Vacations, Pivoting & P.A.C.E. Planning

This week I am taking my first vacation without kids – it’s been 3 years. Just so you didn’t skim past that part years friends, years… it’s been 3 years TOO LONG.

Mind you, our first was born during COVID and all that, so to say that my husband and I have had trust issues on leaving our kids (clearly), has been exasperated by feeling like the world at large has not been particularly safe.

But it’s time. It’s long past due.

And wouldn’t you know it, our vacation has already been derailed by a few days. We drove down to SoCal where my parents live to drop off the kids and my dad was kind enough to share whatever he has with the kids. Now, there’s two sets of emotions happening right now for me:

1) I’m upset and angry that the 1:1 time I’ve been looking forward to with my spouse is likely not happening.

2) I recognize that this is just par the course for parenthood.

And I’ve decided to lean into the latter feeling – this is just life. And the number one thing I have learned in becoming a parent is that Reality > Expectations. Much, much easier said than done. And since I am a professional project manager – layer on that expectation setting and NOT meeting pre-established expectations is not really part of my modus operandi.

👉 Check-list junkie right here.

But in learning to focus on what is actually happening versus what I’d ideally like to have happen, I can actually concentrate on what’s important instead of an arbitrarily put together list. What I mean by this is that I can get to the core of what the intended goal is. My goal for this weeks’ vacation was to have 1:1 time with my husband, attend our friend’s wedding (and not so secretly to get in all the food destinations), but fortunately there are ample restaurants with excellent cocktails within short distance of my parents’ place.

When I leaned into my reality, I was able to genuinely brainstorm alternative solutions that got me closer to my goal. Ultimately, my dad was able to turn his cold around relatively quickly and was feeling well enough to be able to look after the boys without my husband and I being at the house. But we had different solutions lined up and we set up a timeline to make a call on what we were going to do.

The military (at least I think this is from military application) has this acronym – P.A.C.E. Planning -
P: Primary
A: Alternate
C: Contingency
E: Emergency

When your primary plan gets scrapped, go to your alternate, when the alternate won’t work, use your contingency plan, and when all else isn’t working, use your emergency plan.

Since we all have plans every day, I’d like to challenge you to use this acronym the next time you find yourself getting too far into the expectations camp. How can you PACE plan and set yourself up for leaning into working with what’s actually happening? How can you use this tool to get you closer to your goal versus throwing in the towel when your original plan goes out the window?

Since I like real life examples; here’s what our solutions looked like.

P: Primary – Drop off kids, leave following day to drive to Central California, stay with friends and attend wedding.
A: Alternate – Take kids & my Mom, drive to Central California, get an Airbnb or hotel suite, visit friends and attend wedding.
C: Contingency – My husband flies or drives up to attend wedding the day of (it’s his friend that is getting married).
E: Emergency – We cancel and stay in SoCal till the boys are feeling well enough to drive back to Arizona.

Our cut off timeline to decide was 5 PM Monday evening.

The other benefit to laying out plans like this, is that you don’t have to stress about what steps to take on different potentialities. You have the sketched-out plan, you have a time where you decide to make a call and then you tell your brain – “until then, I’m not going to worry about this problem.” It leaves you free to mentally go about your business without the angst.

But since we ended up getting back to our original plan, just a day later than planned – I’ll be shamelessly enjoying 4 kid free days with zero angst! I hope you find this tool useful and are enjoying angst free days.

Your Coach - Erica