Choosing to have a child is one of the biggest life decisions a person can make and a highly individual choice. Some people know they want to be parents from a young age, some people decide to never have kids, and a whole lot of people fall somewhere in between. Some plan to have kids and it doesn’t work out. Others have no desire to have kids until something happens and suddenly they do. A perfect example of such a change of heart can be seen in a video from Daniela Brkic, who captured the moment her friend, who didn’t want kids, held a baby for the first time. She clearly wasn’t prepared for how she would feel, as we see the young woman holding the baby with tears streaming down her cheeks and a look of utter joy and bewilderment on her face. @daniela.brkic First time holding a baby and now she wants 8, probably my favourite video ever #fyp @brkicbaby ♬ Chopin Nocturne No. 2 Piano Mono – moshimo sound design She’s so taken with the wee one that she can barely look at her. As her friends wipe her tears (at her request, so she doesn’t get them on the baby), she says, “I need to have a kid,” and “I want to take my top off and have skin-to-skin contact.” Brkic wrote that it was the friend’s “first time holding a baby,” adding, “and now she wants 8.” So many people recognized the overwhelming urge to have a baby coming out of nowhere and commiserated in the comments. “If that’s not baby FEVER then idk what is.” “Omg don’t let her smell the baby’s head.” “Just another example of our bodies betraying our good common sense.” “Her-i dont want kids. her uterus-WE ARE SOOOOO GETTING ONE OF THESE!!!!” “Her ovaries activated ” “Those maternal instincts booted down the door and arrived with a BANG with the skin to skin comment “ “She’s not ready for skin to skin, her heart will literally explode.” “What a wholesome crash out ” “She’s going to be the greatest mom!” “THIS HAPPENED TO ME. I NEVER WANTED KIDS. Then I held a baby and it drooled on me and laughed. We now have 2 and they’re my favorite people in THE WHOLE WORLD AND THEY’RE SO FUN.” “I NEVER wanted kids!!! I held my cousin’s baby and fell in love. That was July of 2014. My son was born July of 2015!!!!” Is “baby fever” a natural phenomenon? Photo credit: Canva Not everyone was convinced it’ll last Other commenters warned her that the baby fever is a temporary feeling, with some going so far as to call it a “trick” or a “trap.” After all, they don’t stay sweet, adorable babies forever. “They DONT ALWAYS SLEEP. They’re much harder awake. Do not fall for sleeping babies.” “Give her a toddler, she will get over it really quick “ “now give her a 3 year old that has missed their nap, got the blue cup instead of the green and their biscuits broke “ “Girl it’s a trick they start that cute for a reason.” “It’s a trap. They need cars and insurance “ Is ‘baby fever’ a real phenomenon? Yep. It is. That doesn’t mean everyone experiences it, of course. But according to Gary Brase, an associate professor of psychology at Kansas State University who spent nearly 10 years studying the “baby fever” phenomenon, not only is it real, but it’s not limited to women. Though it shows up more frequently and to a stronger degree in females, it happens across the gender spectrum. Brase and his wife Sandra went into their research looking at three theories about what contributes to a sudden, strong urge to have a baby: 1. The sociocultural view: “People want to have a baby because they are taught gender roles. Women think they should have children because society says that is what they are supposed to do.” 2. The byproduct view: “Humans experience nurturance. When they see a cute baby they want to take care of it, and that makes them want to have a baby of their own. Baby fever is a by-product — it is nurturance misplaced.” 3. The adaptationist view: “Baby fever is an emotional signal — like a suggestion sent from one part of the mind to the other parts — that this could be a good time to have a child.” What the research actually found But the results of their research found three different factors that contribute to wanting to have a child. “The first two had to do with the visual sensory things,” Brase told NBC News. “Seeing a baby, hearing a baby, smelling a baby led some people to want to have a baby.” Conversely, seeing the more “disgusting” parts of having a baby, such as dirty diapers and spit-up, had an anti-baby-fever effect. The third factor was about life circumstances and trade-offs that made it seem feasible or not feasible to have a baby. “People would say, ‘I don’t want to have a baby because I don’t have money or I don’t have time or I don’t have a partner,” Brase said. “All of the rational thoughts. That showed up as a third factor.” Only time will tell for her The mix of biological urge and societal conditioning can be a potent combo, which is why older adults will often tell young people that they might change their mind. Then again, they might not. Plenty of people live happy, fulfilling lives without having children, and plenty of people who never saw themselves becoming a parent find it to be the highlight of their life. Time will tell whether this woman’s baby fever is temporary or permanent, but how lucky is that baby to be surrounded by so much love? This article originally appeared in February. It has been updated. The post Young woman who ‘doesn’t want kids’ holds a baby for the first time and was so not prepared appeared first on Upworthy.

Learning a new skill means studying and then practice, practice, practice. That might mean learning how to read music and then playing “Für Elise” by Beethoven over and over again. Or, if you’re learning to speak French, you have to memorize the words and then hone your pronunciation through repetition. But what would happen if you gave your brain a moment during practice to really soak in what it was doing instead of a nonstop information dump? How to learn things faster A 2021 study from the National Institutes of Health found that when you’re studying a new skill and practicing, you can speed up your progress by taking short breaks. Instead of keeping your head in the piano and playing for 45 minutes straight, your brain does a better job at encoding new information if you drop in a series of 10-second breaks. The strategy makes a lot of sense for this simple reason: your brain has difficulty encoding and learning new information simultaneously. So why not give it a second to catch up? “Our results support the idea that wakeful rest plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced,” the senior author of the study said, according to Fox 13 Seattle. “Understanding this role of neural replay may not only help shape how we learn new skills but also how we help patients recover skills lost after neurological injury like stroke.” How to use the 10-second memory technique There isn’t any official time limit between when you should take a break and let your mind encode the new information. Still, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman suggests that “every few minutes” you stop what you’re doing, clear your mind, and let your brain encode the information for 10 seconds. “Now, you actually have to do the work, and how many of these to insert? It should be random,” Huberman said. So, if you were playing “Für Elise” on the piano, set a time for five minutes of intense playing, then when the alarm goes off, sit still for ten seconds and clear your mind of everything, almost like a meditation. Then your brain will kick into action, like a computer booting up, and encode what you just learned. Next, set a timer for three minutes; after the next encode break, set a timer for seven minutes, and so on. How the study actually worked The researchers tested their hypothesis by placing a brain-scanning cap on right-handed participants who were shown a series of numbers on a computer screen and asked to type them as many times as possible with their left hand. The gains were even greater for those who did the 10-second breaks than for those who had just had a great night’s rest. Ultimately, the 10-second technique makes a lot of sense because it’s a lot harder to concentrate on something when doing two things at the same time. You’ve got to give your brain a moment to jot down notes instead of learning and writing at the same time. At the end of the day, what’s not to like about the 10-second technique? You get to take a break and improve your skills at the same time. This article originally appeared in February. It has been updated. The post Neuroscientists say a simple, 10-second trick will help you learn things much faster appeared first on Upworthy.

The benefits of getting a good night’s sleep are too vast to name. Sleep is as essential for our brains as food and water are for our bodies. If you’re not getting enough, sleeping better has been shown to elevate your mood, improve your memory, and even boost your physical health. And then there’s the obvious: when you don’t sleep well, you’ll have less energy and generally perform worse on tasks that require any kind of effort or thought. However, we’re all human, and, sometimes, humans sleep terribly. Your infant might wake you up, or a car alarm might go off outside, interrupting your regularly-scheduled REM. It’s not always our fault when we don’t sleep well, but there might be an interesting way to fix it. A woman in a deep sleep. Photo credit: Canva The science behind placebo sleep A study from 2014 may have demonstrated the existence of something called “placebo sleep,” or tricking your brain into believing you slept better than you did. The placebo effect, of course, has been studied relentlessly over the years and has shown that the human body can do amazing, almost impossible things, when the brain gets on board. The classic example is when symptoms of disease get measurably better after a patient takes a “fake” pill. Another study out of Harvard showed that people who were told their jobs qualified as exercise showed improved health and fitness markers compared to people who did the same job. Placebos even work when the person knows they’re taking a placebo. It’s called an “honest placebo” and is considered a legitimate, ethical treatment method for many ailments. The researchers in 2014 wanted to find out if the placebo effect could also apply to sleep. So, they lectured a group of participants about the importance of REM sleep and how it can effect cognitive functioning. The participants were then split into two groups and monitored overnight while they slept. The next morning, one group was told they achieved 28.7% REM sleep, which is terrific, and the other group was told they only spent 16.2% of their sleep time in REM, which is below average. The numbers, however, were complete fiction. Stunningly, the participants who believed they achieved top quality sleep performed better the next day on a series of arithmetic and word association tests compared to the other groups. In their conclusion, the authors wrote, “These findings supported the hypothesis that mindset can influence cognitive states in both positive and negative directions, suggesting a means of controlling one’s health and cognition.” According to Smithsonian Magazine, follow up experiments confirmed the findings. The key to feeling great and performing as if you had a great night’s sleep may lie in simply believing that you did. How to trick your brain into resting better There are a lot of ways to “placebo your sleep” in order to generate that belief. For starters, you can adopt a new routine or technique or even supplement in order to prime your brain. John Cline Ph.D. asserts for Psychology Today that the popularity of sleeping aids like melatonin may be tied less to the fact that they work, and more to the fact that people believe they work. But you don’t need to take any supplements or medications. Having a slow evening wind down with a book and an herbal tea, trying a new sleeping position, or practicing some measured breathing might work just as well. Or, rather, they might work precisely because you believe they will. You could take the concept a step further and alter your morning routine on nights you know for a fact you didn’t sleep well. Perhaps it’s by using a new coffee brand, doing some stretches before getting out of bed, or meditating before starting your day. Anything that you truly believe might help make you more alert and focused may just work. The TikTok trend putting this to the test One viral social media sleep trend capitalizes on this research perfectly. Researchers have shown that forcing your mouth into a smile has been shown to improve your mood. Turns out, similarly, you may be able to get sleepy by pretending to be super tired. Psychologist Erica Terblanche calls it the “alpha bridge,” and it involves gently closing your eyes, fluttering them open just a tad, and then closing them again as you relax and breath. It simulates the feeling of “nodding off” and is said to create the alpha brainwaves that transition your brain from wakefulness to sleep. It’s another clever way of tricking your own brain. @erica.terblanche Here’s a skill to help you fall asleep on an airplane or anywhere else for that matter. . Its called going over the Alpha Bridge. #EricaTerblanche #ThriveGuru #motivation #sleeping ♬ Solas x Interstellar – Gabriel Albuquerqüe It sounds cheesy, but the power of mindset and positive thinking is truly tremendous. Our beliefs and thought patterns can greatly influence our body, our behavior, and our mood. Sometimes, our mindset can even be stronger than actual reality. Now we have the data to prove that it applies to our precious sleep, too. This article originally appeared in February. It has been updated. The post Scientists discovered a fascinating trick to feeling like you slept great even if you didn’t appeared first on Upworthy.

Have you ever created something, or been asked to give a presentation, or gotten an opportunity at work and felt like you weren’t good enough for it? Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m not as capable as they think I am,” and had a deep fear that you were going to be outed as a fraud (despite the fact that you do actually have at least some level of skill and competence)? Chances are, you have. This wave of self-doubt and fear is called “imposter syndrome,” and it’s quite common. Not only that, but as much as the feeling sucks, it’s actually not a bad thing, according to Harvard behavioral social scientist Arthur C. Brooks.   Why having imposter syndrome is a good sign As a specialist in happiness and author of The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life, Brooks says he works a lot with “strivers” in his research, people who are ambitious and want to do great things with their lives. “What all strivers I’ve ever met have in common is that the higher they climb, and the more success that they have, the more insecure they feel in their own success because they’re not quite sure that they’ve earned it or deserve it,” Brooks shares. “That’s called impostor syndrome. It’s completely natural.” In fact, Brooks says, there’s only one group of people that imposter syndrome doesn’t really affect, and that’s the people who actually are imposters. “It’s one of the great ironies I’ve found is that people who deserve success through hard work and merit and personal responsibility are not quite sure they deserve it. And the people who don’t deserve it are often the people who actually are most sure that they do.” The one group that doesn’t feel it People who don’t experience imposter syndrome trigger Brooks’ “spider sense,” putting him on alert, because it is often a sign of what’s known as the “dark triad.” “Dark triads, in business or in personal life, are people who are above average in three characteristics: Narcissism (It’s all about me). Machiavellianism (I’m willing to do what it takes, including hurting you to get my way.) And psychopathy (to be psychopathic, which is to say, I’m going to hurt you and feel no remorse.) You might think that that’s super rare. It’s not. One in 14 people in the population is above average on those three characteristics. Dark triads are 7% of the population. You know them. They’ve broken your heart. They’ve been disloyal to you. They’ve taken credit for your work. They’ve made life miserable, and you try to avoid them.” Why healthy people doubt themselves Brooks says that “good, normal, healthy” people will almost assuredly experience imposter syndrome from time to time, wondering if they have really earned and deserve their success and if they’re really up to the task. “What you’re doing here, as a healthy person, is that you know what you’re good at, and you know what you’re not good at,” he says. But other people only see what you’re good at. You see your full internal landscape, and you can see what you’re still trying to get better at. But that’s not what the world sees. “They’re looking at the ways that you’re creating value,” Brooks says. “You’re looking at the ways that you can’t create value yet. And you tend to focus, because of what psychologists call negativity bias, on what you don’t have as opposed to what you have. When you focus as a striving, hard-working, ambitious, and upwardly mobile person on what you don’t have, you’re going to feel like an imposter. That’s just the way it is, unless you’re a dark triad.” No one wants to be a dark triad, so having imposter syndrome is actually a positive sign. But that doesn’t make it easier to deal with. How to make imposter syndrome work in your favor Brooks says understanding your imposter syndrome and trying to get better at the things you see you’re not good at yet is the key to using it as an opportunity for growth. “If you feel imposter syndrome, that’s great,” he says. “That means all kinds of good things about you. But don’t miss the opportunity. Don’t miss the opportunity to focus on the ways that you actually can get better and keep striving more for it. Lean into the imposter syndrome without giving in to it. Lean in without giving in. When you’re an accomplished professional, and you’re upwardly mobile, and you’re being successful, what that means is that people are focusing more on your strengths than your weaknesses. And it also says you have more manifest strengths than you do weaknesses.” That’s a helpful reminder. If things are going in the opposite direction, your weaknesses may be taking center stage, but Brooks also reminds us that we’re not all weaknesses and not all strengths. Use imposter syndrome to assess your strengths and weaknesses. Photo credit: Canva “Here’s the problem: If you’re a well-adjusted person with a modicum of humility, you’re going to feel like a loser when everybody else sees you as a winner,” he says. “But rest assured that when things are going well for you, that means that people are more focused on your strengths than they are on your weaknesses. Don’t focus more on your weaknesses than your strengths, but recognize them, because that’s your opportunity for growth and change and improvement.” Why self-doubt might be a good thing Self-doubt is evidence of a healthy sense of humility, which is good. If we can reframe imposter syndrome, seeing it as a positive sign and an opportunity to determine which areas we can focus on to improve, perhaps it will feel less scary and more like a catalyst for growth. You can see more from Dr. Brooks at https://arthurbrooks.com/. This article originally appeared in February. It has been updated. The post Happiness expert explains why ‘imposter syndrome’ is a good thing and how to lean into it appeared first on Upworthy.

from CultivateElevate: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

TIM DILLON on the Charlie Kirk assassination and trial—and Butler and the WH correspondents' dinner—as all being "fishy"