Disrupting Negativity Nature with Dr. Ryan Darby Part 1 (of 2)
“ I love to understand why people do what we do”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM Dr. Ryan
Dr. Ryan Darby is on a personal mission to disrupt negativity, and he does it as a researcher, consultant, and father. Currently, Dr. Ryan serves as President of Incredible Family, and is the co-creator of the Incredible Parent and Incredible Kid strengths assessments. As a researcher, he has published original research in leading academic journals including Cognition & Emotion, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Psychosomatic Medicine, among others, and in leading industry journals like the Gallup Business Journal. Ryan is co-creator of two of the largest strengths coaching certifications programs in the world: Gallup’s Strengths Coach Certification Program and the Global Parent Strengths Certification. He received his doctorate and master’s degree from the University of California, San Diego and his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University.
Understanding Individuals to Serving Families
“I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. So I'm gonna say like, a lot of us, I ended up where I am today, just following passions, following things that connected with me. I'm gonna fess up. I'm a geek, I love to learn, I like to read, I like to dive into things. And I'm kind of a weird geek… My geekiness is in people, I love to understand why people do what we do. And so this pursuit of wanting to know why we do what we do, why I do what I do, has led me down a very cool road. I've been able to be a consultant for large organizations working with Wells Fargo, helping them to engage employees, and I've been able to be a professor of psychology. And then along the way, all these passions led to co-founding Incredible Family. And that's been a real treat. And for those of you that don't know what Incredible Family is, our whole mission is to disrupt negativity. And in particular, we're doing it in the home. And so we are doing it with families. And so we're looking at a family, and we're saying, Hey, what's going on here? How can we bring out the best in your family? How can we help you to live with peace and harmony? How can we help you to enjoy each other? And so that's what we do an Incredible Family. “
Disrupting Negativity with a strengths-based approach
“The book is actually a combination of a lot of work that Brandon I've done together. So when I say we disrupt negativity, there's a specific way that we do that. So we take what's called a strengths-based approach. And I know you all use this at 34 Strong. We use this and what it means is we look at what the best parts of someone? And we intentionally develop those things. So I look at you, Darren, and I say, Darren, he is one of the most forgiving people I know. He is always willing to accept who you are, forgive, and accept and love anyway. And so we play into that and we try to nurture that and try to help that to become something that you use on a regular basis. And so this strengths-based approach of finding the best in people and nurturing those can be used in business, it can be used in family. Brandon and I had had taken this approach and we said, Okay, well, what's out there right now that helps parents to look at what's best in themselves, what's out there right now? And there really wasn't anything. There was stuff in the business world, to help employees and leaders, but there really wasn't anything to help the family. And so we said, well, if it's not there, we're going to create it because we need it. And so we created an assessment for parents that looks at you as a parent and says, Hey, what's wonderful about you? What's great about you? What do you love? What do you enjoy? What brings you success? And we developed a personality assessment that says these are your top parenting strengths. These are the things that you really love, enjoy, and find success, and invest in needs. And here's the way forward, here's how you invest in these. And then we did the flipping, I also did it with kids. And we said, All right, well, how do we nurture what's best for my kids? So we created an assessment to help parents discover what's best in their kids, and how to nurture those. And so we built these assessments. And then Brandon and Analyn said, this is cool assessment. Let's make this more user friendly. So they wrote up the great book, Incredible Parent to go along with that assessment, so that parents can know exactly what they need to do to bring out the best in themselves and have the family that they really want.”
the evolutionary perspective
“I really like to look at the causes of our behavior. I want to know why we do the things we do. And we know that we have a negativity bias, it is very apparent for those of you listening at home. If I just pause right now and say, hey, I want you to list five things right now you can do to improve.. I'm going to bet those came really easily to you. But now if I say, list five things that are really wonderful about you. Which one was easier for you? I know, I know, I've done this hundreds of times in groups. I know, it's easier for you to think what you can improve. We do that one so quick. It's called fluent, meaning it comes easily naturally to our brain to spot by negativity spot problems. And so if we go way back, if we think from an evolutionary perspective, and we think of what our ancestors went through.. the ancestors that were really good at spotting the lion in the grass survived to have kids. The ancestors that were like, no, everything's cool. Look how beautiful the sky is today. I'm very happy. Look, I feel good about myself, but couldn't see the lion. They got eaten, and they didn't have kids. And so from the evolutionary perspective, that tendency to spot problems, to spot possible threats, takes up a huge portion of our brain because it is so adaptive. And so we have portions of our brain, for example, the reticular activating system, and then we have the amygdala, the whole limbic system, we have portions of our brain that are specifically designed to spot threats in our environment to pay attention to these things. And those parts of the brain served us really, really well when we were trying to evade lions. But the problem is that nowadays, I'm sitting in an office and there are no lions around. But that part of my brain is still going, I'm here for something, I'm going to spot a threat, I'm going to spot a problem. And since there are no lions, they're gone.
So these parts of our brain that still fought that or look for problems and looked for threats are still active, but they're no longer looking for lions. Now they're looking for problems in each other. And that's what a big part of what builds negativity bias. And so, for those of you listening at home, I want you to know, you're perfectly normal, if you're the type of person that always sees the problem first. I also want you to know, it’s totally normal. It's that's nature. But here's the cool part, is it doesn't have to be that way. So there's a growing body of research that talks about the ability to change the plasticity of the brain that says that if you repeatedly do something, your brain can change. And so what that means is these parts of the brain can be taught, literally taught, to no longer focus on threats and instead to focus on the good things. You can teach the reticular activating system, this system pays attention. So let’s start looking for what's best in the people around you. “
Awareness is Crucial
“It’s default to look at the negative, but it can be taught to use these same attributes to spot the good things. Some of it could be nurtured. But we do know there's a significant nature component to that. Think about your young kids, when they were first born. What was the first emotion that they expressed? I gotta let the world know something's wrong. So their first emotional instinct is to go to the negative. I'm missing something. Something's not there. I don't have food. I'm not warm. I'm not cuddled, I'm tired. They're saying something's wrong. So their first instinct is to go to the negative, and then we compound that with our nurturing, which says, Yes, that's right. That's exactly how you should be acting.”
“We need to have a pattern interrupt. So something needs to stop. And so very, very crucial in here is awareness. So just the fact that you're listening to this today and becoming aware that you have this natural bias, this natural inclination to see the problems first is good. Because once you're aware of it, and you start noticing, then you can start doing something about it. There's a great weight loss intervention, the most easy weight loss intervention out there. And it's been clinically shown to lead to weight loss and consistent weight loss. You wonder what it is? What's that not dieting, it's not drinking more water. It's not doing high end, high intensity interval training, it's stepping on a scale every day. That’s right, they step on the scale every day, and it works. You step on a scale every day, you look at what you weigh. And that self-awareness makes people likely to change. And so the specialists that say, let's just start there, let's just weigh every day and look, lo and behold, you've lost 10 pounds in a month. I didn't have to tell you to do anything different. Just you became aware and you started to change. And so what I would say to listeners today is first for self-awareness is know that you have a negativity bias. It's one of the reasons why parents today rate hanging out with their children as less pleasurable than vacuuming a room.”
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