Episode 122: Winning Equals Success Minus Stress

Reza: Hi everyone, and welcome to Project Mindset, the channel for everyone who knows that the right mindset makes anything possible.

Returning after a break

After a short break of several weeks, I am back. As I said in the previous episode, I owe you another apology. I needed some time away. One reason was preparing an event that matters a lot to me: Dinner im Schloss. You may have read a little about it online, or on my website.

After the event, I also wanted a few days off to recalibrate, take stock and think about the future of the event and podcast. Do not worry: I will definitely continue. But sometimes it helps to take a little time out and reflect. I am sorry that I have not published anything for several weeks. Regular episodes will now resume, I promise. I have learned a great deal recently and have carefully written it all down.

Those lessons are definitely worth sharing with you. As you know, sharing my experiences and learning through this podcast is very important to me. If you face similar challenges, perhaps you can avoid the same mistakes or benefit from a little extra knowledge and reach your goals more effectively.

Looking back at Dinner im Schloss

Dinner im Schloss took place on 23 April, for the third time this year. It is a great honour that Heidelberg’s mayor, Professor Dr Eckart Würzner, is the event’s patron. He has been involved since the first edition. You may remember my podcast conversation with him.

After that recording, we discussed doing some kind of joint event at Heidelberg Castle. One thing led to another, and I have now been able to organise Dinner im Schloss for the third time. Like the podcast, it is a hobby that has completely escalated. It contains a huge amount of energy and passion, but also work.

That brings us to today’s subject: “winning = success minus stress”. I want to unpack that formula and share my perspective. I think there is a lot of truth in it, at least for me. But first, a few words about Dinner im Schloss itself.

It may be an unusual name. Originally, it was a working title. As working titles often do, it stuck.

The programme and the people

Registration began at 9.30 in the morning, followed by the official start at 10.00. We had panel discussions — five, I think — with spotlight interviews before the panels. There was also a green-tech start-up pitch competition and various other performances and activities. Entertainment mattered too.

Toni L. joined us, which meant a great deal to me. He is one of Heidelberg’s early hip-hop artists. Together with Torch, who has also appeared on this podcast, he helped establish hip-hop in Germany. Heidelberg hip-hop and its beginnings have received heritage recognition, which I find extraordinary. It was important to me that Toni L. could talk about that.

Editorial clarification: the recognition referred to here is the 2023 inclusion of Heidelberg’s hip-hop culture and its networks in Germany’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It is not a UNESCO World Heritage designation for an individual artist.

Different perspectives on sustainability

Dinner im Schloss is organised around sustainability, which I look at from several angles. That means not only climate and environmental questions, but everything else that belongs to the subject. There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs. They include clean water, gender equality, biodiversity and many other issues.

That is why I wanted the day to cover more than the environmental side. Alongside mindset, sustainability is one of the subjects that interests me most. We should look much more often at what we are doing to ourselves, our surroundings, nature and, especially, other people. What is happening? I think discussing that is extremely important.

Here on the podcast, I focus more on mindset. For anyone interested in sustainability, I can recommend Dinner im Schloss.

Sustainability in e-commerce

We had several panel discussions. I will not go through them all now; perhaps I will introduce individual panels in future episodes. One that particularly interested me was sustainability in e-commerce. I face a familiar question: when I need clothes, should I buy them online or shop in person?

If you have listened for a long time, you know that I am a passionate Heidelberg resident. For me, there is only one reason to drive to Mannheim, around 20 kilometres away — and not as beautiful as Heidelberg — and that is buying clothes.

Mannheim has the edge there: better shops and, as far as I can tell, more choice. I always wonder whether to order online from Zalando or somewhere similar instead. But I have to order everything in different sizes. With one brand I am a medium, with another a large, and sometimes an XL. It feels random, which makes ordering clothes difficult.

Orders, returns and the work involved

If I order a shirt, I need at least two sizes, sometimes three. With shoes, definitely three. Then I hope that one fits. Each time, there is the effort: several parcels arrive, I unpack them, deal with the waste, repack the returns and take them to the post office.

An online order or a drive to Mannheim?

At some point, I wondered whether all that sending things back and forth made a trip to Mannheim more sensible environmentally. One return journey, buy what I want, no returns, and that is it. That was my initial thinking.

On the e-commerce panel at Dinner im Schloss, one of the participants was Deutsche Post’s head of sustainability. We worked through what it meant for me to drive from Heidelberg to Mannheim, shop and return: how much CO₂ would that produce compared with buying online and returning the order?

The rough calculation was this: a return journey to Mannheim in my own car — admittedly not public transport — was about equivalent to ordering online seven times and returning everything each time. I found that fascinating.

Just seeing the relationship helped me understand the emissions of an order compared with driving roughly 20 kilometres to shop and then coming back. Of course, that is different from travelling by public transport, although that also has associated emissions.

This is the comparison recalled from the panel, not a documented general emissions rule. The source episode does not include its underlying assumptions or calculation.

New perspectives through conversation

That is the point. I am not arguing that everyone should buy everything online. But there are situations in which it makes sense. I have an online shop myself. As mentioned before, selling sports equipment and supplements through e-commerce is something I enjoy.

I also select DHL’s GoGreen option and, as the sender, pay a little extra. At the time, I understood it as involving electric transport and climate-neutral shipping. That matters to me. I do not pass the extra cost on to customers, but it is worth it to me to pay attention to the climate where I can.

Editorial clarification: the preceding description reflects my understanding in the 2024 recording. GoGreen involved emissions compensation; it did not mean that every delivery was fully electric or emission-free. DHL distinguishes compensation from reductions through GoGreen Plus in its 2024 emissions-report information.

That was exactly the kind of subject discussed on the panel. For me, it was what the event should achieve: an eye-opener that gives people different perspectives. I could talk about the event for hours, but I will leave that for a separate episode.

The challenge behind the event

My main point is that Dinner im Schloss was enormous fun, but also a serious challenge. We had more than 200 guests and, if I remember correctly, 23 panel speakers. There was a great deal to coordinate with the catering team; the dinner was central.

I had to clarify many things with the castle’s catering team and administration, prepare with the individual speakers, and handle the smaller details, such as admission badges. All these things needed discussion. It was demanding.

I had to watch my stress level. Ultimately, I organise the event, just like this podcast, because I really want to and enjoy it. I like discussing particular subjects, exchanging ideas, sharing knowledge and inspiring other people. But I need to ensure that stress does not take over.

Some pressure is part of the process whenever you start a project, do something new or work in a job. A certain amount of stress, or work that creates stress, is definitely part of it.

What a personal win means

However, when I do something, I want to come out of it with something positive. That is why this formula matters to me. If I want to count Dinner im Schloss or the podcast as a win, I do not mean a financial profit. I mean doing something that helps me grow or brings happiness.

You can apply that to many things: a creative activity, a job or a project. Of course you want it to succeed. Dinner im Schloss was a successful event: the guests were happy, I was happy and the people involved were happy. The success was there. But I also need to consider how stressed I felt during preparation and on the day.

“Winning = success minus stress” matters because I genuinely needed to regulate myself during preparation so that stress would not become excessive.

Deliberate breaks during preparation

Alongside my daily work and commitments, children, sport and everything else, I had to fit in the event. I needed to do it in a way that did not create so much stress that I could no longer show up in other areas of life as I wanted.

That is why I took breaks. I can tell you that taking time off shortly before an event is extremely difficult. But I noticed when I needed a day away from preparation — and we are talking about weeks of work. I needed to focus on something else.

That might mean a day with the children, doing nothing except being fully present, playing with them or going out as a family. I had to make room for that so that I could still feel that stress was not taking over.

I could have worked on the event constantly. The to-do list was so long that, as soon as one subject was settled, I could have moved straight to the next, then the next. That made time off particularly important.

Giving yourself permission to pause

I even had to persuade myself to take those breaks. The to-do list does not get shorter while you are away. What changes is that you return with more energy and less of that feeling of stress. Taking breaks was essential for me.

Gratitude as a perspective

Gratitude, a recurring theme on this podcast, mattered too. I repeatedly needed to remind myself that I was grateful to organise an event at all, that people attended and that I could work with Heidelberg’s mayor.

People trusted me to make their day worthwhile. They paid ticket prices that were not insignificant, invested their time and travelled to be there. That trust — someone choosing to spend time with me — was something I needed to keep in view so that stress did not take over.

When stress outweighs success

As in many other areas, I have learned over the years that I can push at all costs to make something successful. But if the stress I feel is much greater than the success I perceive, it is not a personal win. It is more of a loss.

I like the expression “Pyrrhic victory”. You may know it; I have mentioned it before. Otherwise, look it up. King Pyrrhus fought battles in which victory came with enormous losses of soldiers and resources. The idea is captured in the saying that another such victory would leave him ruined.

It means a win purchased with excessive losses and disadvantages: a victory that does more harm than good. Dinner im Schloss might have been a successful day, but if I had afterwards felt so overwhelmed that I never wanted to do it again, that would really have been a loss.

It would have become a one-off: I did it once, and that was that. In the longer term, it would not have benefited me.

Keeping enjoyment sustainable

I want the things I do to bring me something lasting. There are different kinds of gains: money, happiness and others. The same applies to the podcast. Imagine I have a major interview that takes considerable preparation, travel, setting up and conducting the conversation.

If my stress is greater than the success I feel from it, I cannot really count it as a win. Perhaps doing it even causes more harm than not doing it, because I end up thinking that I never want to do it again.

Considering success and stress together

My message today is simple. If you are working on something creative, building a house or pursuing any other project, and want it to feel like a win, of course pay attention to completing it. But pay at least as much attention to keeping stress within bounds.

There are various things you can do. For me, time away from the subject and a change of perspective are especially important. Several people around me are building houses. It can help to say, “I get to build a house. I get to create a home for my family,” rather than seeing it only as a burden.

You can change how you look at it. And taking time out matters: what feels like standing still can sometimes help you move forward more than constantly trying to force your way through a wall. A pause can be more useful than perpetual small movements.

Why the podcast will continue

I can promise that the podcast is continuing. Do not think my stress level has become too high; not at all. I really enjoy it. At the event, someone asked why I make the podcast and what my financial goals are.

Honestly, I think making money from podcasts in Germany is very difficult unless you are one of the largest podcasters or have substantial financial backing.

Experiences for the next generation

For me, the reason is something I mentioned in the first episode and am happy to repeat. How wonderful would it be if my grandfather had recorded a podcast, so I could listen occasionally to how he thought and what he had learned in life?

Leaving something behind is one of my major aims. Other people might learn from my experiences, and my children and grandchildren can certainly take something from them. That is a central goal.

To return to today’s formula, “winning = success minus stress”: I love doing this, and I try to keep stress manageable so that I can continue over the long term.

Looking ahead

That is it for today. Thank you for listening and staying with me. Project Mindset will continue. I enjoy it enormously, and there are many subjects I want to work through and lessons from the past few weeks that I want to share. We will speak again soon. Until then, remember: mindset is everything.