Here's how you can manage stress and pressure in your career using emotional intelligence.

- spend a few minutes each night processing the events of the day. Good, bad, and the ugly: review, evaluate, learn, and move on. This helps with future recognition of your personal emotions/situations and your reactions to them.

- Understand your emotions and triggers: Recognizing your emotions and what situations trigger stress is the first step in managing them effectively. - Develop self-awareness: Pay attention to how you react to different situations and learn to understand your own emotions better. - Practice self-regulation: Learn to control impulsive reactions and manage your emotions in stressful situations. - Improve empathy: Try to see things from others' perspectives and understand their emotions, which can help in dealing with conflicts and pressure. - Enhance social skills: Develop effective communication and relationship-building skills to navigate challenging situations with others in a constructive way.

Take accountability for habits rooted in self-preservation, and inversely, keep boundaries when you are on the receiving end. - When situations escalate, knowing what triggers conflicting responses can allow you to separate the situation at hand from the emotions experienced internally. Take accountability for when you are unable to separate unrelated emotions from another person or conversation to begin de-escalation and conflict resolution. - When you are on the receiving end, EQ helps you differentiate what is truly being directed at you and what is being lashed out at you. Knowing this, you can stand up for yourself in cases where you have not done anything wrong, and are rather a punching bag or subject of ill words. EQ protects us.

Empathy is something that you must exhibit not like a skill, but as a behavioral aspect of your personality. Empathy helps you to become a better person, not only professionally but also personally. When you put efforts in understanding other person's perspective, you appreciate the fact that everyone has their own struggles and problems- And you are not the only one who is feeling pressure. When this happens you try to solve problems as a team, and approach the situation WITH each other, and not against.

Maintaining an empathetic approach is often much easier said than done, especially in tense or stressful situations within the workplace. If you can sense tensions rising, stop for a moment to take a deep breath and consider why the other person may be feeling or reacting as they are. Step outside of your own perspective and try to have an open mind. Empathy is a skill, and like any other skill it takes patience and practice to refine; the more you practice, the easier it will be to approach any stressful situation with an understanding and empathetic mindset. This will not only strengthen your relationship with your coworkers, but it will also strengthen your interpersonal skills as well.

Effective communication is essential for managing stress and pressure, especially when enhanced by emotional intelligence. EI allows you to express your feelings constructively and listen actively, considering not just what you say but also how you say it—tone, body language, and timing. This approach helps resolve conflicts efficiently and fosters an atmosphere of trust and cooperation, significantly reducing workplace stress. In essence, communication with high EI leads to a more supportive and harmonious work environment.

Remain authentic at all times. Authentically communicate consistently to receive understanding, appropriate help, prevent misunderstandings, or find reasonable expectations to meet in the middle. Building trust through authenticity ensures that your communication reaches positive outcomes.

Ultimately, having good social awareness requires being observant and having a well-developed sense of empathy. Like empathy, social awareness is a skill that takes practice to refine - though it comes more naturally to some than to others. If social awareness is something you struggle with, there are ways to practice and refine this skill. Upon entering any environment in the workplace, take a moment to observe the dynamics around you. Take note of facial expressions and body language, any conversations that may be occurring, the general tone of the interaction, and anything else going on. These observations can help you to determine how to act in any given situation and how to adapt your communication approach appropriately.

Recognizing feelings of others can promote feelings of value and inclusion in a team, especially when making informed decisions towards individuals using those observations. This promotes a healthy workplace environment, vibrant with cooperation, understanding, and open communication.

Stress management is a crucial element of mental health, and it's essential to your well-being to know what strategies work best for you. If you're unsure of where to start in managing your stress, try talking with a trusted friend, loved one, or colleague. They may be able to recommend different strategies that work for them. If you aren't comfortable having such a conversation, try doing some research online. There are so many different methods for stress management: journaling, exercise, meditation, and crafting are a few common strategies. However, keep in mind that what works for others may not work for you, and that's okay! Finding the right method for you may require trial and error, but keep trying until you find what works for you.

Staying calm and empathetic in the face of adversity is an invaluable quality, and this virtue is hard earned. Seeking the "why" behind the way we react in difficult situations can help us locate the root cause of faulty behaviours (if any) and fix those. Analyze your failed interactions, try to ask why you/other party reacted that way, and make sure in future when a similar situation presents itself, you're ready to embrace it with logical reasoning and empathy.

While many aspects of emotional intelligence may seem obvious on paper, it is a skill that the majority of people must practice in order to master - and it's quite a worthy investment. While the aforementioned benefits of having a higher EQ are already enticing, there is another great advantage to refining these skills. Having high levels of emotional intelligence is very attractive to prospective employers. High EQ and other soft skills are highly sought after in the workforce currently, and if you can demonstrate a high proficiency in the skills listed in this article, you will always have a competitive edge when applying for jobs, being considered for promotions, and working towards any personal or professional goal.