Project: Workload Unloading

It could be a hostile work environment. Creative differences. Financial burdens. Promotions. Humiliating demotions. Onboarding. Firing. A once in a lifetime risk. The situations and predicaments we find ourselves in as employers, employees and colleagues occur to all of us in a variety of forms and throughout different seasons. As we punch in our virtual clocks, time begins to sucker punch our life with stress and anxiety. Knowing how to overcome these frustrations before they overcome us is essential to healing ourselves, interoffice relationships and even those beyond our cubicles.

Taking proactive steps or being conscious and aware when noticing you begin to feel your workload is preoccupying too much brain space is the first step to unloading.

Here are a few ways to relieve stress:

Chew gum: Researchers have conducted studies that indicate chewing gum for more than 10 minutes is highly effective in reducing stress. Note - excessive gum chewing can cause adverse side effects and to those listening may annoy their senses should you smack your lips or pop bubbles.

Step away from your screen: Not only should you ensure you feet, back, chair, keyboard and screen are always at optimal levels when sitting at your desk, but every hour working, try to prevent eyestrain by taking a five-minute break. Get a cup of coffee or take a restroom break. Whatever you do, don’t check your phone or trade one screen for another.

Listen to your favorite playlist: Research shows that listening to soothing music like nature sounds or melodic tunes can lower your heart rate and blood pressure. Not quite your genre? Statistics also prove up-beat, fast-paced music can help you blow off your steam. Time to plug in and meet some deadlines!

Eat up, keep up: In the long run, skipping food because you think you don’t have time decreases your ability to focus and ultimately slows down your productively. Whether it’s healthy snacks between meals or indulging in a large breakfast, lunch and dinner, ensure you stay hydrated as well.

Be grateful: You have a job. It may not be a career. It may not be where you want to be in five years. But you have what not everyone has. You have accomplished a lot to get where you are and you will continue to accomplish more if you keep overcoming stress before it overcomes you.

 -The Green Couch

Project: 6 Ways to Condition Your Clients

When you are in a creative field, you want to give your all to your clients. You want to say “Yes!” because you want to showcase your skills and market their services and products to the best of your ability. But there comes a time when they begin to bulldoze your kindness and take advantage of your willingness to serve.

It can be a risk to start saying “No.” To being upfront from the beginning to being transparent, to not negotiating. To not being a doormat when your clients walk into your studio even though they could be an ideal creative canvas.

There are more canvases out there and you have to protect both them and yourselves. Here’s a good guideline to abide by:

1.    If your hours are between 9 and 5, don’t answer before 9 or after 5.

2.    If you add surcharges, enforce those surcharges.

3.    If you say that is something your company does not offer, do not offer it.

4.    If you say it will be ready in two days, do not provide them with a rush service benefits.

5.    If they challenge your expertise, be assertive in your work integrity.

6.    If your client signed a contract, refer and uphold them to the contract.

-The Green Couch

Sneak Peek! 2015 Green Couch Session

What you see is what you get because of hard work and big hearts. While The Green Couch may be a young and small project with a large outreach, it still takes many hands to make these inspirational sessions happen.

Today we are so proud to give you a sneak peek into some of the people that sat with us and a new app we used to make The Green Couch reach more and do more good on September 15^th,,.

While two guys who represent Digital Bard - but we’ve adopted as part of our team - set up and shoot all the scenes you see, we decided to introduce the world to live footage. Whether it’s three minutes or fifteen minutes long, we gave you a glimpse of a risk-taker’s gutsy through Twitter’s Periscope. The app that lets you discover life through the eyes of someone else…all from a phone. And since the one filming was scoping a Green Couch session, we all were discovering life through the eyes of someone else…

The great thing about Periscope is that if you didn’t catch it live, you can catch it later on our YouTube account: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreenCouchProject

So we challenge you to not just be inspired but to really be part of the Project. And even though the videos may be not be part of the Periscope archive anymore, follow our periscope account because we will still be scoping live inspirational!

Project: Staking Your Domain

We all desire a sense of acceptance: A sense of home, a sense of inclusion and connection. And so we seek for places of like-mindedness, never realizing that we can be the ones who model these places of welcome.

We have the power to create a niche, to decide what it is that people need and how we can serve them, then offer it to them.

We have the power to facilitate them and lead them from one ladder ring to the next. We can give them the sense of acceptance and encourages them to build a stronger sense of home within themselves and create a stronger outreach.

We have the power to stake our own domain and invite others to be a part of it. And we don’t even have to take issue with zoning regulations.

Creating a safe online presence where people can land 24/7 is vital in a generation where the Internet is over saturated with misleading information.

The best and most important way to do this is staking your domain. Your domain name, that is. It’s your online address, so make it easy to memorize and worth memorizing.

You are competing with innumerable domain names and websites so it’s rare you have opportunity to imagine, pick and purchase the web address you desire, but that shouldn’t deter you from fulfilling your purpose:

• Don’t Be Too Clever

Now is not the time to be creative. Now is the time to be competitive and succinct. Try to stay as close to your company name as possible and keep it short. Make it memorable, remember!

• Consider Your Brand

As The Green Couch Project we were fortunate enough to secure the domain name thegreencouchproject.com. However, in the event it wasn’t, it would be a great disservice and disconnect for us to have used purplecouchpotatoes.com

• Consider SEO

The only way this is effective is if there is a direct association between the SEO keyword in your domain name and the chosen SEO keyword in your website text (which should be used repeatedly). 

• Avoid The Shift Key

If those searching for you are required to use the shift key, you can count on them forgetting it. In other words, if possible try not to use symbols; e.g., dashes, etc.

• Save Room For Misspellings

If your business name is something that is often is interpreted differently in spelling, considering purchasing all common misspelling for your domain. That way, no matter how people search your company, you will not lose traffic.

•  Build Upon It

Now that you have it [your domain], don’t let it lie dormant. Hire someone to build a website around your domain so that you can attract the right community. 

•  Flaunt It

Share the domain name. Invite people to interact. Upload pictures. Stay connected. You have online presence; you have power. What will you do with it? Let us know! We’re always eager to hear from our readers and fellow risk-takers. You’ve spilled your gutsy online and built a domain. It’s time to spill your gutsy with us!

-The Green Couch

Project: Unfabricated: The Live Event

One Couch. 16 stories. 19 people. Hundreds of followers, friends and lives touched.

However, it started with one story, one that two weeks from today will be told.

Dreamers, doers and thinkers – this is a heart-to-heart talk you do not want to miss. It is an exploratory look into the mindset of an entrepreneur’s process from failure to success.

• How do you take an idea and turn it into a business?

• How do you take a business and turn it into a brand?

• How do you take a brand and turn it into an inspiration?

• How do you inspire people when you feel uninspired? 

Laura Wallace would be the first to tell you that she is just like anyone else. That she has no special powers. That she has her ups and downs and downs and downs. That she catches colds and sometimes does not feel like getting out of bed. So that is why this is the heart-to-heart that matters most. Because it is real. Real people. Real conversation.

She cares about your life and your story and your passions and your purpose.

That even though she had no idea purchasing The Green Couch would play such a difference in her outlook in life, she cannot look at it any other way – she must help others speak, follow and fulfill their dreams. And this time she is doing it LIVE!

She is ready to spill her gutsy. Are your ears ready to catch it? Are you ready to accept the challenge to change the direction and go with your gutsy and follow your dreams? What is your couch telling you?

Come one, come all – January 27th is calling you!

-The Green Couch

Reserve Your Unfabricated Seat Here: Eventbrite

Project: The Pinky Promise

There is a time and place for stop signs, and that is when they prevent us from harm and protect our health.

However, when we have a purpose in life, there’s a time we have to overcome the personal stop sign that keeps hindering us from achieving the next step to success – however we may define it.

So we as The Green Couch Project created an initiative: Whether we are speaking to ourselves or proclaiming them to the world, allowing ourselves to become vulnerable publicly, it shows a certain strength. It proves that we all have our weaknesses, and we have something we are striving towards and refuse to back down from – we will not stop at the stop sign.

By sharing this, we are making a proclamation. We are letting others know what is going on in our lives, challenging others to see that nothing will stop us from our dreams. We are asking them to hold us accountable along that journey by joining their pinky in the pinky promise!

•    Download And Print It
•    Red Ink It, So It Can Be Read
•    Snapshop A Selfie
•    Upload It To Social Media
•    #SpillYourGutsy

-The Green Couch Project