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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.
When you catch up with an old friend, you're not playing any games. You're getting real pretty quick. But they're the way they see the world trades on me. And so I get the benefit of their lens and what they are going through, and it helps me expand my thinking and my compassion, or it helps me, wanna downshift and rev up my life.
Keith: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 Average. Good morning, Doug.
Doug:Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey.
Keith:It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. It it's Friday night football, I think. What do you think?
Doug:I've been sitting outside drinking my coffee in the mornings, and I'm really enjoying that. That's a great way to start the day.
Keith:I had an evening cup of coffee last night in the driveway and just was listening to the cicadas whine about the cold weather. They they they were coming in and out.
Doug:They're fine dining or something. The only time I have coffee in the evenings is after maybe a fine meal. Was it like a French restaurant last night or what? My friend
Keith:Ron came by, and I just thought this would be it's getting a little chilly. We'll just we'll just catch up and see what's going on now. So the it went too fine. It was redneck. Okay.
Keith:I got to know my new neighbors, Carmen and Matthew, a little bit. They were walk strolling the neighborhood and just got to know them a little bit.
Doug:Nice. We live in a neighborhood with a lot of walkers and a lot of dogs. It's great to sit out on the front porch and just wave to people. And if you stack a few waves together, you'll actually meet your neighbors.
Keith:Now on the sad note, a shout out to my friend Reggie. Yeah. He's gotta go take that long quiet walk today.
Doug:Is Reggie my friend? Is that here today? Okay. Yeah.
Keith:He's he's gonna go down today, unfortunately, but he's been a good dog. He's been a good one.
Doug:Yeah. Reggie is a good dog. I think he's the only dog that I've given a a card to. A card?
Keith:Like a red card? Or
Doug:No. Like a like, I wrote him a card.
Keith:I didn't know that. Dear Reggie. I did. I wrote him a
Doug:letter. He we bonded once.
Keith:He was abused as a younger dog and it just things triggered him and he's a handsome dog. Yeah. You don't It's like he works out. Yeah. If you don't trigger him, he's probably the most loving dog that I've ever seen.
Keith:I mean, in my heart, it's sad to point today, but Reggie, he's a great dog. Well, we've been talking about what we talked about last week, and I thought we could jump back into it today, that the smaller your world is, the bigger your problems are, and the bigger your world gets, even though your problems are all the same, the smaller they are relative to your world. And I've lined up some friends for us to talk to in the days ahead to kind of share how they've expanded their world and in ways that we talked about last time that you could expand your world is take a different time frame, a longer time frame. The shorter your time frame is, think the more likely you get frustrated because you can't see past that period in time. Like for a teenager to imagine that whatever they're struggling with will be small to them twenty years from now, it's hard for them to understand.
Keith:So the time frame's away. To be more thoughtful, not necessarily in a kind way, but to consider the situation differently would be full of thought. That'll expand your world. Travel, that just can't help but expand your world, right? You see things.
Keith:Was it you and Spencer that went to Tijuana? We did. Yeah. And I can't help but think that that expanded Spencer's world in a way that he never imagined.
Doug:We snuck him into Mexico.
Keith:I don't know if we're allowed to say this.
Doug:I wouldn't recommend doing that, but that's what happened. Yeah. We're on a bus and no one checked
Keith:IDs. See, I'm from Evansville, and I don't get news from normal places. It seems like that was all going the other direction.
Doug:Yeah. But when we came back into The United States, IDs were checked.
Keith:I don't even understand what you just told me. That's that's really funny. Yeah, so like it would be fun to hear if Spencer was here, like what expanded in his world on that little trip for him. Yeah, and I had a conversation with a friend of mine about Mexico recently, and my experience on my honeymoon probably isn't the same Mexico of today. So even your travel experiences can shift and change, and so all of
Doug:that we were not at a honeymoon destination, I'll tell you that. Yeah. I've never been to some of the, like, real popular resort type places in Mexico. But it doesn't really matter. Where wherever you go, wherever you travel to, you are aware of your surroundings, and you're taking it in.
Doug:And you're seeing people. You're seeing the way people do life, and it it can be really inspiring. It is. Yeah. And and I know we I
Keith:think we might have mentioned Kristen and you going to Ukraine last time. And when she told me some of the stories about what you guys saw, like not like on the horizon, but like in the room things you saw, that would forever expand your world, I think. So travel is a wonderful thing to do that. I think one of the notes I wrote down that expands your world is wisdom, and each of these ideas that we're talking about now, they also can contract your world. Like foolishness is going to make your world smaller because it's going to make people not want to be around you and to the extreme point, you're going to find yourself probably in a little cell that's about eight by six feet or something.
Doug:It's not going to be very big. And so that that And it just causes stress. And so during those foolish times in my life, there's been stress, and and you can't you can't think beyond survival at that point. And that that's a tough place to be.
Keith:It's really hard because even if you love somebody and they just keep acting foolishly, you may be forced to take yourself away from the situation even though you love them. And there is it's a it goes to have the wisdom to know what to do in that situation is a big deal. And it it can like, somewhat one person's foolishness can even isolate you as you're thinking about, man, I'm just overwhelmed by their activity and their actions to or against me or whatever. So that's another thing. And courage can expand your world.
Keith:And the word that came to the opposite of that in my thoughts was fear, like getting a fearful thought circling around in your head can really shrink your world. What's the bible verse? The antidote to fear.
Doug:Perfect love casts out all fear. What is that? I don't know. I don't know.
Keith:Know. I don't know.
Doug:The the you know, me being a church goer, I should be able to quote chapter and verse, but I've never been able to do that. But I do know that perfect love casts out fear. And so in those fearful situations, I've I've really tried to lock in on that and say, okay, well, what is what is love in this situation, and what what's perfect about it? And so even reframing a question of, hey, I'm scared, or I I don't know what to do here. And then just saying, okay, what what is what is what would love have to do in this situation?
Doug:And then how could it affect it perfectly? Like, it is a it is a great place to be.
Keith:And that verse is first John four eighteen. And it's a big deal because your ability to cast love onto somebody else might reduce their fear, like whatever they're doing. We had a conversation with our friend Kelly just recently, and she was telling us a little bit about her cancer treatment that she had had. And I think just the willingness to go into a cancer treatment place
Doug:and smile at people can really minimize a bit their fear that they're going into. When I think of fear, I think of these I don't know what years this would have been, that there was this campaign or like, I don't know if they were t shirts or whatever, or maybe if this was just in Muncie. But there were stickers on trucks that I remember that said, ain't scared.
Keith:I love it.
Doug:Ain't scared. And I remember I can remember looking at those stickers and thinking, well, I'm scared sometimes.
Keith:I don't know if I could put
Doug:the ain't scared sticker on the back of my truck.
Keith:Dick's stump on Dick's famous hot dogs, Big Dick's famous hot dogs in Downtown Indianapolis during the 80s, and I was fortunate to befriend him and he was just a treat. And he taught me, do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is near. And man, that takes some courage sometimes to go towards the thing that seems to be scary. But there's probably some wisdom in that. I know when I had to cold call back in the day, I didn't I don't think there's an ever day I walked into the office and man, I can't wait to get on the phone.
Keith:And so what I knew I had to do every day was come in and just get on the phone. Like I had to pick up the phone and make the first dial of that thing and I realized it wasn't gonna bite me, but I just I just the repetition of it helped me navigate through that that tendency to wanna step away from it.
Doug:Honesty is a great place to start with fear or anything like that because you had to save yourself. I don't have any money. I don't have anything rolling in here, so I have to get on
Keith:the phone. It's the only way. And it is never ending that there will be things that cross your path that concern you. Like the challenges, the unexpected things in life that can come at you can shrink your world. But what I've discovered personally is the things that concern me or scared me when I was 18 probably don't even get my pulse to move today.
Keith:Right? And and the things that were 25 or 35 or 50 or 60. So you build up a certain subtle courage by just keeping moving forward, you know? Makes sense. Yeah.
Keith:And that's part of the beauty of expanding your world with different friend groups. Particularly, I like getting some older friends in the circle because they can put experiences in perspective. If all my friends are the same age, then they you know, at 18, they don't really know anything. At 18, they haven't experienced certain things. They haven't experienced what a ten year time horizon is on something of adult nature.
Keith:You know?
Doug:Yeah. I was just reminded of how important friends are last night. I was hanging out with some of my friends. I went up to Taylor for a football game to watch their son play, And it blows my mind when I think about how friendships can form in college, like 18 to 22. And then they just keep growing, and they get deeper.
Doug:And so when you catch up with an old friend, you're not you're not playing any games. You're getting real pretty quick. And you could probably, you know, only have, I don't know, three, maybe four friends like that where you can go deep real quick without even having to catch up. But but they're the way they see the world trades on me. And so I get the benefit of their lens and what they are going through, and it helps me expand my thinking and my compassion, or it helps me wanna downshift and rev up my life instead of just being inspired by old, like, long lasting friendships.
Doug:It's such a it's such a big deal to me. I don't know about you. I don't know about anybody else, but for me, it's a big deal.
Keith:Now I put on Caleb's to do list this week to call one of my friends that's retiring October 1 that I think he's the longest and ten year friend of mine. And we met when I was 15 or 16, and so I thought, let's just let Caleb meets with it. It's known his dad for a long, long time and seen all kinds of things.
Doug:Yeah. Well, we had Gabe Green on here a couple weeks ago, and and, you know, Gabe and I have been friends a long time. And, you could just you can learn a lot from a friend. And my guess is I I'm gonna steal this from my friend, Don Palmer. Don Palmer has a podcast called citizen seven.
Doug:And, in one of his episodes, he said something like this. He he said, I think everybody has friends. Everybody has a friend, that maybe those friendships just haven't been nurtured. Mhmm. And so you might have a friend where you're able to just give a quick call and say, hey.
Doug:How's whatever going on in your life? And then begin that nurturing process, and that'll that'll expand your worldview. That'll expand their worldview too.
Keith:Yeah. You're that statement's from my memory to to everyone who has a friend, I was thinking one of my friends that didn't have a lot of friends died earlier this year, and by expanding my world, kind of I perceived she didn't have a lot of friends by thinking, you know what? Why don't I expand her world? Like that mindset to help expand her world expanded my world because she taught me stuff that I didn't know otherwise. I mean, how often did you drive to her city?
Keith:I drove probably over six weeks. Yeah. Yeah. And I went so often that probably a year and a half into it, I had to explain to Connie I was not having
Doug:an affair. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It
Keith:was a unique way to expand my world and she just taught me things that I just would have never known And probably I think most people, if they had seen her, they might have crossed the road or thought
Doug:she was homeless or whatever, it would have passed on her.
Keith:Yeah, and she just made me smile. She just would teach me things in her subtle way, but she wouldn't talk. She was an introvert and that's kind of where I wanted to go to. She was introverted in such a way that the two of us could sit and have lunch and she would not feel compelled to say anything.
Doug:Okay.
Keith:And I can do that a lot, but that is uncomfortable for most people. So whenever I would go see her, I would literally have to have some conversation points in my head prepared to to kind of break open the the dialogue because otherwise we would end up staring at each other for for the whole hour, which is kind of funny.
Doug:So the book I just ordered off Amazon, and I you know, I'm I'm not much of a reader, so if Caroline she she doesn't my wife doesn't listen to these podcasts. But in case she happens to listen to this one, she knows that, like, I order a lot of books, and then we give a ton of them away to, like I forget Indie Reads or something. She takes them somewhere. And, so I buy all these books. She takes them.
Doug:But, I like to read a couple chapters of every book I buy. I don't read the couple chapters, but this one I'm looking forward to. This is another this was a recommendation from my friend Don, and it's called how to know a person by David Brooks. And here's a couple ways. Like, so if you're hanging out with your friend who doesn't talk much or is a little more introverted, here's a few questions.
Doug:Okay? What's working well for you, Bob? What's working well right now in your life? Because people will ask you, hey. How's it going?
Doug:How are you? And you can give a one word answer. But, hey. What what's going well? Or what's giving you joy outside of work?
Doug:Or here's another one. What right now, Bill, is a real challenge for you? And so I I hijack those from Don, who he hijacked those from this David Brooks guy. Because there's there's skills and tactics that you can learn to expand your worldview. I mean, Libby's taken a Dale Carnegie course.
Doug:What what's the award you won last night? Breakthrough. She won the breakthrough award. Who is that? Nice work.
Doug:Go, Libby. Go, Libby. And so there is breakthrough that can happen, and I think that's one of our staples here at our in our Gimbal culture that you talk about thinking differently, that expanding your worldview means you're going to have to push through something to be able to see more.
Keith:And and the place that I don't think many would know that about me, and and And it was the book Quiet. I don't know, I can't remember the author, but it differentiates between introverts and extroverts. Our friend gave me the same recommendation to read it. It was very powerful. Right, because if you're an extrovert, you gain energy by getting out there and broadening your world.
Keith:If you're an introvert, like expanding your world could like if you're doing it by meeting you can expand your world by people, places, things, right? Like but if it's people that you're feeling compelled to expand to, it can be really wary and exhausting for people. And so realizing that your world can be different based on your unique personality is kind of a big deal. And I would like when Connie and I were dating, we would I didn't have anybody, right? Like I was just cold calling because I was good entertainment.
Keith:I wasn't paying me anything at the time. But as a natural introvert, on the phone getting rejection and getting all those things, by 04:00 in the afternoon my energy level had been burnt down from that and I didn't really understand that introvert extrovert. I just was back in that day, I was just told you need to just get out of your box. You need to go you need to become an extrovert. And the more I've thought about it is there's definitely strengths with extroverts and strengths with introverts.
Keith:But I think even learning to balance those things within your world system, right? Like with an introvert, I have to push myself to get social time sometimes to expand my world. But maybe as an extrovert, you may need to to expand your world may mean reducing the number of people you're with.
Doug:It it is interesting. I think the the best thing I could recommend for somebody who is an extrovert, and you already have this event, to have a really good introvert wingman. And if you're an introvert, have a really good extrovert wingman, and you're probably married to that person. That's really good. Likely.
Keith:That's good. Yeah, I know that as a teenager, I did what you said. Was extremely introverted, so I had the wingman that was extroverted and that opened doors. It taught me I probably wouldn't have learned social skills without that friend, right? Like because an introvert, it's a lot easier not to get out there and learn social skills, but by going out in public and just observing how you start a conversation, which of course the Carnegie course will talk about some of those things.
Keith:You can go to class like that, but having an extroverted person in your world can really help the introvert better enjoy those times.
Doug:Yeah, and the flip side, the introvert can really help the extrovert. I think about my friend, John. And in my early days in the business, John would say, Doug, I want you to really pause and think about why you're doing this. Because I'd spend a lot of time punching air, and he he would help me see the purpose behind what I could be doing. And so I was always appreciative for that type of clarity.
Keith:And it it's a big deal, I think, to navigate through those things with your personality. Because you're the extrovert and you don't slow down enough to think about it, at some point you're gonna just find yourself probably in a lonely place, I would think, because
Doug:Yeah, probably burnout, exhausted, and your I don't care level just skyrockets.
Keith:Yeah, and I think the introvert that won't push themselves out of their comfort zone is probably going to miss a lot of blessings.
Doug:Or maybe just be angry.
Keith:Yeah, because reading Quiet talked about how your personality can adjust. They had a test, I think it was from one to 20, to tell you where you were on the spectrum of introvert extrovert. One would be an extreme extrovert and 20 would be an extreme introvert. And I think I scored around 11. And my guess is I probably would have been 16 or 17 before I got in this business.
Keith:This business didn't really allow you much room to stay real introverted because you have to ask those kind of questions to people to figure out what's going on in their world to help them out. And and I think, you know, if you get caught inside, your world's getting smaller. I I think you you were talking about taking the perspective of the 10 year old Doug yesterday. And I think part of helping, you know, thinking how to expand your world is to remain curious or inquisitive or just ask questions because there's things no matter where you find yourself where I think that inquisitive attitude can broaden your world. And so when you're talking about the 10 year old Doug, what what did the 10 year old Doug forget over the years or or the the loss, the
Doug:enthusiasm, or zeal? Yeah. It just become a little more practical. I think success, you wanna hang on to your successes. You don't you don't long for the frontier like you were when you were 10 years old and so that the dreams aren't quite as wild.
Doug:Maybe that's the midlife crisis type stuff. Maybe that's why guys go buy fun cars. Yeah. Chop me down with. And so, yeah, it it's I think if he could if he could let the, if you could put the 10 year old version of yourself in control for a little while, probably a great move.
Doug:And that that's from my friend Thad. He brought that to my attention this week, so I'm grateful for that.
Keith:I think my friendship with you has kinda helped me with that over the years to just kind of remain open to energizing myself. I don't know what 10 year old Keith would do in a 64 year old body, but I think what would happen today A great teen. Pardon me? It would be
Doug:a great
Keith:teen. Well, think I'm inclined to do 10 year old stuff. Maybe it's 15 year old stuff, but it is fun maybe to even having adult children to pour gasoline on their version.
Doug:It's the best. Because I'm just entering that, but it is the best ride, best adventure.
Keith:Yeah, think it's Thursday last week, Caleb learned that his sister Kelly was doing a triathlon on Saturday. Yeah.
Doug:Yeah. He jumped in.
Keith:He jumped in. And and and not not a full triathlon. I don't know what they call it. It was a a five ks and a 10 mile bike ride and a 500 meter swim. But their energy had me pondering, maybe I'll do this.
Doug:The And Son of a gun. That's got me in a lot of trouble.
Keith:Yeah, and I was like, maybe I'll do it. Don't think of it. A shout out to our friend Charlie. He called me six years ago and it would have been probably around Halloween. He was driving down the road in Indianapolis and kept seeing these yard signs for the I forget the name of the mini marathon in Downtown MDM.
Keith:Oh, Millennial or something like that. The Monumental. It's the Monumental Marathon. Okay. And it's also a mini marathon.
Keith:And he's like, what are you doing Saturday, Keith? And I'm like, I don't know. What do got in mind? He goes, wanna run the mini marathon with me? This is like Wednesday.
Keith:Yeah. Okay. Goodbye. But you're saying the peer pressure the peer pressure to do things.
Doug:Yeah. And the 10 year
Keith:old Keith definitely would not have run
Doug:a mini marathon. Was not involved. Whereas the 10 year old Doug would have been like, sure. And then I get into it. I'm like, oh, I'm in trouble.
Keith:It's really funny. I was sitting in my driveway observing my neighbors and this teenage girl was our neighborhood is an oval basically, and so she was taking laps. They're about a mile lap and she's talking on her speakerphone and people don't I think they don't recognize that I'm sitting in the driveway. Like whatever they're saying I hear. And so she's talking on her speakerphone last night and she told the this is a 15 year old, think she told her friend or whoever she's talking to, she ran eight miles earlier in the day.
Keith:And I was like, very impressive. And then she took to her four laps. So she's up to 12 miles and and I thought, man, I don't even know if I could walk 12 miles in a day. You might have to
Doug:do a water stop for, like, Oh, a gas out like a Gatorade.
Keith:I may do that. Put my own lemonade stand out there. Yeah. So I don't know what it is that that would cause you all to broaden your world. You know, as an introvert, maybe you've got kind of settled in your ways.
Keith:That old saying that the difference between a rut and a grave is the ends. And maybe you just have got settled in a rut. And to get out of that rut may just take a little bit of effort, and it may just take something small outside of
Doug:your comfort zone to get you to expand your world. Start. Whether you're really great at expanding your worldview, whether you're extrovert, introvert, or both of y'all, I would encourage you just to ask god to open a door. Yeah. Because the extrovert can waste a lot of time trying to open a door or a relationship or or a a new adventure, and the introvert can just never get it done get it done by analysis paralysis.
Doug:And so he just prayed that god open the door. Whether that's a solo adventure or an adventure of three or four, I'm just asking for it.
Keith:And I would say take a baby step with it. You don't have to go jump into the monumental mini marathon with Charlie. It may be just as simple as sitting down and writing notes somebody you haven't talked to for a while, picking up the phone and calling somebody. A great way to expand your world is with baby steps, pursuing wisdom from above, and just trusting it's gonna be okay. What do I need to know before we let everybody go today, Doug?
Keith:Anything else?
Doug:Labor Day weekend. Go grill out. Have something on the grill this weekend. That's what you need to know.
Keith:Alright. You guys enjoy your weekend, and we'll talk to you real soon.