In this week’s episode of Retire in Texas, Darryl Lyons, CEO and Co-Founder of PAX Financial Group, takes a deeper look at why so many goals fail – and makes the case that it’s not a lack of motivation, discipline, or strategy that holds us back, but a misunderstanding of suffering.
Using the backdrop of New Year’s resolutions and goal-setting frameworks like SMART goals, Darryl explores why enthusiasm fades, why accountability alone often falls short, and why discomfort is an unavoidable, and necessary, part of meaningful growth. Drawing from personal stories, scripture, and real-world observations, this episode reframes suffering not as failure, but as a process that builds perseverance, character, and long-term hope.
Key highlights of the episode include:
- Why most goals fail despite strong intentions, clear plans, and accountability systems.
- How discomfort, delay, and inconvenience – not catastrophe, are often the true forms of suffering we avoid.
- Why embracing struggle can create stronger habits, deeper character, and more durable results.
- The importance of perspective when facing setbacks, and how understanding others’ struggles can reframe our own.
- How community, collaboration, and shared accountability make suffering lighter and progress more sustainable.
- Why focusing on long-term outcomes, not short-term pain, is critical to lasting personal and financial growth.
If you’ve ever wondered why change feels harder than it should, or why progress stalls even when you “know what to do,” this episode offers a powerful mindset shift. Whether your goals involve health, finances, relationships, or personal growth, Darryl’s message is a reminder that growth rarely happens without discomfort – and that endurance, built over time, is what ultimately leads to hope.
For more insights and to connect with a PAX Financial Group advisor, visit http://www.PAXFinancialGroup.com. If this episode resonated with you, consider sharing it with someone who could use the encouragement.
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. If you’re looking for a financial podcast that will help you stay grounded, but also give you some direction, this is the right place.
Also, I don’t like to use a lot of numbers, so if you don’t like listening, I mean podcast, financial podcast, you think, man, I’ve got to listen to a lot of numbers and it just there’s a disconnect that happens if you’re driving or working out it. You just can’t like embrace the content. So, I’d rather not use a lot of numbers, but I’m gonna start out using numbers.
How’s that? Only 9 to 12% of New Year’s resolutions, work? Only 9. So in other words, 9 to 12% of people actually do what they say they’re going to do at the beginning of the year. You know, whether that’s quit drinking, you know, I guess there’s this dry January thing that happens, quit drinking, quit smoking, lose weight, all that stuff.
Right? Because we start out with this enthusiasm and then it wanes. And I think about it. And we have these frameworks of how to win with goals and had for years. Oftentimes the framework is called SMART. Is the goal specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. And so, we have this framework.
And then we have these online tools that teach us discipline in these Navy SEALS that motivate us. And these are all healthy necessary thoughts, good ideas. But it doesn’t quite explain why people quit. So why do people quit? And I read the other day in a scripture found the answer to the question, why people quit? It just dawned on me and I don’t think they quit because there’s a lack of desire or lack of ideas or lack of strategy.
I think all those things are important. But there’s another reason people quit, and it’s actually something that I found in the scriptures. Now, I am a financial guy. So why am I talking about goal setting? I want to put it in perspective 75% of the time, if not more. And I’m making up that statistic. Our advisors, we’ve got nine.
They dig into life much beyond numbers. Not because they try to, but just, that’s how life works. We get into real life stuff. That’s why it’s important when you work with a financial advisor that there’s a values alignment there. Sometimes we get into stuff that’s external that we can’t control, like a job loss or death in the family.
Other times there is a pathway to control, like improving our health. So, we don’t become a financial burden to our family, needing chronic or long-term care or making improvements in our spending habits. We can be better stewards of our money. And so, what turns what starts out as a money conversation certainly turns into a more of a life conversation, somebody who needs a thinking partner.
And so I really think an understated role in a financial advisor to you is where you can go to the advisor and say, hey, can you hold me accountable to these things that I want done? Because there’s usually an economic tie to it. So, for example, I’m going to use Haley as an example. She’s top of mind here.
Haley, can you hold me example, hold me accountable to weight loss, to changing my spending habits, to better relationship with my kids or my parents, or going to church, or I want to quit smoking. I want to quit drinking. So, any of these things have some economic tie to it. And so, the financial advisor role, I think it’s understated where it’s a thinking partner that can hold you accountable to things that you want to do.
Now you might say, well, as accountability, where you’re going with this? No, actually it’s different. I think accountability is very important. Obviously, having a thinking partner helps. Having a framework, a SMART goals framework, having the discipline of a Navy SEAL, all of that is good, but it’s still fall short.
It’s still not helping us move the needle. And we talk endlessly about these things, but we barely whisper anything about suffering, about suffering. In Romans 5: 3-5. Not only so, but we will also glory in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character. Hope. But not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope.
So, I’ve got six key points. I want to talk about suffering for a second. First of all, I want to define it. Suffering isn’t rock bottom. When we’re setting goals and doing things to make ourselves better human beings or maybe not better for ourselves, maybe just better for our family? This idea of suffering doesn’t mean that we’re shipwrecked or in prison. Oftentimes, suffering just means discomfort or delay or boredom or fear or pain or humility or embarrassment.
Sometimes that’s suffering. Viktor Frankl said it well in his book Man’s Search for meaning, he said suffering fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. So regardless of your suffering, it’s a mind mess. It really messes with you in a lot of ways. The discomfort, you start to question things. Really messes with your soul.
So oftentimes we think suffering needs to be, like I said, shipwrecked. Or something, you know, like imprisonment. And oftentimes it’s just pain, still stinks and it still hurts you. So, we’re all uniquely wired and how to navigate through this suffering. A student asked a chess master, what’s the best chess move? And he says, well, it depends. So your suffering is different than my suffering. I think we just need to recognize that suffering has different definitions.
So, the second thing I want to talk about is not only defining it, but embracing it. And the reality is, is I feel like we’re all house cats. I’ve got indoor cats and I got outdoor cats, and I’m not even a cat guy, but I got them. And if I took my indoor cats and put them outside, they would be a little uncomfortable.
And I thought about that, and I realized that I’m a little bit of a house cat, and we kind of all are. I was in Eastern Europe this last year, and I didn’t have to go here. I went here because I was invited. And it’s you go in, it’s like the sauna for Russians.
And you go in this middle of nowhere and you go in this rock and they heat it up inside of a rock and heat it up 175 degrees, and it feels like they’re putting fire on your face. And it’s, they’re heating up a rock and putting water on it. So, I’m with a bunch of Russians, by the way.
Then once you’re done with that, you jump in the cold plunge, and then you do that again and again and again. And I couldn’t quit because I felt like I was representing our country. But I thought about it. I was like, man, I am just not tough. And I think that we have to just recognize that we’ve got warm beds, we’ve got full refrigerators, we’ve got infinite comfort, and sometimes we just like, don’t want to do something after a long day because we’re just tired and we just don’t feel it, you know what I mean?
It’s this feeling thing. I just don’t feel it not going to work out today because it was a long day. And so, we just lean on these feelings and I think we have to embrace the reality that we’re house cats and push through that a little bit more. We got to push through that a little bit more, especially in America.
So, the third thing I want to mention about suffering is we need to welcome it. We really do. Because if you think about it, when I was in college, I had a friend who his parents paid for Saint Mary’s. I had to work through Saint Mary’s. And so, every single class I thought about the economics of those classes and how much they cost.
And I wanted to make sure that I got good grades because I had a scholarship. I didn’t want to lose my scholarship. And so, I was looking at my friend, noticing that he loved playing video games, he loved hanging out. He did minimal stuff, and it struck me as though. That, well, we think about it, trust fund babies that he didn’t really embrace and welcome this idea that somebody before him had suffered to pay for college. And I get that. The reality is when you’re doing the suffering.
When you’re in the middle of the suffering, that’s when the perseverance builds and the character builds. And when you’re fighting for something, there’s actually something really special happening inside of you.
Would you rather earn $1 million or scratch off a lottery ticket for $1 million? You know a third. And I’ve had several lottery winner clients. You know, a third of them go bankrupt. According to the CFP Board of Standards, professional athletes blow their money. Not to say they didn’t work hard at their craft.
But there’s something about fighting for something, strapping on the gloves and battling it, battling through stuff. So, we have to welcome this struggle and fight. The fourth thing I want to do is make sure that we perspective it now in the spirit of kind of keeping this theme, you know, define it and embrace it, welcome it, perspective it.
It is my next piece that I want to talk about. The fourth one. And so I’m driving a long day at work and I turn on this podcast called Voice of the Martyrs Radio. I love the podcast because it helps me put things in perspective. I mentioned that 200 pastors are arrested in Iran. A guy named Youcef Nadarkhani.
I’m sure I’m messing that up. Born Muslim, converted to Christianity, arrested for apostasy. So that’s a national security threat in Iran just for evangelizing, telling other people about Jesus. Beaten solitary confinement, facing the death penalty. But where I really got concern was he just was separated from his children. I thought, man, that’s tough. And so, we fail to have this perspective.
I mean, it doesn’t make the suffering disappear. It just helps us a little bit. Sometimes it’s what’s necessary to help us push through. And if we don’t learn history and if we don’t have a global perspective, we misunderstand suffering. You know, your parents told you, you know, you need to eat everything on your plate because they’re starving kids in China.
They’re right. There’s perspective there and we need to have this perspective to appreciate the suffering. The fifth piece I want to tell you about is just we need to collaborate in it. This next iteration of our economy very much embraces information, and the interpretation of the information through ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence. Where does that leave us as humans?
My son cooks a mean steak. Now, I did not teach him that. Not that I can’t cook a steak. I’ve gotten better over the years, but he does it really well. So does that hurt? Because I wasn’t the one that taught him how to cook a steak or do we teach our kids how to change tires or change oil anymore?
Can they just look this up now? Do a YouTube video? So, what is our role in all of this? It’s interdependence. I get to enjoy that steak with him. Interdependence is the goal. These relationships that bind us all together can’t be lost. We can’t be in isolation. And that especially includes when we’re suffering. I did Toastmasters because I had to get better at speaking.
I still listen to these podcasts and just beat myself up for the number of awes. Frankly, if I was in Toastmasters and I said, they put a ding, they ding you with the bell and eventually they feel bad for you. So they stop dinging. But this Toastmasters community was a very good community, and I did feel embarrassed and I was uncomfortable, but it was a community that embraced each other’s discomforts and helped each other.
When somebody maybe didn’t have the strength to push through. That’s why Alcoholics Anonymous is so successful, because it creates this community. That’s why church exists. You know, you go to church and you get frustrated at the preaching or the singing isn’t quite right, but it’s really about a community that can be there for one another. When we have to suffer, when we have to go through tough stuff.
Suffering is lighter when shared and isolation. That magnifies our pain. That’s even why I suggested that working with your financial advisor and passing along a goal that you want to accomplish, and having them hold you accountable is healthy. The last element of suffering that I want to mention is that we don’t focus on it. We respect it. When I was in high school, my junior year, maybe my sophomore junior year when I lived in Harlingen, we would spend a lot of time at the beach, and I got to be particularly comfortable at the beach and understanding how the water flows and how it’s, you know, different from time to time.
And one of the things that’s interesting is the riptides. So, the riptides are problematic for people who don’t respect the riptides because they exist and sometimes they’re powerful. It’s basically the water coming in and finding its way back out. You’ve got to respect that riptide. And just like you have to respect suffering, but you don’t focus on the suffering.
You think about the payoff. You think about the outcomes. You think about the benefits. You think about the child, not the childbirth. We just need to get better at suffering. We don’t fail in our goals because of a lack of ideas or systems that are out there. We fail because we misunderstand suffering, and it’s a necessary process that gives birth to hope.
Suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Remember, you think different when you think long term. Have a great day.
Resources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKVAGxoU2AM
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