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Up Your Average is the “no nonsense” podcast made for interesting people who think differently. Learn to navigate your life with unconventional wisdom by tuning in to Keith Tyner and Doug Shrieve every week.
If you want to think differently, I would ask yourself this.
I'd say, what am I afraid of?
That could be something that happened to you in sixth grade and you're still afraid of it.
And then I would set a standard where you can fail at that and share it with somebody.
Because that person will challenge you.
They'll be real with you.
And then um you'll be much sharper because of it.
Welcome to the Up Your Average podcast, where Keith and Doug give no nonsense advice to
level up.
Your life.
So buckle up and listen closely to up your av.
Good morning, Doug.
Eath on the way to North Webster, Indiana's coffee shop that I liked this morning.
I passed a sign and it said, good luck, Casiasco County, 4-H'ers.
And 4-H is a big deal up in Cosciasco County, Wabash County.
And in Carmel, I don't know if 4-H is that big of a deal.
I mean, maybe it is, and I'm missing it.
But I just I love the hype around four H.
It is a pretty cool family uh rally.
And you see these young kids doing big things, whether it's with uh animals, crafts,
whatever, they're expressing their God given creativity and I just love it.
Well, four H seems like the country version of uh Boy Scouts and I'm
A big fan of that and I'm a big fan of just living your best life too.
So shout out to the Hamilton County uh 4 H because they uh I think their fair ends Friday
or Sunday, maybe.
Okay, so 4 H, do you know the H's?
No, let me let's hear it.
I didn't know the H's either.
I had to ask the Google or or uh the Claude.
But head heart, hands and health.
Head heart.
Hands and out.
That's good stuff.
That's a good education in itself.
That's a summertime education when you're not in school.
I love it.
The um
Like the Boy Scout motto, I might have said it last week is be prepared and and learning
that as a ten, twelve, fifteen year old.
I I've I j it just occurred to me that that had has had a big influence over my life.
And uh there I I forget what it's called, On My Honor, I will do my best to do my duty to
guide and country as part of Boy Scouts.
And then just the idea of what's honor, no nobody really talks about honor much anymore,
but that was part of Boy Scouts.
And so those
Um, as a guy that's not much about tradition, I think there's some great value in those
sort of things to help young people see life from a different vantage point than maybe
what they're seeing in other places.
Yeah.
No, it's great.
your your topic of of today, um, you know, I I really I slept well, but I kept waking up
thinking, what the heck am I gonna bring to this topic?
And so I had to wake up early.
I set my alarm early, Keith, so that I could go to the coffee shop and just with an open
mind say, all right, what what is what is this all about?
And and and how do I go into places that would make a difference?
Because this topic is one that you could just you could say, hey, based on my experiences,
this or that.
But but to really think deeply about it and to think, okay.
Am I allowed to change my opinion?
Are we allowed to do that?
Are we allowed to uh say, this is what I used to think, this is what I think now?
And um where there's a track record of it on social media with your personal Facebook,
Instagram, TikTok, whatever your thing is that you like, you can go back and you can say,
Oh, this is what Doug thought, or this is how Doug thinks.
Um
Probably good reason never to voice anything on TikTok.
Well, let me let me tell let me say what the topic is.
Yeah, what's the topic?
Well, what I texted you was three things you once thought were so and now see differently.
And it comes from a a quote that is either uh attributed to Will Rogers or Mike Mark Twain
that says, It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
And and uh Darwin said it another way.
He said, ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
That's good.
And and really what I was alluding to was I was a very confident man in my twenties.
I mean, I was um I knew it all in my twenties.
I don't know about you.
Oh, I I'm sure I
Still think I know it all at at 50.
And I, you know, there's going to be some evolution between now and 70.
Yeah.
Well, and and so I made a short list of those things that that I thought I knew at the
time.
And then go, oh yeah, I've I've quite a bit evolved on that.
And so I I would I would let you jump into it first, Doug.
Throw your idea out and let's see what that looked like.
Well, I decided to ease into it with something in my twenties and then get a little more
uh close to home and just go right now.
Like what am I thinking right now?
And um and so to ease into this, uh I was known as skinny dug.
Pretty much my whole life.
Elementary school, middle school, high school.
When I got my driver's license, I was five foot two, ninety-six pounds.
I was the guy who got pulled over by the police because they didn't think I was old enough
to drive.
You know, so I was skinny dug.
And and what do skinny kids do?
Skinny kids run because they're not carrying extra weight around.
And so I became a cross country runner because I was skinny kid.
And what do skinny kids not do?
Skinny kids don't lift weights.
Uh skinny kids don't go to the gym.
Who does that?
Football players, wrestlers.
Well, it may have been an upper limit challenge.
Uh, I don't know what it was, but it was wrong thinking.
Uh, just because skinny Doug hadn't put on any weight yet, he should have been hitting the
weight room, but he wasn't.
I wasn't confident to do it.
I was afraid.
I'd never done a bench press before.
I didn't want to look like an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing.
I didn't want to be embarrassed by just having the bar and maybe some fives on it.
And so what would I do?
I wouldn't do it.
I just keep running.
Or I would ride my bicycle.
And so all of that looked good, but I was missing out on the reality that weights help a
man.
And so
Uh thinking differently was hey, uh skinny kids, even though I'm not skinny anymore, I've
I'm not skinny anymore, but I still have that in my past where I have to think differently
and say, hey, uh weights help a guy.
Don't be afraid.
Go in there and lift some weights.
And even though I don't look like a weight lifter today, I go in there and I lift some
weights and it's great.
And so that's an area.
That's probably a real easy area of my life, one that I can talk about to anybody um and
not get too uncomfortable.
Um, at least today.
That the the idea that a runner can switch to lifting some weights and keep running and
lifting weights and just be a healthier version.
That's so beautiful.
That's really cool.
I I had uh depending on how long we c converse about that, I'll get either more
kind of transparent or not, but the the f the the first one that comes to mind is
graduating from a mid-major college and not like an Ivy League or a major college.
I went into the workforce with maybe some insecurities about my education.
And then once I hit the workforce, I'm like, this seem the
It doesn't seem like the education matters so much.
And then then I had success in the business world.
And so in in in my twenties it went from insecurity to overconfidence.
And and I don't think the insecurity is good.
And I don't think the overconfidence is good.
And then in my thirties I got taught some real hardcore lessons about
life and these these sort of things.
And so um humility is is the answer.
And and that was kind of like that Darwin quote quote that most people that have knowledge
um aren't that confident in your face.
You know what I mean?
Like they're they're pretty reserved.
And so the the cost to go from lacking confidence to overconfidence to probably what would
be a natural level
Um, it it was an expensive thing, but I I would encourage you twenty year olds that you
probably are smarter than me when I was twenty, but you probably don't know as much yet
because sometimes you just gotta get you gotta hit the the the sander to get to r realize
what you actually do know.
I was listening to one of my favorite podcast guys and he was interviewing a very high
profile person uh that we all know.
And he asked this ho pro this high profile person, which is better, humility or curiosity?
wow.
I thought that was a great question.
And and the high profile person said, and this guy's a high profile person, he says, it's
humility.
Because if you're not, if you're not humble, you you can't think, huh, I wonder if there's
a different way of doing this.
And then start to be curious about it.
I thought it was great.
I was thinking that they they might be just opposite sides of the same coin.
Humility allow yeah, humility allows you to be more curious, at least for me, right?
Like oh what he was saying.
Yeah, because I I that's one of the things I like about my talking to Grok because um I
can just be out somewhere and and just question what I thought about something.
Like uh I could be in the woods and see something there that I thought was so and just ask
it and I was like,
That makes sense, right?
I was sitting in my I was sitting in my yard this week and we're trying to sell our house
and I was looking across the street and my neighbor had uh she has manicured her yard and
it's like the um it's like the old joke when you go into a barber shop and there's two
barbers and one has a good hairdo, which barber do you choose?
And
It's the one with the bad hair, too, because he cut the other guys, right?
Like and so my neighbor's yard when I sit in the driveway is the yard I see.
It's the perfect yard.
I don't see my yard because I'm facing it, but I was on this particular day, I was sitting
in my yard and I was looking down at the grass in my yard, and and it's polluted with
dandelions, violets, clover, and probably some crabgrass.
Amongst other things, right?
And and I was feeling pressure looking at my neighbor's weedless yard.
And so I said to Grok, I was like, Hey, um, it seems like to me that my yard was the
standard yard when I was a kid.
Like I don't r I don't remember seeing any yards like that when I was a kid, but that
could be a memory thing.
And my Grocks going And it says yes and this
sixties and seventies, that was the standard yard.
And so I said, Well, I have a hypothesis why it isn't that way anymore.
Wanna guess what my hypothesis was?
Three companies.
Um Monsanto, um, Scott, and who would be one of the other ones?
It's it's not coming to me uh Why?
I don't know.
I know the turf builder, one, two, three, four.
Yeah.
And so all those things evolved in the seventies and eighties and built into the mindset
of people the idea that a weedless yard is the standard.
And that all happened from the seventies and eighties, and nobody had it before that.
And s the only place that had it before that was a was a um golf course.
Well, both sides of the same coin.
You mentioned that.
I'm listening to you.
That that that's pretty clever because
If you are curious about something and uh it goes wrong, you're probably gonna have to
deal with some humility.
And so I I like I like the way you're thinking on that.
And and just even, you know, you have a big thing about thinking differently.
Just being willing to say, you know what?
I'm gonna hold this opinion loosely.
That's a that's a big deal to even start there.
And so one of the areas as we
think about this question.
You know, what what are some things that you've changed to your your opinion or your
worldview or what was your specific question, Keith?
Uh I'm looking it up here.
Give me a second.
It was um three things you once thought were so and now think differently.
So um one of the things that I once thought were so, and it's not even anything anyone
Taught me, no one taught me how to procrastinate.
Uh, but I could pretty much procrastinate in life and get the job done.
Still get the job done through personality.
And there was a time in my life when I was really struggling to get the job done through
personality.
And I called my pastor, Pastor Rukas.
What a great guy, a Greek guy.
And I said, hey, uh, Pastor Rucas, could could we have a breakfast or something?
That's what old people do.
They have breakfast.
So I go meet my pastor for breakfast.
And he says to me, Doug.
I just want you to know that sometimes she can't get things done through personality.
And I remember thinking, what is he even talking about?
And I pondered that and dwelt and thought about it.
And he was so right that sometimes this procrastination or maybe stuckness or whatever you
want to call it.
you you're leaning in, or I would lean in on my own strength and try and get it done by my
uniqueness to connect or encourage or have empathy for somebody, but it really wasn't
enough.
And so it began this quest to think differently about it and think, okay, well, how how
could I do it?
Well, I could do it through the uniquenesses of other people.
And so it's it's working with a team.
It's saying, hey,
This person has some skills.
Let's ask them for help or let's bring them in and maybe they can help sharpen the sword.
And so that, yeah, that that was one where I had to begin thinking differently on a topic
that really no one wants to say, yeah, I'm a procrastinator.
I mean, who who goes out and says that?
Nobody.
Uh, but you have to be on or I had to be honest with myself, or someone had to be honest
with me and say, hey, look, this is what it is, Doug.
You're trying to get by just off your own personality.
So I had to change my thinking on that.
And I I don't do this much on our podcast, but I'm going to err interrupt the podcast
right now to point out to those of you that are watching that that Gimbal Financial is
open for business.
We are financial advisors.
And if you have friends and family that are looking for financial advisors, one of our key
principles is to buy wisdom.
And that's part of this podcast.
We're offering the wisdom that we share that's unique to others.
in our industry and we love to help people.
So if you know anybody that's looking for an advisor, we're here for them.
uh Well back to the show.
So uh here's the here's the here's the first one that came to mind for me.
And uh it's a bit of a tongue twister.
But I was thinking back to my younger days and and and and it is this.
The thing you think is the thing usually isn't the thing.
And and I got in a lot of trouble making mistakes when I thought the thing that was the
thing was the thing and it wasn't the thing.
And so I wrote down some examples of what I had to learn.
Like in my twenties, an example of that would be I might be sitting in a restaurant with
friends and
then a family over in the corner would be eating and their kit their kid would be blown a
just blown a gasket and disruptive.
And I remember thinking, man, when I'm a parent, that ain't happening.
That was that's a small example.
It's like I thought the thing was my pleasure in the restaurant when the real thing is,
man, we need more kids in the world.
Like we we c we need as a culture, need more kids.
And then
Uh the one that's real common, I think, for a lot of people is uh and I'm paraphrasing
what I've heard is man, my dad was so stupid when he when I was 18.
I was shocked by how wise he was when I was 25.
Like he he really got smart in those years, right?
And so uh that one, uh that that one I I had to really uh had the I had the temptation of
regrets over that because I didn't know what I didn't know.
in that really sweet spot of life where I could have embraced my dad, but my dad's health
was deteriorating.
So I didn't really get to embrace my dad as an adult because of that mindset, which I
don't really regret it because I think it's a pretty normal mindset for people between 18
and 30 to to think their parents just fell off the apple cart, you know?
And then um there's many, many of these kind of things that I thought was the thing as a
financial advisor.
Like I thought highest performance,
I thought giving the the clients all the right answers, I thought all that was the thing
went in my twenties with the business.
And I realized that most people want somebody that can bounce ideas off that'll be honest
with them and put forth the effort to help them make the best ideas, b ma best decisions
they can make.
And that's not what I thought for many years in this business.
And I concerned myself with stuff that didn't matter.
Yeah, I think uh, you know, currently, you know, as as as I take this journey of where am
I today on on thinking differently, uh probably the most exciting one that I'm at right
now was really I was sparked to think differently by my son who just graduated high
school.
He spent four years with an outstanding world class organization.
The Carmel High School marching band.
And this is a high performance group.
Um, in his four years, they took third place in a national championship once, uh, second
twice and first once.
And Avon High School, just across 465, and we're talking the nation was competing, but
Avon High School uh kicked Carmel's butt and they did it.
being great competitors.
And so one of the things I've learned from my son was that you can truly learn to compete
differently.
You could either compete to um beat someone in what's that?
A zero sum game, Keith, where where you where you have one winner, one loser.
Right.
Is that right?
And so um you can do that.
And there's there's plenty of examples of that.
And that's that's fine.
Um, but what I learned from my son in Carmel High School and Avon High School was these
two were making each other better.
And my son shared a different view of competition with me that, hey, I'm not even
embarrassed to tell you.
I learned it from him and I just learned it recently.
But it's this idea that I'm gonna show up.
I'm going to give my very best I can today.
And I I'm I'm competing against Keith Tiner.
I I am I am bringing my best for Keith so that Keith can bring his best for Libby, so that
Libby can bring her best for Phil.
And so like when we're doing that, when we're bringing something to the table, we're we're
doing it to elevate somebody else or to elevate a a certain culture or a belief, then
You can have win wins.
And I just love that my son modeled that for me.
It's a great view of competition.
I think competition is great.
I think it's what drives a lot of success in America, in the world.
I think it's what drives personal development and enlightenment and thinking differently.
Because how would you know if you didn't know?
Well, someone else has to show you the way.
And what better person than your family member are the persons that you spend most of your
time with throughout the day?
Boy, I love that.
I I had my daughter Caitlin was a gifted artist with a camera a lot of times.
And and what when I think of it, my c all of my kids have taught me tons of stuff that I
needed to know that I would have never known without having them, I don't think.
And but my the one that came to mind while you're talking about Warner was Caitlin is just
really good at photography.
And I would go, that would make a good picture over there because how I saw it.
And then with our conversations, I realized that she sees the world differently than I
literally sees it differently.
And by realizing that she sees the world differently, that we're never gonna see the world
the same.
Because the way she's created, and it means that her thought process is gonna be different
than we.
And the I had to be, I probably had to be in my 40s before I realized this, because I had
probably mostly d s seen the world black and white.
And when I saw it from an artist mindset, I realized, um, there's all sorts of people out
there.
And so that was quite a learning process for me, is I don't necessarily have to agree with
everybody.
But I don't know how they frame what they see sometimes.
And so it gives me a lot more patience.
Well, one of the things that you did during that time, um, when Caitlin was really into
photography, is you challenged her to take a bad picture.
And I I think setting a standard and then not reaching it.
I don't know if she ever took a bad picture or not.
But but if you can say, Hey, I've I've got a standard here.
And even if you don't reach it and you fail, so you're asking her to fail, uh i if you can
fail, I think what that's gonna do for a person, what it's done is it has shown me some
humility.
It's caused me to think beyond the circumstance and to uh really dive deep into what it
takes to sharpen myself or sharpen you or sharpen each other.
Or even have a a a disagreement about what a standard is, and then be able to go back and
say, hey, let's let's recenter this and let's improve and get better.
And so failure through competition is a is a is a wonderful thing not to be afraid of.
And and that's that's the greatest place to start.
I wrote down a couple of things like how how would you start thinking differently?
And um my friend Ken gave me a question a few years ago, um
And I I would ask if you want to think differently, um I would ask yourself this.
I'd say, what am I afraid of?
Like currently, what am I afraid of?
And that could be something that happened to you in sixth grade and you're still afraid of
it.
That's okay.
could be something that that you're it's a what if scenario.
I don't know what it is, but what am I afraid of?
And then I would set a standard where you can fail at that.
And and share it with somebody because that person will challenge you.
They'll be real with you.
And then um you'll be much sharper because of it.
I asked I think what goes along with our feedback conversation actually.
I asked Libby a question a while ago.
I forgot.
Did I ask you uh are you afraid to be wrong?
Or what is that what I asked?
I yeah, so I asked Libby if she is afraid to be wrong because uh I don't ask that to
intimidate her.
I just
Wanna know her personality, like be honest with me, telling me about it.
And so in my twenties, um, I thought being wrong was a big deal because that's kind of how
I'd been trained.
You know, if I didn't get a 90 or better or an A, that I was lesser of a person.
And so to learn to be wrong and take that natural feedback is a big deal.
And I was talking to my friend John a while ago, and I told him one of the principles
There used to be a restaurant in Indianapolis called Big Dick's Dogs.
I don't know if you remember that.
Uh Bob and Tom used to harass the name all the time.
And and Dick was a friend of mine, and I was telling my friend this morning, I said, Dick
taught me this little phrase: do the thing you fear the most, and the death of fear is
near.
And I was in my twenties when he said it, and I learned it, and I was like, oh, so I'm
not.
putting the scary thing at the end of my to-do list.
It's going at the beginning of my to-do list.
So I can just deal with the bad thing first in my day and go on.
And and so over the years, that little quip helped focus me on getting bad things done
early in my day.
So I could stay focused the rest of the day.
So here's a here's a story on me.
Uh I don't even have my pen.
I I started collecting pens for some reason.
Well I know the reason.
It's a long story, but I
I I thought I would buy a luxury pen.
I was gonna buy a golden Mont Blanc.
Like it nobody would have known how bougie it was, but it was fancy.
And so I take I take my lawn chair out, I put it on the sidewalk.
I was gonna just sit outside and get on the auction.
It was an auction.
I said I had my computer.
My computer's open.
I set it down there, got the auction site up.
I went and did something, came back, grabbed my computer, and somehow
On the touchpad, I had made a bid on an unknown auction.
And unbeknownst to me, it was the winning bid.
And I had no idea what our bid on.
Like this auction had things from ten dollars to twenty thousand dollars.
And so my heart's beating.
And I pick it up and then it goes, You won!
I'm like, I did.
What competition did I just win?
Consequently, I never bid on that pen because I I think it was twenty five hundred dollars
is what I won.
And I'm like, I gotta go tell Connie what I did.
Like that's what it costs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was a um it was a picture with a Roy Campanella autographed baseball on it.
And I think Roy Campanella is a Hall of Famer, but I couldn't care less about it.
Right.
Wow.
It's not my thing.
And so I emailed I I thought maybe they'll let me out of this.
And they they said, We will let you uh out of it for seven hundred dollars.
And so I'm thinking, I I to win, I just had to bid over somebody else, right?
So like the market was probably one bid less than my bid, which wasn't seven hundred
dollars.
And my thought was, I'm not g I'm not, I'll pay for this thing.
And so hanging in my wall in my study is that picture.
And what that picture reminds me every time I see it is everybody makes mistakes.
That was an expensive one, but I think I can't think of a better thing to hang in my study
than just the humility of knowing there's a Keith mistake, and when somebody makes a
mistake around me, it's not all that deep.
Because they're gonna unless they um I wrote in my notes that being wrong isn't a big
deal.
Being wrong about the same thing repeatedly is.
Yeah.
And
Yeah.
And that's where humility comes in that you learn from your mistakes.
Well th thanks thanks for uh having this conversation with me.
this is good, Keith.
I I hope I hope others listening are having the conversation with themselves.
And if it's interesting or you just want to let it out, we're a phone call away.
Yeah.
Don't be afraid to try something new today and see what happens.
It's not it's not gonna be that big a deal.
And and in the meantime Have a great weekend, everybody.