The words “sympathy” and “empathy” are often used interchangeably, but while both refer to how one responds to another’s suffering, they do not mean the same thing or offer the same experience for either you or the person receiving them.

To start, here’s what Grammarly says about the history of empathy and sympathy, and how they are connected:

Of the two words, empathy is the more recent entry into the English language. Sympathy was in use for almost 300 years before empathy ’s first written record in the nineteenth century. You might notice that both words contain -pathy , and that’s what makes them sort of similar–they share the same Greek root word pathos , which means “feelings” or “emotion,” but also “suffering” or “calamity.” But while both words deal with emotions, they are still very far from being synonyms.

What is empathy?

Empathy is the capacity to be able to imagine oneself in someone else’s situation, either because you have experienced something similar or because you can understand their feelings to a depth with which it feels as though you’re having them yourself. To be empathetic is to create a shared experience with another person.

Empathy tends to look like someone who really listens, and it can sound like, “That must be so difficult,” and “How are you feeling?” A Kids Book About Empathy (by Daron K. Roberts) explains it in a way both adults and kids can understand:

It’s when you feel with someone who is experiencing something that’s hard, sad, or scary. Empathy means you listen, don’t judge, feel with, and ask questions.

In other words, to empathise is to experience another’s emotion . It is feeling with someone.

What is sympathy?

Sympathy is less about experiencing the emotions of another person and more about feeling and expressing your concern, pity, or sorrow over their pain or misfortune. “Sympathy cards,” therefore, are aptly named because they provide a way to you to voice the sadness you feel for their experience.

When someone sympathizes, they feel bad about what someone else is going through without fully walking the emotional journey with them. Sympathy sounds like, “I’m sorry,” or “That really sucks.”

In other words, to sympathise is to commiserate with the struggle another is experiencing . It is feeling for someone.

The post How to Spot the Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

If you’ve found yourself having an overblown reaction to something relatively small during the past year or so, you’re not alone. We’re all juggling so much — mentally and emotionally — that it can be difficult to continuously have to process everything that comes our way. These can be anything from major threats — like the global pandemic, racial injustice and violence, and economic/financial insecurity — to your average everyday annoyances.

When faced with so much at one time, it’s easy to have big, emotional reactions to everything, even the smaller stuff. One way to help deal with this is by strengthening your emotional agility. Here are three tips for doing that.

What is emotional agility?

If you haven’t heard of “emotional agility” before, that may be because it has only been around since 2013, when leadership coaches Dr. Susan David and Christina Congleton first coined the term in a Harvard Business Review article . Basically, emotional agility is exactly what it sounds like: having the ability and skills necessary to think problems and emotions that come up through during periods of complexity and change.

As David explained in a recent episode of the Armchair Expert podcast , there are three key skills you can practice to improve your emotional agility in uncertain times: acceptance, compassion and curiosity. Here are some ways to improve each of those crucial skills, according to Vanessa Loder, a former Wall Street and Silicon Valley executive, now working as a mindfulness consultant.

Acceptance

According to Loder in an article for MindBodyGreen , emotional agility begins with recognising that you are not your feelings. She writes :

Labelling your thoughts and feelings is a powerful way to begin accepting what you are feeling without being overtaken by it. When you say, “I am sad,” you become fused with sadness. It is now your identity. You are the grey cloud of sadness. When you say; “I notice that I’m feeling sadness,” now you are more the observer. You are the sky. The grey cloud of sadness is simply passing through.

Compassion

Now that you’ve identified how you’re feeling, approach the emotions with compassion. Per Loder :

When you label your emotions more accurately, you can better understand the cause of that emotion and what you can be doing in relation to that emotion. If underneath your stress is loneliness, perhaps you are craving more intimacy and connection so it’s important to reach out and call a friend. On the other hand, if behind your stress is disappointment, maybe it’s time to have a difficult conversation with your boss or express your disappointment to someone.

Curiosity

Get curious about why your emotions are causing a specific reaction. Loder says that the next time you are processing a difficult emotion, ask yourself “What is this emotion trying to tell me that is important to me right now?” She goes on to explain :

If your emotion is telling you that you’re upset with your boss or colleague, it doesn’t mean you need to tell off your boss or suppress your anger and put on a happy face. As David says, “Emotions are data, not directives.” Instead, ask what can bring you closer to creating the career and life you love? Get curious about what value that emotion is pointing you toward. That is the power of our emotions; they are guideposts to our deeper truth.

Yes, these strategies do take some time and practice, because let’s face it: it may seem much easier to have a generic Big Feelings reaction to everything and let it get us worked up, but really, we’re only adding additional stress to our plate when we do that.

The post Use These 3 Skills to Increase Your Emotional Agility appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

In the final instalment of the sleep tracking fitness challenge, I’m going to talk about my experience with the WHOOP strap. This and the Oura ring, which I covered last week , are the two big players in the recovery tracking space. Both keep tabs on your activity during the day and your heart rate at night, and aim to tell you whether you’re getting enough good quality sleep to support your athletic endeavours.

Both WHOOP and Oura more or less do what they promise. Neither is necessary to track your sleep ; low-tech solutions can do the job well enough. But if you’d like more data, either is a good device for the purpose. Both will monitor your sleep and give you a score; both will relate that score to how much exercise you’ve been getting. WHOOP may work better for you if you’re an endurance athlete or do a lot of cardio, while Oura is probably the better pick if you mainly do other types of exercise or are interested in sleep more generally. I preferred Oura’s day-to-day experience, but WHOOP’s monthly analyses are a data nerd’s delight.

Those thoughts amount to my best guide to choosing between the apps, but there are also two important questions you need to ask yourself before buying one or the other:

• Would you be more annoyed by wearing a ring all the time, or a wristband? If you have a strong preference, this is honestly the biggest factor.
• Would you rather pay up front, or monthly? Oura is $US300 ($392) (or more) for the device, but after that, it’s free to use the app. The WHOOP strap is free, but a membership runs $US30 ($39)/month for a six months — though it’s a bit less if you sign up for a longer membership.

The WHOOP’s pricing model makes me wonder: How long do you need to track your recovery? I came across several discussions on the r/whoop subreddit in which people said they only used the device for six months or a year. By the end of that time it had effectively taught them how to prioritise their sleep and balance their activity and recovery.

I didn’t have to ask myself this question, because the WHOOP folks gave me access to the app to test it out, but I find it somewhat disconcerting to ponder the existential question: H ow long I will care?

Anyway, WHOOP has some cool features.

What it’s like to wear the WHOOP strap

The WHOOP strap is a gadget that looks like a watch, except it has no screen. It’s a lightweight rectangle with an elastic strap. There are green LEDs on the skin side of the rectangle that pick up your pulse, and an accelerometer to detect motion.

The strap is meant to be worn 24/7, and it has a clever way to charge. There’s a little plastic brick that you charge separately, and then when the strap’s battery runs low, you unplug the brick from its cord and slip it onto your wristband. This way, you never have to take off the strap itself.

That said, if you get the band wet — say, if you wear it in the shower — you’re then stuck wearing a wet band. WHOOP sent me a spare one, which was handy to change into on those occasions. (Spare bands, and spare charging batteries, both cost extra.)

Using the app

WHOOP’s app is straightforward in some places and arcane in others. At first, I was always forgetting where I saw a certain number or feature. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll find that the app is full minutely detailed views and extra information.

Right up front, where you can’t miss it, are two numbers: your strain score for the day, and a recovery score based on how you slept.

The strain score is based on your heart rate throughout the day. This makes the most sense for people who do a lot of cardio, which made the app slightly awkward to use as a person who only really walks and lifts weights. If I were a runner or if I played team sports or did a lot of aerobics videos, I’d love this.

Your strain gets higher as you do more exercise, and the number is calculated in a way that isn’t particularly easy to wrap your head around. Still, bigger numbers mean you’ve spent more time with your heart rate elevated. That means that if you spent a lot of time with a high heart rate because you were nervous, rather than exercising, your strain will be high — which makes sense, honestly, because it still represents stress on your body.

Recovery is another single number, this time given as a percentage. If you are less than 33% recovered, you’re in the red; if you’re over 66%, you get green. If you’re working hard but also sleeping well, you’ll see a lot of yellows and greens, maybe the occasional red. A string of reds, on the other hand, probably means something is wrong.

As you’re looking through the app, my best advice is to mess with everything you see. If there’s a little card giving you some information, tap it; it might flip over and give you more details. When you’re looking at your recovery score, swipe up and a chart of your past week’s scores will suddenly slide into view.

The coolest surprise feature, which I didn’t notice until someone from the company pointed it out to me, is that if you turn your phone sideways you can see a screen showing your heart rate throughout the day, with sleep and exercise highlighted.

One of the most fascinating features WHOOP offers is the sleep coach. You tell it what time you’d like to wake up tomorrow, and it tells you when you should get to bed tonight. That’s not so special in itself; many apps do the same. What’s different here is that you can choose whether you want to “peak” versus “perform” versus “get by.” I don’t know how accurate the three estimates truly are, but on a gut level they felt about right. For example, on a day that my sleep need was calculated at 7:48, the recommended sleep time for peak performance was 8:33; to simply get by, it was 5:59.

You can learn a lot from the weekly and monthly reports

I found the daily screens a little confusing to navigate, but I loved the weekly and monthly reports. You don’t get the monthlies until you’ve been wearing the strap for a full calendar month, but they’re worth the wait.

These reports tell you about your trends. Since the whole point of comparing recovery to strain is to figure out whether they balance out, there are charts to show how well you aligned the two.

I mean, just look at these:

By far the coolest graph in the set, and probably the coolest feature, is the correlation matrix you get from the daily journal feature.

To use the journal, you need to open the app each day (or find the clipboard icon on a past day’s screen) and answer a little survey that you’ve set up for yourself. Basically, you’re choosing variables to look at, and the monthly report will tell you whether those variables correlate with good sleep or poor sleep. I chose several, including whether I had had alcohol and whether my stress was particularly high. You can use the journal to evaluate supplements you’re taking, to see if your hydration levels affect your sleep, or to see if your recovery score changes when you’re on your period. The only catch is that the app needs a mix of yeses and nos (five of each, minimum) to be able to calculate correlations. Anyhow, here’s one of mine, for alcohol:

I think every sleep expert I’ve ever interviewed has mentioned that people rarely believe alcohol affects their sleep , and are astounded when they start paying attention and find out that it does. It’s interesting to see the data right in front of me.

Now, these are correlations , distinct from causation. I know that I tend to stay up late on nights I have alcohol, and that these nights tend to be at the end of a training week, when I’m already more likely to be under-recovered. If you meditate or take a supplement on nights you expect to have difficulty sleeping, that thing could show up with a negative correlation even if it really does help you sleep. So it’s important to be thoughtful about how you interpret your data.

All that said, the standard caveats apply: I wouldn’t rely on any consumer sleep tracking device to tell me for sure whether I’m getting enough of a given sleep stage (remember, Oura tells me I always get too little REM sleep , and WHOOP routinely tells me my REM is on the high side). I use the data from sleep trackers to help guide my medium and long term planning, rather than as a prompt to skip workouts. Still, I think both devices work well to help you see those patterns, each in its own way.

The post What It’s Like to Track Your Recovery With the WHOOP Strap appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

Most of the time, talking on the phone is an inconvenience. There are less intrusive ways to communicate if something isn’t urgent, and picking up the phone can feel like an obligation, dedicating time to a conversation that didn’t need your attention right away.

That’s why — barring some exceptions — you should try sending a text prior to calling someone on the phone. Even if it seems like an indirect route for getting someone to pay attention, it’ll likely help your relationship with them over the long run.

Calling out of the blue can feel pushy

Nothing screams “I demand you dedicate time to me” like an impromptu phone call. Even in this time of isolation, people are still busy, with a constant stream of digital notifications and Zoom meeting reminders vying for their attention. A phone call insinuates an immediate demand for another person’s time; a text message nudges the ball along just a little bit, using a polite suggestion to talk more when you get the chance.

True, people are tethered to their mobile devices, but that doesn’t mean they’re primarily used for actual phone calls. An unexpected buzz in your pocket when you’re changing your baby’s diapers or trying to corral your dog for a walk just adds to the stress of everyday life. The busy person you’re trying to reach will likely want to send your call straight to voicemail.

People forget to return calls

This is also true of text messages, but a phone call feels far more temporary and thus likely to escape someone’s memory. A text or email, at the very least, has a longer lifespan. If it’s initially ignored, it lingers in your inbox like an easygoing reminder of what’s on your to-do list. Plus, a text is implicitly less important than a phone call — it requires the recipient’s attention, albeit not at a moment’s notice.

It might not be a good thing, but the convenience of personal technology has made everyone decidedly lazier. Time is of the essence in basically every aspect of life, so reading a text and typing a response — even if it’s somewhat belated — sounds like a much simpler proposition compared to a call.

You want someone to actually have the time

Even though your voice is filtered through a speaker, a phone call can facilitate some deeper interactions that need more thoughtfulness from the person you’re calling. Having a phone call probably requires even more attention than talking to someone in person — there are no facial cues, or shared visual experience to rally around. From the caller’s perspective, you’re doing yourself a disservice by buzzing someone without due notice.

If you need someone’s full attention, sending them a text is a less intrusive way of letting them know. Especially if you need to discuss something personal or important, you can’t expect someone to have the time to drop everything and focus on your needs. While that’d be nice, we can’t all be so lucky.

There are exceptions

Obviously, there are times when a phone call is warranted due to unforeseen and extreme circumstances. If you have to deliver some tragic news, for example, it might merit a call, given that you’d like to add a human touch to the conversation. (Emergencies that require an immediate response also fall into this category, obviously).

For some people, there’s an understanding of who falls into a small list of people who are allowed to call at any time. These are the people closest to you, whom you find it extremely hard to be bothered by. What’s more, you understand that these people will understand if you aren’t immediately available to talk, since you ostensibly have such a strong bond already.

But these folks are few and far between, and in any case, they might just text you to schedule a conversation for later.

The post You Should Text Before Calling appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .