EQ in Space: Self Awareness
By Bailey Burns
Aerospace System Engineer at Blue Origin
Emotional Intelligence, often referred to as Emotional Quotient (or EQ) is all the things that make us as humans the squishy, emotional, loving, community-based species that we are. Now, why am I talking about this on a space blog? As we expand out into the universe and start considering long-duration missions to the Moon or Mars (or further) in a small tin can with limited resources and multiple crew members all with different backgrounds and cultures… Emotional Intelligence is the key to making sure we don’t kill each other in space. Space is hard, I think we all know that. We don’t need to make it harder by adding interpersonal conflict and emotional turmoil to that list of high risks.
The good news is we don’t have to wait to go to space to fix this. We can start working on developing EQ right here on Earth.
EQ is made up of four subsections: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The first place to start is with self-awareness. It is the strong base of the EQ pyramid and is really important to explore before you can even hope to manage yourself or be aware of others.
What is Self-Awareness?
Self-Awareness is recognizing and understanding your emotions and how they impact your life, your performance, your relationships, and others around you. Don’t skip understanding your relationship with yourself! Each human comes complete with their own set of glasses that they see the world through. These “rose-colored glasses” (or whatever color tint yours have) are based on our experiences, our emotions, and our perceptions. As we grow, these glasses can grow and change too, but they are always on our faces, changing the color of everything we see. No matter how enlightened, intelligent, or all-knowing you are, you will always have your glasses on. This is not a bad thing. I repeat. This is not a bad thing. The goal of growing your self-awareness is not to remove the glasses, but to be cognisant that they are there. After all, these glasses are part of what it means to be human! Take pride in them, just know you are wearing them and that they will distort your perspective on the world. This will keep you honest and curious about other types of perspectives and keep your views of yourself in check too.
How to Improve Your Self-Awareness
There are many different ways to improve your personal Self-Awareness. Good news for you… just by reading this, mulling it over in your brain, and considering it in your life, you arealready improving your Self-Awareness! The trick now is sticking with it and continuing to listen to your emotions, especially when things get tough - that is when you want to shut it all down the most. A lot of people dedicate their whole lives to being more aware of their emotions, and many religions or practices have Self-Awareness teachings laced in. There are many methods, including some I found on Very Well Mind. Here are a few things that I recommend.
- Emotion Logging — Just take a notebook, excel sheet, or a phone app and do a simple log of your emotions throughout the day. Just the time and the emotion you felt, no explanations. You don’t get to try to justify or explain the emotion. Only log the emotion itself, not the experience. This will get you used to noticing your emotions in the moment.
- Journaling — Now this one isn’t for everyone. Personally, I can’t keep a regular journal going more than a week and a half sometimes, but just having a place to express yourself or getting in the practice of writing your thoughts out once a day can be life-changing. Some people swear by it, so even if you don’t think it’s for you, why not just try it out? Note: some people like doing voice-recorded messages instead of journaling. That is a good hands-free option to get everything out.
- Talk to Others — Talk to people you trust to give feedback on you. Now make sure you are in a place where you can be super receptive and not defensive! Otherwise, it won’t do any good. These are just people who can help you see some blind spots you may have or reaffirm what you already know. You don’t have to take their opinions either, remember they have glasses on too.
- Practice Mindfulness — This is a whole new world that is trending right now. That means there is tons of literature, research articles, TikToks, whatever your medium of choice is. I first learned of it when I was much younger in martial arts. Mindfulness is about being present in the moment and is a powerful mindset shift that you can see almost immediate results in.
- Meditation — This is another growing trend that I learned through martial arts. This means I may have a more old-school view on these things, but there are many different ways to try it out and see if it helps you personally. If you are intimidated by it, try one of the free meditation apps or videos on YouTube as a guide. Loretta Whitesides has said she believes in the future people are going to meditate daily like how we brush our teeth now. They are going to be disgusted with the idea that people didn’t meditate to reset and ground themselves. I mean… how else are you going to get all that mental plaque off your brain!
This is where your Self-Awareness journey begins! I promise you… now that it is in your head, you are going to be thinking about your emotions more and more for the next few days. Go with it! See what you can discover about yourself!
Excerpts reposted from Emotional Intelligence in Space & EQ in Space: Self Awareness. Visit the original posts for additional detail, and more from Bailey.
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