The Art of Balance

The mist hangs low over the water, dancing in the first rays of sunrise. The gentle sway of the tides rocks me as I take in the first sip of my coffee, rich and aromatic, bringing warmth to the cool morning air. The distant calls of seabirds punctuate the rhythmic lapping of waves against the shore. My fingertips trace the weathered wood of the small table beside me, worn smooth by salt and time. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, tasting the briny sweetness that only comes from being near the ocean. Am I in a dream? Or did I awaken to a window, a balcony, and water for miles as far as I can see?

Exactly one week ago at this time, we awoke at six, ran quickly to grab some breakfast in the massive buffet, came back to our room, grabbed our bags, departed the ship, got a ride home, then rushed to the Orlando airport to drop off our daughter, then drove home … exhausted, I took a nap and awoke in a different paradise.

The Floating City

My daughter was on her last spring break, with her college graduation coming this spring, and one of her dreams was to experience life on a giant cruise ship. We picked The Wonder of the Seas from Royal Caribbean, which a year ago was the world’s largest — now it’s the third largest. It houses up to 7,000 guests and 3,000 crew and is like a floating 20-story building. It was an incredible experience, with an onboard central park, multiple theaters, art galleries, and a shopping mall. I enjoyed ziplining, ice skating, waterslides, and some amazing music. Yet those things don’t matter much to me. The best part for me was time with family and a complete internet-phone blackout. It was a perfect opportunity to escape the news, social media, texts and phone calls, and work. (Though I did spend two and a half days at sea finalizing the new second edition of my marketing book.)

The Value of Disconnection

This wasn’t my first internet blackout. I’ve done it once before, for a week, but I had forgotten how wonderfully valuable it was. Think about your typical day online. For me it’s an eight- or 10-hour day of screentime, staring at my computer, writing, doing about five hours a day in meetings on video, hosting five YouTube one-hour shows a week in the studio, doing a one-hour Plein Air Podcast each week, writing several columns and blogs and marketing pieces, managing a large team of people, dealing with financial reports, marketing reports, and employee needs, and then going home, having dinner, and using the three to four hours in the evenings to catch up on a dozen different social media accounts, which includes posting, commenting, responding, and messaging others. It’s also when I catch up on texts, which I don’t typically have a chance to check during the day. Frankly, it’s all very addictive. It’s a high-speed merry-go-round, which is a lot of fun, fairly exhausting, and yet fulfilling because I tell myself my work is changing the world in some way. And it’s all a part of doing business and staying in contact with friends and family these days.

The Resistance to Return

What I discovered during the blackout was much like what I found with the inability to travel during COVID. When it was over, I did not want to return to the high volume of business travel, days on airplanes and nights in lonely hotel rooms. Once my vacation ended last week, I resisted going back into the full social media routine. In fact, a full week has gone by and I’ve opened Facebook only one time, briefly, to message someone. I know I can’t stay away forever, but I’m trying to give myself a mental break for as long as possible, even though all the meetings and broadcasts have resumed.

I highly recommend forcing a break from social media.

The Weight of Responsibility

Upon my return, I picked up the phone to hear from a friend and client, who was calling to let me know his company was going to go out of business. He felt the right thing to do was to let me know before the rumor mill caught up to me.

I sank deeply in my chair, my eyes welled up, and I found myself devastated by the news. In fact, so much so that I could not sleep that night. I spent most of the wee hours of the morning tossing and turning, processing his news and trying to come up with solutions to help save his business. Plus, his news came soon after another client had laid off half of their staff for survival. Could I be next?

When I think about my whirlwind of activity, after hearing this news I’m happy I have the opportunity to be busy, to be blessed with a thriving business. As I tell my staff, “We never take lightly the demise of anyone, because it could be us next time.”

The Familiar Ache of Failure

With no words to express how I felt, all I could do was kindly tell my friend, “Been there, done that.” I could actually remember the sinking feeling I experienced as I flashed back to 2002, when my internet radio company, RadioCentral, had to be closed, my dreams shattered, and my family of team members had to lose their jobs. Then having to experience the humiliation of bankruptcy and a bankruptcy auction, seeing millions of dollars in equipment that we fought to be able to buy selling for pennies on the dollar. Years of effort and innovation down the drain. Worse was seeing the dream of revolutionizing radio and audio disappear.

If there was good news in any of this, it’s that my friend said, “It’s been coming for a few years. We’ve been fighting the battles to try and prevent it, but the inevitable cannot be ignored.” And he said, “I’m at peace with it.”

How can he say that? His world was just ripped apart.

Identity Beyond Business

It’s important as I relay this unfortunate story to point out that this man’s identity is not tied up in his business; his identity is in his faith and his family. No one is sick or dying. He knows that failure wasn’t his management, it was his market, the economy, and the conditions he faced. Nothing he did could have saved this business, and in spite of my decades of experience, I could not come up with a solution he had not explored over the years. His company was too small to be big and too big to be small.

Lessons in Resilience

Since I write this each week in hopes my young adult children will eventually embrace the result, I’ll say this here: There are forces beyond our control, and though we feel we can control everything, we can control very little in actuality.

My dad used to tell me his stories of pacing the floors trying to find ways to survive, and I too have experienced failure multiple times. Moments when this company I now have almost closed its doors in multiple recessions. In fact, when interviewing potential employees, I look at their failure as a positive, not a negative, because once someone has had their teeth kicked in, they know what it feels like and will fight like mad to never let it happen again.

One of my best friends, now deceased, who was a CEO, told me it never gets easier, it just changes. I concur. 

The Hidden Struggles

It’s easy for outsiders to place blame, to make companies out to be big bad corporations, but few ever know of the sleepless nights, the weight of responsibility of massive debt, or knowing the lives of your employees and their kids will change for the worse if you screw up. Sadly, I have screwed up. Sadly, I have disrupted lives. No matter how good a business owner you are, sometimes you can’t survive.

The Courage to Begin Again

What I’ve learned through my own failures and witnessing the failures of others is that resilience isn’t about avoiding the fall — it’s about how quickly you get back up. My friend’s sense of peace comes from understanding that this business was a chapter, not the entire story of his life, and that God has a plan that’s probably better.

There is a unique wisdom that comes only from standing in the ashes of something you built and asking, “What next?” It’s the wisdom of knowing that your worth isn’t measured by what you own or what title is engraved on your business card. It’s measured by the courage it takes to begin again. It takes a special breed to dust off and restart.

I think about the crew members on our cruise ship, many from developing countries, working six months straight without a vacation, then returning home for just two months before starting again. They do this to provide for families they rarely see. That’s true resilience — finding joy in the work despite the sacrifice, finding purpose in providing despite the separation.

The Balance We All Seek

Perhaps the real lesson in all of this — from my friend’s business closure to my own social media blackout to the cruise ship workers separated from their families — is that we’re all seeking the same thing: balance. Balance between work and rest. Between digital connection and real presence. Between success and failure. Between identifying with what we do and remembering who we are. Between us and our Maker.

So as I sit here, looking at the seductive blue glow of my phone and the dozens of notifications waiting to pull me back into the whirlwind, I’m making a commitment to maintain some of that precious balance I found on the water. Not to abandon my responsibilities, but to hold them in proper perspective. To remember that even if everything I’ve built were to disappear tomorrow, the most important parts of me would remain intact.

And isn’t that the greatest freedom of all?

Eric Rhoads