Growing up, vacations were life for my family. I don’t really reflect on my childhood a lot, or think of myself as a particularly sentimental person, but family vacations are something I love to look back on. Even as a really young kid, I knew that vacation was important and that it mattered.
My love for family vacations definitely comes from my dad. In fact, two of my favorite vacations growing up were surprise trips that he planned! My mom, sister, and I literally had no idea where we were going until we got to the airport and it was thrilling. One of those trips was to Las Vegas and the other was to San Francisco.
Aaron, my amazing husband, grew up with a totally different experience. His family vacations were going to Pennsylvania to visit his Grandparents every year. Even though our experiences were different, the goal was the same – connecting as a family. Going into our marriage, we knew that taking a family vacation every year was important no matter what it looked like.
But as we got into marriage, we came up with excuses. We’re busy. It’s expensive. Let’s just go for one night. All of the sudden, years had gone by and we hadn’t really honored our commitment to take family vacation seriously.
When I realized this, I felt sad. I honestly felt like I lost a little bit of my heritage.
Now that my kids are getting older I recognize that they are actively building their memories, and I want so badly for them to treasure family vacation like I did.
My dad worked a ton, but you know what? When I think of my dad during my childhood I don’t think of him as someone who worked all the time. I just think of him as vacation dad. I just remember him on vacation.
Our desire to give our children those strong memories of their childhood vacations meant that Aaron and I needed to create a habit of vacationing. And honestly, I struggled with this because it felt self-serving.
If I take a vacation, my staff has to do more stuff at the store and have less access to me. It’s easy to let guilt overcome me and I start to feel like I’m just asking my staff to up their game while I go and play. This mental battle became my next excuse for not taking vacations.
But as much as I love my staff, I love my family first. I had to make a mindset change – taking a vacation wasn’t selfish, it was just putting my family first. I’ve talked about sabbaticals, and I’ve talked about planning retreats. Sabbaticals are really about me. And planning retreats are really about my business. But vacation is about your loved ones. It’s telling your people that they are your priority.
At this point, I think it’s pretty clear that taking a vacation with your loved ones is so important, whether that’s your friends, your husband, your kids, your parents – whoever! As business owners, we need all the help we can get to maximize our vacation experiences. Over the last couple of years I’ve found that these three things are the key to a truly incredible time away with my family:
- Do what they love AND what you love. Make sure you ask your husband or your kids or whoever what they want to do. And do that. Then ask yourself what you want to do. And do that too.
- Hire a travel agent. We ask our brides to trust us with our expertise every day, right? Since hiring a travel agent for the first time a couple of years ago I haven’t battled the stress of booking the right flights or finding the best hotel – it’s amazing! Travel agents are experts, so trust them to plan the perfect trip for you and your family!
- Set boundaries. This is where everyone recoils. As a business owner, it can be so hard to set boundaries but if you really want to prioritize your loved ones than this is simply a must. Set your auto-responder. Empower your staff to handle situations at the store. And be fully present with the people who matter most!
Your relationships with your loved ones are worth all of the extra work it takes to get away and unplug. Friends, you’ve gotta put family vacation on your calendar right now. In fact, it should be the very first thing on your calendar every single year. I promise you, this will make such a huge difference in your home life and your work life.
So, tell me – where are you going? Don’t be afraid to dream!