(upbeat music)
- Good morning, good life.
Welcome back to AmyTV where we come together
to help you go after the life you want.
Is it just me or has 2020 felt like its own decade so far?
Today, I thought it might be useful for you
'cause I'm hoping it's useful for me,
for me to reassess with you my list of 20 for 2020.
I shared this in a video with you earlier in January,
and we're gonna have to make a few changes here (laughs).
Hit the like button if you're like me
and you either did a 20 for 20 list
or a goals list for this year
that you're kind of afraid to look at.
Hopefully, you will feel empowered with me
through this video to take a chance
on reassessing a few things.
Here was my list of 20 for 2020 and how we're doing so far,
and then what we're gonna have to do to adjust.
Stay tuned until the very end of my list
because there might be something new on my 20 for 2020
that is coming for you and you're gonna love it.
Number one, a 30-minute workout every day.
We started off so strong on this, we really did.
February and March kind of fell apart.
I get this thing called a microblade done, and they're like,
"Oh, sorry, you can't work out for two weeks
"after you get a microblade."
And I'm like, Ooh, twist my arm.
But when March came around,
and I still wasn't doing as much as I wanted to,
I decided to take the Matt D'Avella approach to this,
and try the Two Day Rule,
which is where you don't go more than two days
without hitting the gym or doing your workout of choice.
I definitely got my groove back on this in April
when I got really hip to the Peloton in quarantine,
and I ended up doing their April challenge
of working out every day for 30 days,
so I could get that badge.
You know, I needed a little gold star, I needed the reward,
so that helped a ton.
And I'm still going strong with the Two Day Rule.
I've actually worked out four days in a row.
Today will be five, so I'm excited.
Number two, get custom seasonal wreaths made.
I did this, kinda.
My first full season in the house was spring,
and I got this beautiful wreath made from a lovely woman
on Etsy and I love it too much to replace it,
so I haven't even bothered to shop for one for summer.
So, I actually think that that's okay.
I don't need to have unnecessary expenses for the house,
especially since we just moved in in the last year.
And it's very much susceptible to many expenses
otherwise throughout the house.
So, I think it's okay that
I'll probably get a new one for the holidays.
That's when I think I'll get re-energized around it again,
maybe the fall.
But I think it's something that we can accumulate
over a number of years,
and ultimately over two or three years,
I'll end up having those four seasonal wreaths
that fill my cup.
I'll also link to the one that I got,
just in case you wanna get one too.
Number three, I said I would stop eating meat.
I don't know why (laughs).
Here's what I've decided.
I'm a girl from the Midwest, I like meat and potatoes.
The thing that bothers me is making meat.
And since I have assigned my husband to be in charge
of making meat on the grill from now on,
I'm only in charge of carbs and veggies.
So, dinner comes together pretty well.
This is just not gonna be, unfortunately.
We're just not at that phase in my life
where I'm cutting out meat.
Not sure what I was thinking on that.
Number four, read 50 books.
I'm still doing pretty good on this, I'm a bit behind.
Goodreads says that based on my goal of 50 books in a year,
I am eight books behind but I've read 16.
I feel pretty good about that.
And I'm in the middle of two right now.
And "The Daily Stoic" is a book I read all year long,
so that one won't get a box-checked
until the very last day of the year.
I feel good about where I'm at with this progress.
I'll also be catching up quite a bit in the summer.
Number five, regular coffee dates with Vin.
This one was kind of fun because behind the scenes,
it involved a little bit more
than I could talk to you about.
Get your head out of the gutter.
At the time of filming, we had bought a house,
but we hadn't moved into it yet.
So, the coffee dates were also ulterior motive
to go to the place that's down the street from our new home,
so that we could go have coffee on Sunday mornings,
and then pop into our house to see how the painting
and a couple of renovation things were going.
And then we moved in and we kept going
to that same coffee place for lovely Sunday dates.
And then COVID happened and those Sunday dates
came to a screeching halt.
However, we have renewed our love for them on our deck,
where we have this fabulous deck furniture
that I found just in time for summer.
And so, we've been enjoying quarantine coffee dates.
It's been nice.
Number six, start donating on behalf
of GATLUW House to nonprofit organizations.
This went pretty well.
We launched the The GATLUW Society,
and all of the people that joined helped contribute
to the campaign that we were doing for Pencils of Promise.
So excited, we started raising and we've already reached
more than a thousand dollars for that.
That was also supposed to be my birthday campaign.
We were gonna continue to kind of like rah-rah
around PoP for my birthday but then a lot of other things
were happening in the world and it just felt like maybe
we could share the love in other ways.
So, that is when we pivoted and I did a video here
called I Stand With You in which I started the effort
of fundraising for the NAACP.
We are still fundraising for them,
so definitely check the link for that out
if you would like to contribute.
Or if you would like to contribute to Pencils of Promise,
that's linked as well.
But the most important thing is that we all come together,
both from our profit sharing here at the media company,
so that our work continues to go bigger and greater
than just sharing these videos with you,
but also to encourage you to use your voice
and your dollar whenever possible by sharing.
We did that, I'm very pleased.
We had another thousand dollars for the NAACP so far.
And I think that this is just the beginning
of what we can do as a community
to contribute to the greater causes of the world.
Number seven, more Instagram chats is what I said.
I'm getting better at this.
I don't know why it's so natural for me
to sit down in front of this situation and just yammer on.
I mean, it gets excessive.
Instagram, I just feel like I wanna post pretty things
all the time and I don't always talk,
but I've gotten a lot better about this.
I try to communicate and just speak directly to the camera
as much as I can.
It helps when I have an active community
over there and I do, everyone that follows on Instagram.
If you don't, make sure you check it out.
There's so much love there.
People constantly providing feedback on things I post,
or videos that I've shared,
or potential videos for the future.
And so I just love it and I'm just continuing
to flex my talking muscle over there, I guess, I don't know.
Number eight, host quarterly dinner parties ha-ha.
So, that's not socially acceptable anymore (laughs).
I had a bunch of people over right before quarantine.
It was for Lucy's birthday,
and then everybody got locked down.
And so, this concept of actually inviting
a small intimate group over to our big dining room table
didn't really work out but that's okay.
I've kind of chalked 2020 up to a loss on that.
But I will say we had Vin's family visit.
My family visited also while they were visiting,
and we were socially distancing and all that fun stuff.
But sitting at my big dining room table,
and actually having people
for the first time this month was so nice.
And I do look forward to the developments on this front
where we feel like we can do that more comfortably
in each other's homes.
So, looking forward to dinner parties again at another time.
Number nine, go back to Vegas
for my anniversary with Vincenzo.
I am 99.99999% sure this is not going to happen.
We have not really wrapped our mind
around getting back on a plane for so long.
And it's really amazing.
We typically fly twice a month, both of us,
sometimes to different places, sometimes together.
So, the fact that we're like,
"Eh, you know, we're not really in the mood to fly
"even if things are kind of looking on the up and up."
That's one thing but the other thing is that we've actually
kind of thought about taking a different trip in August,
and so we'll be probably doing that instead.
Something drivable, not flying,
and just kinda keep it short and safe instead.
So that one's gotta go.
Number 10, host a family holiday.
Again, a little bit of trouble here.
I'm gonna play it by ear.
I'm hoping to at least do something
sort of around the actual holiday season later in the year.
That was my original motive anyway,
but we're just gonna have to see
how health and wellness goes at that point.
Number 11, learn some Italian.
Learn level one Italian was what I wrote down
in my bullet journal.
Mm, nope, haven't done that,
but I have been using the Babbel app a lot.
I just ended up in this situation
where I argue with myself like,
"Do you wanna practice Italian or do you wanna read
"'cause you're behind on reading,
"but also you could practice some Italian?"
So, I have to kinda balance the two.
I need to get better about just making time for both.
Clearly, I'm not prioritizing the Italian.
That is the bottom line here.
But with all these other things
that I have to change off the list,
there should be a little bit more time, shouldn't there?
Number 12, sell more clothes on Poshmark.
I wanted to do this on a monthly basis.
I'm not doing it monthly,
but I will say I've had great success with this.
I typically do big batches at one time.
And I think that's actually been helping a little bit
to get more attention on my Poshmark store.
So, pro tip, I'm not sure.
I definitely have been selling some things
in my Poshmark store.
I have even more things.
I've created an entire area of my closet
that when I know I'm totally done with something,
I take it out of the place where I pick out clothes to wear
and I put it in the place to sell,
so that I can immediately take it out of the equation.
It makes it easier to pick out what to wear,
but then also put it in the space
where I know if I have time
to start listing things on Poshmark, it's ready to go.
It's sitting there in the section
where I need to start doing that.
If you like, check out my Poshmark store,
there might be something there for you.
Number 13, pay for work travel less (laughs) winning.
It's like I put it out into the universe,
and they gave me what I wanted,
and they also gave the world something awful.
So, I don't know what to think of that one yet.
Number 14, start a podcast with Vincenzo.
We did this (laughs).
We actually started one.
We have artwork, we have a name, we have episodes.
But everything changed so much with COVID
that his business really picked up a lot,
and we've been pivoting over here,
so it hasn't been a whole lot of time
to sit down and record some.
But I know that we are thinking about it often,
and we just need to kinda come up
with a couple more topics to sit down.
But we actually sat back here with our headphones on,
had a little chat, and at least,
I think we've done 2 1/2 episodes.
I say a half because episode zero is really short.
If you are interested in a couple
doing business together in love and in business,
is that something you would want
to subscribe to in your podcast earbuds?
Let me know in the comments.
Number 15, stop saying the F word.
Well, I've decided this one's also
a little farfetched for me.
So, I just don't think it's realistic
to have a spot on the 20 for 2020.
So lofty though.
Number 16, take more selfies.
Um, I think I am but not really.
When I put this one on the list,
I was thinking I need to take more selfies with my friends.
I need to take more selfies with my husband.
I need to take more selfies with my dog, my mom.
It just doesn't happen very often
when you're not seeing people very often.
And when I am seeing people, I'm focused on seeing people
because I never get to see people anymore.
So, the selfie thing hasn't exactly picked up,
but I will say I've taken a lot of terrible selfies
of myself that are in my phone just to flex the habit.
Number 17, sustain a healthy work environment and culture.
This took an interesting turn too.
I think we've done this for the most part in the office.
I mean, I painted the walls pink, what else do you want?
(laughs)
With COVID, we couldn't have anyone working in the office
for a period of time.
And actually, only recently did I open the office back up
as an option because I wanted the team
who doesn't have the best work-from-home conditions
to be able to at least change it up a little bit.
And we have a COVID-19 policy and a sanitization policy
that everyone needs to abide by
in order to be able to use the office.
So, I think that that's helpful but for a while,
it was more along the lines of navigating
how do we keep this culture and communication
when everyone's working remotely?
And the entire team really stepped up
when they realized that how they show up in digital formats,
like in a project manager like Trello,
or on Slack for conversations,
it was even more important,
so that we could kind of check in
on where everyone's at or what they're feeling,
or what they need help with.
So, I actually think this has been going really well.
And I have touched bases with my team.
We try to do twice a month,
just to let them tell me what's on their mind.
It's not like a me telling you how you're doing.
It's more like you tell me, how are we doing?
And those seem to have been going really well,
so I think we're doing okay on this.
Number 18, throw Lucy a birthday party, I did that.
Lucy turned 16 this year.
We were able to have a birthday party for her
right before the lockdown,
which was the event I told you about earlier.
And so, that felt really lucky and spoiling (laughs).
A lot of people didn't get to celebrate their birthday,
but my dog got to celebrate her 16th, so there's that.
Number 19 was a secret
because I couldn't tell you what it was.
At the time, I had written down for number 19
to finish the dressing room in my new home.
This was for me, the number one thing I needed to do.
Actually, that's not true, it was the number two thing.
It was the number three thing.
In order to feel comfortable moving into the new home,
there were a couple of things I had to do.
The first thing was to replace the fireplace
because it was awful.
The second thing was to paint the whole house,
just to have a fresh coat of paint,
and to get the colors to where I needed them to be.
And the third thing was number 19 on this list,
and that was to complete my dressing room.
That was important to me because I knew
the entire house was gonna take time.
It was gonna take a moment for us to feel like it was ours.
And as the morning routine queen,
I needed to have a space that felt like me.
And one of the things that the previous office did for me
was it was also a dressing room for me.
There was a walk-in closet,
and so it played both roles for me.
I felt like turning the second bedroom of this house,
which is a very, very, very small room by the way,
into a dressing room would make me feel
more at home more quickly,
so that I could feel empowered every morning
when I was doing my morning routine
to be able to attack the rest of the things
that it would take to feel like the house was ours.
And so I did that, number 19.
And number 20, reach one million subscribers on YouTube.
I guess there's still time, feel free to help.
Okay, so let's do a little reassessment.
Number three, since we are 100% sure
Amy's not giving up meat,
I'm gonna change this one up a little bit.
So, we're gonna change number three
to complete the new home interior design,
at least the phase one of that.
And what that looks like
is I want the first floor to be done.
The first floor's looking pretty good.
We just got a new couch.
We finalized a lot of stuff in the dining room.
Everything feels really good.
Artwork will kind of come.
There's, I think it's not that much left.
The biggest thing we have to do
is paint the kitchen cabinets.
So, I feel really good that this one's going to get done,
and just to have a completed first floor,
that would be huge for 2020.
I don't care if we don't really finish the second floor
to where we want it to be until next year.
I think it would be a huge win to feel like the first floor,
we could welcome people in in 2021
when everyone's happy and healthy I mean,
happy hopefully also.
That's what I want number three to be.
I just wanna finish what I've started on the first floor.
Number eight, not gonna be hosting quarterly dinners
any longer this year.
So, what I'm going to start is a happiness journal.
You know how I love to start a whole new project.
We should do a video on all the different ways
that I can fill a notebook 'cause I have so many notebooks
that serve different purposes (laughs).
One of those is a happiness journal.
So, what I've always tried to do
is when I catch myself ear to ear smiling,
genuinely happy about something,
making a note of what triggered that,
so that I can have a list of those things.
So, I wanna start a happiness journal
where I can write down when those moments happened,
so that I can refer to it in the future
when I'm feeling really down.
One example is just the smell of coconut.
The smell of coconut is straight heaven for me,
and so I would put that on my happiness journal.
Number nine was anniversary in Vegas.
We're gonna change this to schedule,
and stick to one social media free weekend per month.
I took a social media break in April.
I think it was like a week,
and it was delightful, I have to say.
Social media is a big part of my career,
so there's even more balance that has to be in place for me.
So, I think instead of needing a lot of time at once,
like a week because I feel overwhelmed,
I think instituting one weekend a month
would be much easier.
Number 13 was to pay for work travel less.
I won that one.
I think we should just give me
a check mark gold star for that.
But COVID was pretty much the reason for it,
so I don't know if that's realistic.
Instead, I think we should replace it with my love
of the MasterClass app.
So, if you don't know what MasterClass is,
it is some of the most amazing film of amazing teachers
teaching things that they do amazingly.
And so, it's so much fun to watch.
What I would like to do is assign myself
to finish five master classes this year.
And it's actually not that hard to do
'cause a lot of these videos are fairly short.
One of them that I really liked
was Malcolm Gladwell talking about writing.
That's a great master class but I took that last year,
so that would be cheating.
But I would like to do five more of these
'cause there's so many.
I literally wanna watch every single one on the app.
Number 15, stop saying the F word, F that.
We're gonna change this
to a very fun and exciting announcement.
Number 15 on my 20 for 2020 will now be
to relaunch the Good Morning, Good Life Planner.
If you're familiar with "Good Morning, Good Life,"
it is my book that I put out into the world last December.
The Good Morning, Good Life Planner is the planner
that goes with it to help you to start every day
on your terms and to go after the life that you want.
Taking the advice from the book,
and applying it to real life.
It's a planner I'm very proud of.
I see people post on Instagram about it all the time,
but I feel like we needed to level it up like 80 notches
because that's just how I am.
So, I'm not showing it to you yet but just know
that very soon I will be sharing more details
about the Good Morning, Good Life Planner,
the new iteration of the planner, what it looks like,
how to use it in a future video.
And if you would like to be one of the first people
to know when it is available,
check out the link in the description below,
and sign up for email updates.
I will be sure to let you know.
Stay tuned for more on that.
I'd like your help with my new
and improved 20 for 2020 list.
You can subscribe to this YouTube channel,
that would help me a ton.
And if you would like to look at all of the things
that were on my list and are now on my list,
check out the blog post on gatluw.com.
I will link to that below.
Question of the day,
What is something on your 20 for 2020 list
or your 2020 goals list
that needs a little bit of a reassess,
and where do you think you would like to go with it instead?
Share that in the comments below, so we can talk about it.
That's all for today, thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it as always.
Make sure you subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love and go after the life you want.
Cheers.
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