and I was optimistic that I had done everything right. Put it in the, you know, kind of set aside the charcoal and the wood, the wood doused in apple.
I guess that I was going to say apple cider, but, you know, the apple juices, and so I had a good thing going on. The temperature was under control. The stable and it was like, I don’t know, [1:00], it was [2:00] in the morning or something like that. And I just got real tired again. I was optimistic, and I fell asleep, and I woke up to a very, very crusty brisket.
And it was black as black could be. I don’t know what happened, but I totally messed that up. So, I had everyone coming over for a brisket and I had to pivot. And so I had to run H-E-B and get a new brisket, and I just went at it again, and it took me all day, and we were a little late for dinner, but made it work.
It was not a fun experience, but I was a little bit overly optimistic in that specific event. I still have my Texas card. They don’t take it back if you burn a brisket, but, I am on probation, so, but I do want to say all that because, you know, I’m generally an optimist, but I even think about the brisket now, I’ve had cooked a brisket since then, so there’s this little bit of a negative thought that exists there about cooking brisket.
It’s a lot of work, frankly. But, you know, just the fact that I fumbled the last one and I think this is a pretty decent analogy because there is something to be said about this, this idea of being an optimist and having these negative thoughts when it comes to growing your net worth. And I want to make sure that you understand how powerful optimism is.
I’m generally an optimist, but just like that, experience with the brisket, sometimes you get these negative thoughts and they’re just real for everyone. But optimists are generally healthier people. They exercise more, they have better days. This is all kind of, everything that I’ve researched substantiates this idea that optimists are overall healthier, their immune systems are healthier, they’re less chronic diseases, they recover faster than their pessimist counterparts.
They’re more successful. They set bigger goals. They achieve these goals, they stay motivated. And so, we generally want to have an optimistic outlook. Science says we should have an optimistic outlook, but we have these things that happen in our lives that put us in a negative place. I want to talk about that a little bit.
And by the way, there are people that are extreme optimists and they’re just foolish. I’m not talking about those people. And you might even say, well, I’m not an optimist. I’m a realist. I would suggest to you that realist are generally just professional pessimist. I think there’s a quote that I’ve, I don’t know who it’s attributed to, but it’s a it was a general and I think it was Ulysses S Grant, but, I can’t confirm it, but he said, I’ll take an optimist over a realist any day.
So, I want to challenge your thinking of being a realist. I’d like for you to lean into being an optimist with some degree of risk management framework that you have in place. But optimists are completely different people. But I don’t want to. Don’t misunderstand. It’s not always optimist, roses and sunshine and rainbows and sunshine. There’s stuff that we deal with and we’re all wired different.
There’s this anterior cingulate cortex that we have in our brain is kind of this gear shifter, and it actually helps regulate the brain. And it is a part of the process that regulates our emotions, like fear. Some people call it the heart of the brain. And we all have this physiological field, physiological makeup that’s different than each other.
Very much genetic. And so, we have various degrees of optimism. But what I really want to make is that we have some control over it. We have some control over it. And so, I want us to try to live a life of optimism. But when these negative thoughts come in, I’m going to give you 2 or 3 ideas today on how to get in front of it.
How to move past it, how to not stay in that place of pessimism or frustration very long because it’s damaging. So, the question is, can we control our optimism in the face of markets and wars and I mean absolutely crazy things that are out there. And I get it. I’m reading all the same stuff you are, by the way.
Many of my friends, they are optimists one day and they’re pessimist the next. You know, we can do better. I think our default should be optimism. Especially if you’re Christian. Especially if you’re a Christian. But then how do we deal with these? How do we deal with these negative thoughts? And so, Dr. Daniel Amen is somebody I’ve been studying lately and reading a lot of his content.
He wrote Change your Life or Change your Brain. Change your life. Change your brain. Change your pain. So, a couple, a couple of interesting books, very nerdy books. But he talks about these ants. Automatic negative thoughts. And we all have a, I guess, a different ant in our head.
I think, you know, sometimes I just get a lot of those ants. I remember years ago, 20 years ago, I had a mentor, and I just kind of threw up on him all the all the stuff I was dealing with. It was a tough time in, you know, starting out in business and not having any clients.
And I just kind of shared with him all the stuff. And he just said that stinking thinking. And I know you’ve heard that before, but that was like, that’s those are ants. Ants living in your brain. Like, man, I’m always behind. I can never catch up or this man, this decision was a bad decision. It’s this is all going to fall apart.
That’s how it felt when I built a tree house for the first time. Or I always mess this up. Or in terms of investments like, oh, man, this market is going to crash, man. It’s just a matter of time to House of cards. And then your hands get colder and you hold your breath and your shoulders get tense.
And of course, then the physiological, physiological stuff kicks in. And all of a sudden, like I said, the pessimists just have poor health. And it’s just these ants. They’re just living in our brain. So how do you how do you kill these ants? And so, Doctor Daniel Amen, but he has, there’s a lot of stuff that he talks about, so I’m just kind of condensing his stuff.
But if you want to digest it, plenty of content out there. And he does these really interesting speck scans on people’s brains. He’s done over 50,000 of them. So, these are pieces, brain nerd question. Some a lot of people out there question like, okay, is he legit or not? I mean, I’m not an expert in that space to make that claim, but I do find his content to be pretty darn interesting in this piece of this idea of the ants is, very pragmatic.
And he, he would suggest when you get these ants that are just keeping you in a place of pessimism, and it really, frankly, messes up your progress in life. It messes up relationships, messes up health, and messes up your net worth. Write them down. And he has a series of questions. I won’t go into all those questions, but you can YouTube it.
But if you really want to unpack it and put it into practice and create a habit. If these ants, if you feel like, answer or take it over your brain. But like one of the questions is, is this true? Like just in writing it, writing it down is very healthy. And I’ve been a journal person for years, and I subscribe to journaling as just a healthy practice.
But writing it down and just asking yourself, is this true? Like, I think the question that I’ve may have not been stated outrightly by clients in the past, but I think it’s been, if you read between the lines, there’s this fear that I’m going to lose everything, especially when the markets are just uncertain. I’m going to lose everything, and they just write that down.
Is this true? Another question that he would ask to follow up that is, is this absolutely true? And what you’re trying to do is you’re just trying to challenge your negative thoughts and just challenge them ultimately to kill them. But just to write down whether or not they are absolutely true. And again, like I said, you can look up more and aim in on his questioning process.
But writing these down and just challenging these negative thoughts that you’re anchoring to, will move you towards optimism, which is where we need to be. So the second framework that I think is helpful for, again, you can look up Amen’s work and plenty of content out there. The other one that I’ve been studying a lot that I think is very helpful is Doctor Benjamin Hardy’s work.
And he’s a behavioral, organizational, behavioral, a PhD in organizational behavior, AI, something like that. Sharp guy. Listen to plenty of his stuff, read this stuff, wrote a book called The Gap in the Game. This is another, I think, interesting framework of thinking about, like, why we are living in the land of, pessimism when we know optimism is a better it’s a better outlook, especially as a Christian’s like, why are we hanging out with ants?
Why are we, why do we have this stinking thinking when we know we shouldn’t? Well, Ben Hardy, says in The Gap in the Game, he says that we there’s these two places that we can live in the gap, says this is where I should be. Like, for example, I’m behind in my net worth.
Like, I should have more money. I should have a bigger business. I should have more in retirement. I should have more for college. It’s never enough. Like comparing yourself where you think you should be. And it just leads to frustration. And like I said, anxiety. And just, oftentimes poor decisions.
So that’s living in the gap. And so, what he tries to do in his framework and I think it’s very healthy and I do this personally, is when I feel like I’m living in the gap where like, man, I messed up or even like even some people. I was talking to a friend the other day and just feeling frustrated because, you know, just certain decisions that they made with their kids and now they’re adults and just feeling the burden of that.
And like, this is the gap. And it’s just a really tough place to live. But rather shifting that to the gain, which is much healthier place, which is where Optimism should live. And that’s man, I’ve made a lot of progress in life, man. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve grown as a person. I’m much more patient and living that place and just enjoying it.
For what it’s worth, sometimes you just have to now, I was telling my kids about this. I pulled them aside around the table and I said, hey, have I modeled service for you guys? And thankfully they said, yeah, we modeled serving others. And I go, okay, good. That feels good. I could, because I was serving the other day and I just sat there in the context of serving, I go, you know, I’m serving a community that has less fortunate.
And I’m sitting here going, I’m so thankful for what I have. And so, I say that because sometimes the gain is easier to see when you’re serving. And I talk about the financial benefits of or they not only the financial benefits of giving which we’ve talked about in previous podcasts, but the interpersonal benefits of being able to give your time, allows it makes it much easier to live in the gain.
Me and I’ve got it good. And so that’s, that’s one of, that’s a practical application you could take away with. If you have a bunch of ants and you’re living in the gap, the ants live in the gap. I guess you could say that. Then then one of the antidotes to that is not only like what Doctor Amen said is writing things down, taking inventory, challenging your thoughts, but actually serving.
So let me just close it and kind of land the plane here with some financial applications. It’s really easy to have these automatic negative thoughts. These ants are living in the gap when you compare your portfolios. Or let me say it this way, like sometimes you chase returns when people get nerdy. Not everyone here is nerdy, but you might like, man, I could have done better if I were to just put all my money in Nvidia.
And you feel behind or, you know, there’s always something to be like, I could I should have, like, I should have bought that real estate when I had a chance, you know, all kinds of stuff. That’s gap thinking. And I want you to start shifting to optimism where you yes, you track progress, but you celebrate. I mean, there’s something to celebrate about being consistent.
There’s something to celebrate. I think there’s reason to celebrate when you didn’t let your emotions make bad decisions, because the vast majority of financial mishaps are not like financial mishaps. They’re emotional mishaps. People, doing things haphazardly rooted in emotions. And so, if you’ve navigated the last 2 or 3 years in the market with all the uncertainty, I think that’s worthy of celebration.
So that’s living in the gain. And so, the simple framework is this, just recognize these automatic negative thoughts. Check the gap. Check your gap. Making sure that you’re not living in the gap and then shift to the gain. It does take some practice. There’s a lot of different frameworks to do this. This is one that I’m giving you to, to just maybe unpack a little bit more, especially if you want to be an optimist.
If that’s like, that’s where your heart is. I want to be optimistic, but I keep living here. Then hopefully this helps in at least kind of points you in the right direction. But your biggest bottom line is your biggest financial enemy is in the market. It’s the story you’re telling yourself. And the story I’m telling myself is I need to do another brisket.
I paused, because there’s a lot of work, but I will do one. I’ll do it for you guys. Okay. It’s not going to be the kind that that sits on a fork, and it just bends just right. And it’s got all of that. I just want to. Mission accomplished. And it didn’t burn and go up in flames.
How’s that? I’m optimistic I could do that. And of course, optimism doesn’t guarantee outcomes, but I would suggest it dramatically improves the odds. Thank you for listening today. And I want to remind you, you think different when you think long term. Have a great day.
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