Good morning and welcome to the Increase Your Impact podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode 210077.

In sports, we say winning is oxygen. Some people even call it a deodorizer. When you're winning, those small problems don't smell as bad.

The little things that would normally drive you crazy suddenly don't matter as much.

But when you're losing, everything changes. Little frustrations start to feel huge. Every comment,

every mistake, every bit of tension starts to weigh even more. It's like the air gets thinner

and everyone starts grasping. And that's when you have to

find a way to breathe again. A few years ago, as I shared with some of you, those of you have

been with me for a little bit, you know that I had a lung collapse. One minute I was fine.

And then the next minute, I'm struggling for air. I spent a few days in the hospital hooked up to oxygen and every deep breath hurt.

It burned.

Every inhale felt like it was splitting me in half.

Hard to explain if you haven't experienced it.

However, that oxygen, that painful force of breathing, it was actually the

only thing that was sustaining me. And when a team is losing, it feels the same way. You can't wait

for oxygen to show up on its own. Sometimes you have to force it in. You have to generate it.

You have to create it. And for leaders,

this oxygen comes in a few forms. One way is staying positive when things feel heavy, or strengthening

relationships instead of retreating, leaning into honest, hard conversations even when they're

uncomfortable, encouraging someone who's struggling

and they're only a shell of themselves, taking care of yourself, moving, exercising,

eating well, getting sleep. Those things might seem small, but they keep you in the fight.

They keep you breathing. And just like i said with me attached to all the

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