EPISODE 456: Increasing Your Mental Resiliency with Amy Bukszpan, PhD

Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Marketing Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry. 

Dr. Kevin Christie: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Modern Chiropractic Mastery. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie, and today bringing a, uh, really cool conversation from Amy Bukszpan PhD. And, uh, I know her, uh, for my community. And we did a collaborative workshop in my office on injury prevention and performance for endurance athletes.

And, uh, she is an endurance athlete, an ultra runner. Um, works with endurance athletes on the mental performance side of things and, uh, just was really impressed with the information that she had brought to the workshop that we had in our community. We had about 20 people attend it and was very well received and realized, you know, after that I emailed, I was like.

Is some of the information you discussed applicable to business owners, so, or people that are high performing in work? And she said absolutely. She also works with people in that regard. And so I wanted to have her on to discuss some of the principles of [00:01:00] resiliency and, and, and mental toughness and some of the things that we have to do on a performance side.

When it comes to the mental aspect of it, and as we know, whether it's sport like endurance athlete or maybe your traditional, uh, sports like football, baseball, hockey, all those, there's a mental side to that and there is, uh, being a doctor and there is running a business and there's no doubt about that.

And sometimes it goes unsaid. So I wanted to have Amy on. The show to discuss some of that. And I think one of the things that I want you to get also is that yes, obviously there's a difference between mental health issues and diagnosees and things like that, and. And not having that and, but still having challenges emotionally or, or mentally with work.

Uh, it doesn't have to be a diagnosed condition and we're not gonna dive into that type of stuff today. Um, [00:02:00] but putting the diagnosed conditions aside. I do, you know, I do believe from just a regular mental performance standpoint, as a business owner, you can get better, you can get more resilient, you can become more flexible.

Um, you can deal with the ups and downs better that we do. And that's why my, my goal is, is when we work with chiropractors, that's part of what we do. Um, but it's also why I love having this podcast and be able to bring on true experts to bring you some value in all kinds of different things. And so without further ado, here is my interview with Amy Bukszpan.

 Alright. Excited to have Amy on the show here. As I mentioned in our introduction, we've, uh, we've done some work together in the past, mostly with, uh, endurance athletes, but we're gonna make the connection between what she does for endurance athletes and also you as a chiropractor practice owner, future practice owner, uh, you know, on the [00:03:00] rollercoaster of, of life and business.

Before we dive into that, Amy, uh, tell us a little about yourself and what you do.

Amy Bukszpan: Sure. Thank you for having me. Um, I am a doctor of the behavior analysis, um, and I am a board certified behavior analyst and I am the owner of Bux Fan Behavior Consultants and Nana Champs, which is a performance coaching and, uh, behavior consulting company.

I work, um, primarily with ultra endurance athletes. Um, I coach a team of. Ultra Runners and I provide them with their day-to-day, um, running programming, which involves their mileage and their runs and what that looks like, along with their strength and conditioning programs. And then their mental coaching, which is their coaching for their.

Mental preparation to, uh, take on the rigors [00:04:00] of training for what could be something from 30 miles, uh, half day effort to 250 300 miles, which could be a whole week's worth of running effort. So we do how to prep for trading for that, how to mentally prepare for. Uh, race, race day and how to build that mental resiliency and mental toughness and those types of strategies.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. It, it's, it's awesome. And you and I were, uh, doing a injury prevention workshop and performance workshop for endurance athletes in our office, uh, a month or so ago. And it was, it was really cool to, to dive into that. Uh, tell us a little bit about also your personal experience with these endurance events.

Amy Bukszpan: Yeah, so I have been running ultra marathons myself since 2018. Before that, I was a half marathon marathon runner. Done a New York City marathon [00:05:00] about five or six times now. Been lucky enough to do that, but uh, at certain point I just started, I pivoted, I started doing back to back marathons. Mm-hmm. Then, uh, it was like, oh, there's this thing called ultra running out there.

Did a. Hopped in, did a 50 mile trail race down here in South Florida, then immediately signed up for a hundred mile road race.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.

Amy Bukszpan: And then started looking out to the mountains and going out west and, um, jumped into a 250 mile mountain race. Through the desert of Arizona up into the mountains. And then, um, recently finished a Mountain 200 in Tahoe.

And uh, actually this summer I'll be going out to Alaska to race, um, 135 miles up the old Alaska Road through Denali, and then going back out west and racing another two more, two hundreds. Nice. So, uh, not only do I, uh, coach this

Dr. Kevin Christie: mm-hmm but I

Amy Bukszpan: use it in my own practice and as a. [00:06:00] Small business owner person.

I own my own company, my two companies. Um, I use a lot of these strategies, what we call organizational behavior management strategies, um, behavioral psychology strategies, but is the same mental development strategies, um, in my practices and as an ultra runner that I do. Um. With, when I look at how to build and work with, uh, my company, and I also, um, I, I work with companies and, um, their leadership as well.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. Well, I was like, when I was listening to your talk at, at my office, uh, not being an endurance athlete, uh, myself, but I kept on like, when you're teaching us all this stuff, it's like, well, a lot of that applies to business and ownership and, and just professional life in a lot of ways. And, uh, one of the things you obviously talked a lot about was, uh, mental resiliency.

Um, and, and how do you kind of define [00:07:00] that for someone?

Amy Bukszpan: Mental resiliency.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah, I guess it's in the, it's in the phrase, right? It's in the term. Well,

Amy Bukszpan: you know, know what it is. It's, it's, it's this thing, it's, it's interesting. It's, I think it's a fuzzy topic, and as a behavior analyst, we're always looking, we, we try to define everything we do.

We talk about operationally defining things and like what we can measure and what we can see. And mental resiliency isn't one of these things that's so easy. To measure and to see, but like when you go through it and you're doing it, you're like, oh, and you see somebody do it, you're like, oh, that's a resilient person.

But it, it is the ability to take risks and put yourself, I would say, in risky situations or put yourself in, uh, positions where you're under pressure and you don't. You're not in your optimal safety net. Yeah. Um, and you, and you go through it anyway, and you come out the other side [00:08:00] and you're no worse for it, right?

Mm-hmm. And you can move forwards and you learn from those experiences, and that's the best you can hope for. Um, I always preach too to, to be, um, curious in your skills and to learn to be flexible. And that's the part of, uh, resiliency that I think is one of the biggest. Being adaptable and flexible and being curious as to what happens.

Mm-hmm. And then when you have a business or when you're an athlete, um, not being afraid. To move towards what's scary and to take risks. Um, and then if something fails, being able to adapt or being flexible to that failure and then learn from that failure and move forwards. Mm-hmm. Um, that is the mental resiliency.

Like not going, oh, I'm gonna sit here and, and wallow and what could have happened or what should have happened. But rather you pivot and you go, okay, here's where I'm at now. And here's what my next steps [00:09:00] can be, here's where I can go and, you know, that's, that's, I'm gonna keep moving rather than just stopping and being stagnant.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. And, and I know you had told some stories of some of that, some of that resilience were, or flexibility in, in your own running adventures, right?

Amy Bukszpan: Yeah, I mean, I, uh. I've, I've had quite a few, um, most recently when I was in, um, when I was in Tahoe. I, I mean, I, Tahoe 200 is a very challenging race, especially for those of us that live.

At sea level going and racing somewhere in altitude. It's, they say that we train at poor man's altitude, which is in the humidity.

Dr. Kevin Christie: That's true.

Amy Bukszpan: Um, we, we, as Florida runners learned to train, uh, doing bridge repeats for getting our, our, our climbing legs. They went out there and I, and I. I prepared as best as I [00:10:00] could.

I put a, I, I did, I didn't miss a single training day. I had a solid training block going out there. I did everything my coach could ask me for. Mm-hmm. I was, uh, our flight was delayed going out there. I got sick the night before the race. I showed up as best as I could, um, a hundred kilometers in, which is about 61 miles.

I wasn't, I, I pushed and I wasn't feeling super grave and I kept going. I had met with my, my team the first time and they, they're like, all right, we're gonna fix you up and you're gonna keep going. Then a hundred miles in. Um, I pretty much was wheezing and I could hear my chest wheezing and I felt really awful.

Very, very sick. All the pollen had gotten to me out there, all the dust, and I, um, I just was like, I was ugly crying as I describe it. Mm-hmm. Begged my crew to let me quit. And, uh, was like, that's it. I'm pulling the plug on this. I don't [00:11:00] care how much money it had cost me to get out there, how many months I had given up, you know, things that I wanted to do, things that I'd wanted to like, you know, have a, have a cocktail on a Friday night and stay up late.

But I didn't because I gave up to go, you know, wanted to go train in the morning, early mornings. You, you give up your late nights or anything. Um, but I was like, at that moment ready to say. I give up everything because I just was, I was done and I felt awful. Um, but then they said, you make this decision, they left me alone.

And I had these thoughts in my head and, and I said, you know, um, this, that's the, it's never gonna get worse. That, that was what I said to myself. I'm like, you put in too much. And I was like, you put in too much work. All these people showed up for you and they support you. Um, I had some colorful words that I shared with, uh, the people at your office that I won't share here, uh, with my crew [00:12:00] and, uh, picked myself up and, you know, and finished that race and finish the other half of that, the other a hundred miles of that race faster than I ran the first half of the race, which is pretty amazing.

But, um. What it did tell me, and it taught me, is that it really doesn't get worse. Yeah. Um, and you think it is, you think it's gonna be more painful and. It is a really powerful learning experience. I, I learned more about myself and who I could be and who I am hitting that bottom and making that choice to dig myself out than if I hadn't gone through that a year before.

I had run Coca Donut 250, which is a incredible 250 mile race in Arizona, and I ran for me a perfect race. It was my fir first race over. A hundred and, uh, 25 miles. So it was 250, a huge leap. And I had a [00:13:00] really wonderful race. I had everything positive that could happen, and so I really wanted to capture lightning in a bottle, and I thought that that was what was gonna happen, going out for my second 200.

And then I had this other type of experience, and I learned more. From hitting that bottom. Mm-hmm. Then I, then I would've learned having another perfect race.

Dr. Kevin Christie: So, yeah. And I think that's the thing that's fascinating, whether it's endurance or it's business, is that it, it seems like it's a feedback loop, right?

Like it takes opportunities of this. Really mustering up the, the resilience to get through an unknown, because I think a lot of people get fearful of the unknown. Mm-hmm. Uh, they haven't been there before in that sense, or haven't gone through that cashflow crunch or that employee turnover. All the things that, you know, they, they may not have gone over, gone through before, and so the unknown prevents them from.

Taking [00:14:00] those steps, like for you, the, the, the next 100 miles for the chiropractic practice owner, it could be just, you know, taking that next step in business or opening up that office finally, or buying, investing in that team member equipment. They never take those steps 'cause of the unknown ver, but if they did.

Maybe they take their lumps, maybe it's a perfect race, it's a perfect hire, but maybe they do take their lumps. But you figure out how to overcome that, which you do, and then it becomes a positive feedback loop of like when you hit that next hurdle or a hundred miles, you say, I did this before. That could be, you know, it could be worse.

Right. Is that what you see often with people you work with?

Amy Bukszpan: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that. In business and in running. It's the same thing. And you know, I was just thinking, I put on a race last year and we had, it was my first time as a race director.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.

Amy Bukszpan: And we were putting on a 24, it was supposed to be a 24 hour, 12 hour, and a six hour race.

Mm-hmm. And [00:15:00] we find out about a, we had people signed up for all, all the different, uh, types of races. And we find out about myself and the Cora Director about a month ahead of time, that the school's no longer gonna let us do a 24 hour race. And I was like, oh my God, we have all these people that are so excited to run this 24 hour race.

What are we gonna do? And then the platform that we put the races on doesn't allow for refunds. I'm a new race director, what are we gonna do? And I said, you know what? I'm gonna do what's right. I'm gonna give all these people a refund. I'm gonna take it out of our own cashflow. I'm gonna pay them out.

What needs to happen? Because at the end of the day, you have your reputation. Mm-hmm. And we have a learning experience, and we're gonna move forwards and we're gonna put on a great race, and I'm gonna do what I can do and it stinks and it's financial hardship. And we still have all these things that we have to pay for for this race, and we're gonna move forward.

And we did that. And people love the race. Now, fast forward to this year, we had. Additional issues. Put a different, we have the, the race we moved, we have a 24 [00:16:00] hour, a 48 hour version and a 12 and six hour version of this race. It's gonna happen in two weeks. And I signed a contract with a university.

University fires the guy that I have a contract with, they noll and void the contract. This was a whole nother story. Mm-hmm. And leaves me two months before the race looking for another location to, to hold the race at and. I am crying in the backseat of an Uber going, I can't believe I'm in this position again.

Yeah. What am I gonna do now? Lemme tell you something. The amount of money that we spend people get for, for, uh, a 48 hour race, people spend a lot of money. It's a lot to, to do and a lot to spend renting these facilities. Um, but I said, you know what? We fixed this once. I'm gonna fix it, fix it again. And instead of just sitting and wallowing in it, I immediately.

And, and trying to get retribution, which I think a lot of people too would do. Like be [00:17:00] angry at the situation. Yeah. I was like, I just have to go in fast. I have to go in forward mode. I have to contact places. I have to figure out how we're gonna move forwards and make this for my customers who are my runners and move forwards.

And I think that that's, again, those are those signs of resiliency is like, okay, I can be upset. And I could definitely, and I definitely had my emotions, but then you have to pick yourself up and go, what do we do next?

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. And

Amy Bukszpan: I think that that is, that is resiliency and business as we do resiliency and running and, and it's all of those things.

It's not, it's not wallowing in it. It's taking your lumps when you have to, but then it's also learning from those past experiences and just, you know, and there's certain things that are gonna happen and you're gonna go, I can't believe this is happening to me twice. But it happens. And employee turnover is one of those things.

Like I deal with it as a behavior analyst in my other practice as much as I do with running. And you have to think like, as a [00:18:00] coach, we constantly give turnover in clients. Yeah. So, you know, how do you, if I was upset every time I lost a client, I, you know, it would be killing me slowly. So, you know, every time.

So you have to like, be able to move forwards and just pull yourself together.

Dr. Kevin Christie: And it sounds like you're not saying, you know, you can't have emotions around it. It's, it, it, you can have those, like, you can have the moments where you're. You know, screaming four letter words at your crew, but it's also about being able to, like you mentioned before, kinda be flexible and have a range of like, okay, yeah, I feel like this now, but it doesn't mean I can't get my mind right.

And, and then overcome this. So it's not about being this. Completely emotionless human being that nothing ever phases you. It's about maybe having strategies to overcome things that are obviously phasing you at that [00:19:00] point, but not letting it make you retreat completely and and throw your hands up.

Amy Bukszpan: Absolutely. It's, I mean, anything. You wanna have good coping mechanisms and it, it helps in life in general, right? Like we can't, you can't ignore your emotions. And as a behavior analyst, we teach people. You know, you have a behavior and you have a behavioral response, and you could either reinforce those behaviors mm-hmm.

And they keep happening, or you punish those behaviors and they decrease. And when you have a problematic behavior that you want to go away, you replace it with an alternative appropriate behavior.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.

Amy Bukszpan: So you, you can identify and go, look, these are things that scare me. These are things that upset me. I can identify that.

It makes me upset. I can say I'm upset, but then we have to choose an alternative behavior instead of going look. I'm upsetting. It's upsetting. I'm just not gonna deal with it. Which I think a lot of people choose just to not deal with things when they're upset. And that's one. And like athletes [00:20:00] and runners go, oh, this is too hard.

This is too painful. I'm just dropping out of this race. I'm just not gonna do this anymore. I'm gonna stop training. It's too hard. I'm bored. Whatever. Or like business, some people choose to ignore their bills. Yeah. Like I'm not paying this. Like that's not a good, it's never gonna go away. That's not a good answer.

So instead you have to figure out what is it? You can go, this is problematic. I have a stack of bills that are piling up. This is problematic. I need staff. This is problematic. I'm, I'm hurting in a part of this race, but what is the choice that I can do? So, you know, for me, like I have, I have business strategies for work.

Like these are the strategies that I have that can assist me when I have. Financial issues. When I need to talk to somebody, when I have questions, I have a mentor for my business and for behavior analysis, I have a mentor. Mm-hmm. And then for running, I tell my runners, if we're in a race, here are things I can control.

Mm-hmm. Here are things I can't control. If in a race situation this comes up, what do I do then? Yeah. And [00:21:00] here's what my crew knows what to do, here's what I'm flexible about. Mm-hmm. Here's what I'm not flexible about. So it's all a game of. Problem solving if, when these things happen. Mm-hmm. So we have these replacement behaviors.

So you do learn to identify it, and you can have the emotion, but then you gotta move on. Yeah. So like, yeah. Identify it. Say, I'm, I'm in a really bad place right now. I'm, I'm emotionally broken. But we can't stay there. And it's okay. Like, it's okay to feel the feels. Mm-hmm. But it's not okay to like, let everything fall apart on you and then.

At the end of the day, the whole, you, you know, there's other, when it comes to a business, there's other things you have to do. Yeah. You know, at the end of the day with a race, if you decide to drop out, you decide to drop out, but probably the next day you're gonna feel pretty curdy about it anyway.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Would you, would you, would it be accurate if it was like, it's, it's kind of the quickness of the response that you have to it and recovering from the faulty [00:22:00] thought processes.

Is that a, a common theme you see with people that are resilient?

Amy Bukszpan: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We would call it like the latency in it, like the time in which it takes for you to do it.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.

Amy Bukszpan: Um, yeah, I think that resilient people. Will tend to like snap out of it pretty quickly and be able to turn it around. But some, it just depends on what it is and they, I think that you'll also find that there's a support system in place and like people will have like their support circle and those people that they know that they can have and that helps you be more resilient as, as a course of it and help you make those decisions more easily.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.

Amy Bukszpan: Like I said, I have, you know, when you have a crew for runners. When you have a business mentor or somebody that supports you, then you can have, you can have somebody talk you through it, which helps make those decisions and having somebody in your corner.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.

Amy Bukszpan: Um, and I think that it makes that aspect of being resilient come forth a little bit easier.

And I think that, that, you know, you'll find that in other things as well. I think, you know. When people have [00:23:00] traumatic experiences in their lives. Mm-hmm. One of the things that helps them get through those traumatic experiences is having other people in, you know, trusted professionals, trusted family members that can support them in that system.

Well, it's like you, so I think that that's,

Dr. Kevin Christie: yeah. I've even read where, you know, military, they do pretty well when they're in there. Platoons and they're with their fellow soldiers in the thick of battles and, and, and they're, uh, they're pretty good in that sense. It's when they, they leave and they go home and it's, they don't have their band of brothers anymore, like the, the movie show, and they struggle because they don't have that group anymore.

Amy Bukszpan: Yeah, I would say after. After a big race. Yeah. And you go home and you're by yourself. Mm-hmm. Um, plenty of us, the people just get like a little emotionally void a little after you go through one of these big experiences and you're not with the, your crew anymore. My husband has stopped crewing me and showing up at the end of my races, not [00:24:00] because Yeah.

You know, he doesn't want to or anything like that. It's just because he has work and he can't come out for a week. But, uh. You know, it's, it's hard to, to then you have this experience and you have to like, you know, there's like, I would say it's, you know, in building a business, there's all these like little micro traumas that can go on throughout your experience with it.

So learning how to cope and who to talk to about that. As that happens, it's a big deal. And then, you know, you don't wanna go through that again. Mm-hmm. So the same thing with races. People are like scared. Oh, I remember what happened. Remember what happened to me when I was at mile 60, 65, 70. That was really scary in a dark place.

I don't wanna put myself through that. Or, you know, we talk about injury, that memory of being injured. Yeah. You start to feel it happening or, oh, this is how I strained myself. This is how I tore this. I don't wanna do that again. So they stop before it happens. 'cause they're, they're fearful. Mm-hmm. You know, that causes a lot of people to do things.

And the same thing, like I [00:25:00] got burned by business before I put me in financial straits before. Or I hired a person that was similar to this. Mm-hmm. I don't wanna take that risk anymore. I don't wanna put myself out there. So I think you wind up with this like a little post-traumatic experience that you're always kind of riding, but you know, if you're resilient and you can go and you can start to trust.

What you, the systems you've built around yourself and go, you know what, that was that experience. What are the alternatives? Mm-hmm. What can we do? So I always talk about, you know, the, the coin and there's two sides of the coin. And, you know, here's everything I want to have happen and here are the possibilities that, here are the things I have to give up.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.

Amy Bukszpan: To get what I want. Also, here are the things that might occur to also get what I want. Mm-hmm. And am I willing to come into [00:26:00] contact with the bad, to pursue the good And like we talk a lot about values and like, are all my values aligned is what I want? Mm-hmm.

Dr. Kevin Christie: So

Amy Bukszpan: business, if it's with you, want your business, or if it's with ultra running.

So with ultra running, I said a little bit of this before. You have to give up a lot if you want to really reach your good outcomes. I've never seen anybody have a successful a hundred mile race that didn't put the work in. Yeah, I mean, you could. You could definitely go a hundred miles, but you're not gonna feel good.

I wouldn't call it successful. I'd call it like walking. Yeah. Maybe limping across the finish line. 40 hours. I mean, it's not, it's not comfortable. It's not, it's not how I would recommend anybody do it, but you gotta put in the hours, you gotta put in the work, you gotta put the time in. It takes, it takes sleep, it takes nutrition, it takes lifestyle, change it, it takes giving up stuff.

And you have to have all those values aligned. And that's the same thing as starting a business and working in your business and giving up all this. [00:27:00] You have to give up a lot of stuff. When you're invested in what your values are, and then you gotta go, okay, well my other values are my family. My other values is my, my religion and my other values is being able, maybe it's reading a book and having downtime and not doing work and having, you know, this, this Sundays I don't do anything.

So am I okay? Does that fit in with these values? Am I okay not getting those things? And like. Where is that? And then like, you know, the other stuff is what am I scared of and how does that all align? And I think that like, you know, for me with my runners, we have little um. I have them do little tasks and we, we practice this.

Mm-hmm. Like we would do how we train physically. I have them train through these tasks and they have to run through little assignments and think through these strategies and what they're [00:28:00] willing to give up and what they're not. Mm-hmm. And what happens when their values for two different things. Bump pets the when I wanna give time for my kid.

I need to be training at the same time. How do they do this together?

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah, no, it, it makes sense. And one of the things I wanted to define, you mentioned flexibility being a key to, uh, mental resiliency. How do you define mental flexibility?

Amy Bukszpan: Oh, mental flexibility. I think mental flexibility, again, it's another one of those super fuzzy.

Mm-hmm. Fuzzy fuzzies. well, I'll tell you what it's not and we can work backwards from

Dr. Kevin Christie: there. There you go.

Amy Bukszpan: I mean, so we all get stuck in like, this is how it's gotta be. Yeah. And, and, and like, this is how my perfect, my perfect race is gonna go. This is how my. My business has to look.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah.

Amy Bukszpan: And [00:29:00] I've told so many, my runners are like, I don't understand my mental flexibility.

Why we have to be flexible and how we're thinking about this. I don't think it, it, I'm like, trust me, it's gonna help you because when something doesn't show up and you're not, and if you're not prepared for it. Whatcha are you gonna do, you're gonna hold onto and you're gonna be an emotional wreck. So we have these ideas, how things go, and you have to throw it out the window.

Um, and that's really what, that's the heart and soul of mental flexibility, is just being able to go, go a little bit with the flow and not being so stuck and rigid in the way that we think about things. . , We'll go with running and I'll, and I'll explain it through. So essentially in running we're a little bit, we can be very rigid about our paces, our times, um, what we're eating.

Yeah. And, and how we set and how we, how, how that goes about, how many calories we're going to [00:30:00] eat, what we're going to eat, um, throughout a race, throughout a run. Now how we see that that's all that's rigid, just how we perform. Mm-hmm. Um, how we think about it. Also in that rigidity is, again, it's all performance based.

Now being able to wrap our head around. Okay. It's not gonna play out that way. And I'm gonna be a little, I'm gonna be okay if it doesn't. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna be okay if things get a little less strict. Starting to widen our graphs and widening, widen our thoughts on what we can do and how we approach it, um, that starts to get in.

So like the actual performance and real, like, flexibility of what we're doing day to day. Mm-hmm. And then, and how we think about it gets into more of that flexibility of what we're Yeah. How we [00:31:00] approach it. And that's, I mean, this is how I, I train it because we have to do it. I go from a tangible to a like, okay.

A more overt understanding of it to a more covert understanding of it. So they do it and they practice actually doing it to like, um, like having more control over their environment Yeah. To like not having control over it. And then we learn to be more mentally flexible in other ways.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.

Amy Bukszpan: So we do, um.

So it leads to them being more mentally flexible in the way that they approach like racing and performance later on, because they've already learned how to be physically flexible mm-hmm. With how they take in things. I don't know if I'm explaining this very clear. No, it,

Dr. Kevin Christie: it does. And I had taken it on a note, um.

On one of your slides when you were speaking and, and it was the definition of resiliency and it was adaptability. [00:32:00] Mm-hmm. Plus learning, plus flexibility.

Um, yeah. And, and when you, when you apply that flexibility to adaptability and learning. Uh, how that becomes resiliency. Um, what's the learning part? Is that just kind of learning about yourself or learning strategies around it?

Amy Bukszpan: So the learning part, so all of it. Yeah. So all of it has to do, so I, I try to like stepwise at all.

So learning is. We do as, as I was kind of just explaining kind of roughly is yeah, we take everything and uh, and we practice, and we train it and we learn and we compound. So the more times you have to actually practice it in this, in this kind of safe environment, and then we go into a simulated and then we go into a race.

Yeah. So you are practicing it daily learning and then. You have more opportunities for that kind of skill to get reinforced.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.

Amy Bukszpan: So you are, you're learning and inquiring [00:33:00] skills of adaptivity, being adaptable, flexible, and that learning piece all leads to that ultimate resilience. So the more you practice flexibility, the more you're okay with, and this is what I was kind of getting at.

Your nutrition not being there. Mm-hmm. People not meeting you where they need to be meeting you. Something going wrong, say your spreadsheet doesn't load up right or somebody doesn't show up on time. The more you are okay with that and that's your flexibility that shows that you're, the more you're learning, the more learning experiences you have under your belt.

The more you're adaptable to that and to change, the more resilient you're gonna be so that they all work compounded. So the more we can learn from our past experiences, the builder and the, they compound on top of each other. Um, and if we don't have those learning experiences to draw from

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah,

Amy Bukszpan: right.

Then we just wind up just stagnant and we can't move forwards. And if we don't put [00:34:00] ourselves into those learning experiences. Then we don't move forward. So we have nothing to gain. So the idea is every time, you know, I think about like ev, every time I put myself in a hard situation, every time we deliberately manipulate a situation to make it so it's not your ideal.

Like go train in the rain, go train in high humidity, go train in high heat. You're becoming more flexible and your thinking becomes more flexible and you're adapting. Makes sense. You're adapting biologically too, and you're adapting mentally. Mm-hmm. And you're becoming more resilient. So that's all you're learning altogether.

Dr. Kevin Christie: I love that that puts you in those different environments. Um, and I remember you talking a lot about, um, self-talk and I know that's something you've mentioned a few things today where I know for myself personally, I've gotten better with my self-talk over the years. Uh, I've done a lot of work to, to do that.

I'm [00:35:00] not perfect and when my self-talk is failing me. That's where I do rely on my kind of surrounding group of chiropractors in our mastermind group and other mentors I have. Uh, and I know a lot of our, our clients, whether it's our group coaching or mastermind, they've gotten a lot out of that where it's, it's allowed for them to then have that backdrop of, okay, my self talk's not winning right now.

Um, but I've got a group of people that. Can help me on the learning side, uh, or even on the flexibility side of giving them new thoughts and ideas of like, look, you're, you're, you're, you're overthinking this a little bit. How about this here? It's like, oh, okay. And when you hear it from someone else, sometimes that helps you become maybe a little more mental, mentally flexible.

Uh, at least I found that for myself. I,

Amy Bukszpan: I agree. I think like I sit down, I have one particular athlete that I work with. He told me yes. That's the one that's like, I don't understand why, what [00:36:00] mental flexibility has to do with any of this.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.

Amy Bukszpan: And I will never be able to visualize, and I don't do self-talk.

Fast forward a year and he is my, oh he, he's like, I can visualize every blaze on every tree from here on the Florida trail all the way to Lake Okeechobee. And I'm, he, I mean, he's like, I'm talking to myself every day out on the trail in the sauna doing all, and he's my champ. I mean, he's, yeah. He's ready to go.

And I think this, it encapsulates what we're talking about because I had him practicing this skill. Mm-hmm. Like, you practice running, like you practice anything. And he worked with me deliberately on it. Mm-hmm. And I think that there's things that we do and we, we actually, there's a book called. Expert coaching in the world of organizational behavior management, and it's a beautiful book and it's about all these things and these pieces that we can put into place to support workplace.[00:37:00]

Skill development and it, it, that particularly is looking at schools and school scaffolding. Yeah. But it works and it speaks to, it speaks to everything. It speaks to coaching, it speaks to leadership and business development. But we have to be very deliberate and, and purposeful when we're talking with whoever we're talking with about what the skills that we want them to develop.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Mm-hmm.

Amy Bukszpan: And, and that's, you know, when, when I talk and I work, I'm very much. It's very behavior specific.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. And it's

Amy Bukszpan: very targeted. So when I'm working with a runner and we're looking at how are we gonna work at resiliency, adaptability, flexibility for you, it's for you and it's skills that you need to work on.

Mm-hmm. And in the environment they need to work on. When I'm talking with directors that I'm coaching at a school back in New York and they're in a special ed school, it's like, what? What skill do you need to support your team in this [00:38:00] environment? And it might be adaptability and flexibility and the same types of, um.

Same types of traits and, and behaviors, but it's specific for them. And we might be talking the same thing, a little self-talk and visualization before they go into a meeting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and getting themselves prepared for that or before they do a professional development with the whole school, but.

What that rehearsal looks like and what that maybe pump up looks like is very unique to them. But all of these strategies certainly work, and I think you have to make sure, regardless of what the strategy is, that it's very specific for the environment and the individual and that they also, the other key piece that I found is that it is.

Important to them and that they find it important and that we define why it's important to them. I always think a rationale, like a rationale [00:39:00] that's unique to the individual is like, this is why, like the guy, like, I can't do self-talk. I won't do visualization. Well, here's how I, this is gonna help you and here's why it's important to you as you become.

The ultra runner that you wanna be. This is what it's been shown to do. Here's how it's gonna connect you. Here's why you need it in this setting as a leader in the school, and this is what it's gonna help you do and how you're gonna enhance your performance as a director. You know, I think that that too helps tie things.

And we often wanna teach people skills and want people to attain these skills, and we forget to tell them or teach them why it's important to have those skills in the first place. And they're like, oh, why am I doing this? They don't realize the importance that it has for them.

Dr. Kevin Christie: One self-talk that I've, I'm not big on like the motivational rah rah type of stuff.

Uh, I, I like a lot more of the deep rooted stuff that you, you teach and stuff. Mm-hmm. One thing that I did [00:40:00] take from, uh, Navy Seal, uh, I think it was Jocko willing, but he had a thing where, when shit was really hitting the fan. In training or or whatever in the military with the seals, he would just blurt out, alright, full benefits.

And he just meant that like, yeah, if I'm going on a, if we're going on a training run and it's down pouring, this is the full benefits because now I'm benefiting from this crap and now I know I can make through it. Right. And I, mm-hmm. I can do. So whenever things got tough, that's what he would say to himself and his team.

It was like, all right, good full benefits. And that's something I try to do when, when things aren't going the way I wanted to. Uh, I, I do that. The other, there's a really good book that I read by Ethan Cross. I think he's out of the University of Michigan, called Chatter. And I found that really helpful.

And that's essentially what that book was, was about the, the subtitle is, uh, the Voice in our Head, why it Matters. And how to harness it. And he comes at it from [00:41:00] the kinda research side of, of, uh, psychology. And, and I believe it is, it's either Michigan or Michigan State. And, and I thought, I thought that was a really good book for me to have some strategies, uh, around it.

Um, but it's, it's nothing like having a coach do that. And so, um, how, how can our, our audience, I wanna first thank you. For this, this has been amazing and I think it's information that people really need to first understand and then actually work at it because you, you can, you can get better at it. I know that.

Um, so what, what would you say to that person who, who's like, been struggling with this and doesn't see that they can get better at it, and then just finish it up with how they could reach out to you and find out more information?

Amy Bukszpan: Yeah, I think it just takes, pick a small target. What, what small step do you wanna get better at?

Um, and break that down into small component steps. Mm-hmm. And then take it one step at a time [00:42:00] in like, even, even micro components.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Yeah. So

Amy Bukszpan: if it's, if it's self-talk mm-hmm. Self-talk around what. Then how do you wanna go about it? And then make it part of one part of your day and then track it and like, did I do this once today?

Can I then do it twice today? And do it just small little steps and then make it part of your daily practice and hold yourself accountable for it. Um, I, I think that that's a good way to start, you know, as you would start any habit. Yeah. Um, and then if you wanna get ahold of me mm-hmm. I have. A fun website called banana champs.com.

Um, that has a contact page in everything that I do in my coaching world. Uh, easy. And then banana champs on Instagram, banana champs on Facebook. If you start typing banana champs, I'm the only one out there.

Dr. Kevin Christie: What, what's the story behind Banana Champs? [00:43:00]

Amy Bukszpan: Uh, so Banana Champs is a nickname. That I was given the banana champ out in the ultra running world by a Reese director.

Mm-hmm. Um, one. Early morning or late night, depending on what you're calling it. When I was out, uh, accruing for a friend and I put his banana suit on and ran after him and paced him in a hundred mile round and I said, get out of this aid station, or I'm gonna run the whole rest of this race in this banana suit.

Um, and then he purchased a banana suit for me. And ever since then, the banana seed goes everywhere with me. And so, um. Yeah, it stuck.

Dr. Kevin Christie: Love it. Love it. Well, Amy, this has been great. I really appreciate your time and expertise and uh, hopefully I'll see you soon.

Amy Bukszpan: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.