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: How to Capture Your Ideas and Capitalize on Them

The brain is an organ with mysteries and untapped resources. But it’s also like a muscle. The more we use it, the more we exercise it, the stronger it becomes.

But no matter how much we expand the fortitude of our brain, if we exercise it, if we push it to its limits but never harvest from its bounty, why then put ourselves through the rigorous reps – whatever method we use to gain information – reading, traveling, seminars. We are absorbing; our brain is expanded but our mind is constricted with potential.

Your brain is big. Your ideas are too. The next time one pops in your mind let it pop on paper:

Write it down. Immediately. You always think you’ll remember it in an hour, in a day. You won’t. Even if you take notes on an app on your phone, don’t trust your battery. Try to carry around a pocket-sized notebook and keep one on your night stand, too. Not only is jotting down the idea cathartic, but equally so getting it down on a piece of tangible paper.

Give yourself a deadline. Once you express your big idea, break it down in bullet points or baby steps. Then give yourself a deadline to realistically accomplish the first task. The big idea is a beautiful picture but the more you face it the more you’ll be struck by analysis paralysis. Therefore, it’s vital you evaluate the project, your schedule and your capabilities. And then take in consideration this is a big idea – so you need to double dose your risk-taking factor.

Have an accountability partner. It’s okay if you don’t have a prototype, a slideshow presentation, a logo or a business plan put together. You can share as much or little as possible. Just have someone you trust to keep you on track.

Be open to detours. Whether you’re off schedule, flying off the handle because you can’t take one more failed attempt or people giving your idea the brush off, don’t give up on your idea. Just be open to taking your idea to another level. Reevaluate. Be open to suggestions while always being true to your idea.

Maybe reading this has given you an idea. Untapped what you thought others might not understand. And they won’t. Because it’s YOUR idea. So it’s your job to help them understand. To bring it to life. To give it a name, a personality.

-The Green Couch

Project: The Root Word

Few are the days we discard the alarm clock, trusting the international anticipation of tomorrow and euphoria of life to keep us awake.

But as December 31^st blends into January 1^st, as one day ends and another begins marking not just another month but a new year, we recognize a season of hope. Renewal. The season of resolutions.

We all have succumbed to thinking them. Since childhood we’ve been conditioned to bettering our lives and it all starts on the first day of each year. To break a bad habit. Start a good one. Lost five pounds. Try five new things. Floss every day. Quit smoking. End a relationship. We resolve to bridge the gap between where we are and where the happiness resides outside of our reach.

Personal or professional, resolutions don’t just have to take place in January. The most important factor is that they solve an issue.

If we slow down and enunciate the word that trips us up emotionally, we’d recognize that resolution sounds a lot like solution. That’s because the word is a derivative of solution.

Too often when we think of resolutions we set before us new hurdles, thus new problems to solve.

This year, we challenge you to follow this five step plan to fulfill your 2016 dream, to successfully SOLVING your resolutions:

1) Identify: Realize what the problem is – what it is you want to change.

2) Analyze: Create a custom, tangible plan with bite size manageable steps

3) Pace: Pace yourself. One of the reasons people often give up on their resolutions is because they forget it should be more than a marathon. It’s a lifestyle, it’s long-run. If your goal was to floss every day but you kicked off by flossing five times in one day – overkill will kill your momentum.

4) Forgive: If you skip a day, two or three, pick yourself back up and keep going. The worse thing you can do after inadvertently missing day five of mark, is purposely miss day six because you think you’ve lost too much momentum or failed the system.

5) Reward: Incentivize yourself. Don’t wait until the end of the year to determine if you achieved your maximum potential. Highlight your calendar with several future dated celebratory milestones to benchmark your success. Everyone needs a little sticks and carrots to keep them going. Figure out what your carrot is and keep it forefront wherever you are.

- The Green Couch