338: Is Midlife Messing with Your Enoughness? + Busting Not Enough Scams with Mandy Lehto

09/03/23 • 51 min

“Legacy isn’t something you leave, it’s something you live.”

These are just some of the wise words from this week’s guest, Mandy Lehto, who shares strategies for letting go of being a hard-o-holic, nexting, navigating mid-career pivots, and busting all manner of other “not enough” scams.

More About Mandy: Mandy Lehto is a speaker, writer and coach with a Doctorate from Cambridge University and in her former career she was a director at a global investment bank. Mandy is the host of Enough, the podcast, a show for recovering perfectionists and overachievers. When Mandy isn't coaching leaders, she's parenting her two musical teenagers with her husband, or walking Herbie, her toy poodle, on Wimbledon Common.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

“Legacy isn’t something you leave, it’s something you live.” What if you embraced more of who you are, quirks and all, rather than trying to please or achieve?
Not-enough scams are false beliefs, that once we play through them enough times, becomes automated. Our mind wants to automate as much as it can.
Nexting is our compulsion to continue being dazzled by the mirage shimmering on the horizon that the next thing for sure will fill the void inside us.

✅ Try This Next

Pick your inner critic that hogs the mic and name it, even something provocative (Mandy’s is Judgy Janet). And also name your inner champion, the wise voice that’s always rooting for you. Give them fun names so you don’t take this all too seriously :)

📚 Books Mentioned

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Mandy on the web, Instagram: @mandylehto, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest
People: Arthur Brooks
Articles: Jennifer Lopez article in Vogue
Video: Mark Hyman’s podcast with Robert Waldinger

🎧 Related Episodes

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes at

“Legacy isn’t something you leave, it’s something you live.”

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

“Legacy isn’t something you leave, it’s something you live.” What if you embraced more of who you are, quirks and all, rather than trying to please or achieve?
Not-enough scams are false beliefs, that once we play through them enough times, becomes automated. Our mind wants to automate as much as it can.
Nexting is our compulsion to continue being dazzled by the mirage shimmering on the horizon that the next thing for sure will fill the void inside us.

✅ Try This Next

📚 Books Mentioned

🔗 Resources Mentioned

Mandy on the web, Instagram: @mandylehto, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest
People: Arthur Brooks
Articles: Jennifer Lopez article in Vogue
Video: Mark Hyman’s podcast with Robert Waldinger

🎧 Related Episodes

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter

💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey

☎️ Submit a question or comment for future episodes

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes at

Previous Episode

337: Cut Your Losses—Even While Pivoting in Public—with Khe Hy (Free Time Crossover)

“How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” —Ernest Hemingway

That’s the kick-off quote from returning guest Khe Hy’s recent pivot-in-progress big reveal, taking us behind the scenes of his business in a recent post titled, “The $645,099 business pivot.” Khe is the founder of RadReads and former Wall Street managing director.

Khe returns to the pod today (as our first three-peat Free Time guest) to share his experience from the belly of the Pivot beast. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Khe’s earlier Free Time appearances, linked in the Resources section below and in this Spotify playlist: RadReads x Pivot x Free Time.

This crossover episode originally aired on the Free Time podcast on March 21, 2023.

More About Khe: Khe Hy is the founder and CEO of RadReads, an online education company that helps professionals lead productive, examined, and joyful lives. Khe is creator of the $10K Work productivity method and teaches the popular cohort-based course Supercharge Your Productivity. RadReads provides guides, trainings, and coaching for over 36,000 professionals to help them gain back free time, scale their impact and make their little dent in the universe.

🌟3 Key Takeaways:

You’re not alone: Don’t feel bad if you caught a momentum wave during the pandemic that has vanished since. It can feel like you’ve captured success in a bottle, and it will continue just the way you’re experiencing it now, but the same circumstances rarely last.
Borrowing other people’s goals can lead to chasing arbitrary success metrics and other people’s work-life balance. Instead, follow the fun! Ultimately, it will be much more sustainable.
There’s freedom and surrender in openly sharing your process. Many entrepreneurs are not straightforward about how difficult it can be to maintain and grow a business, and being outwardly transparent helps you be inwardly honest about what you really want to accomplish.

📝Permission: To feel. To cry. To fully experience and talk about what you’re going through. Your humanity in the situation is not at odds with who and how you want to be as a founder and CEO—they are perfectly intertwined.

✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Get quiet: What is it that you truly want? What part of my business is driven by ego and “borrowing other people’s goals,” and what part is driven by the pure magic of it? For any friction area where you feel stuck or drained, take a page out of Khe’s business playbook and “follow the fun.” What would following the fun tell you to do next?

📘Books Mentioned:

🔗Resources Mentioned:

Khe on the web, Instagram: @radreadsco, TikTok: @radreadsco, Twitter, LinkedIn
Courses: Supercharge Your Productivity, $10K Work Accelerator, Life Operating System, Jenny’s Free Time Business Operations Dashboard
Rad Reads: The Magic of Doing $10,000 Per Hour Work

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

Spotify playlist: RadReads x Pivot x Free Time
145: Tips for Training Part-Time Team Members with Kaneisha Grayson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Episode

339: Moneyzen—Leaving the Cult of More with Manisha Thakor

“To live a rich, joyful, and connected life . . . achieve less.” That’s the counterintuitive path to MoneyZen that this week’s guest Manisha Thakor shares.

For the first half of her life, money represented a scorecard of self-worth and a sense of safety. She says, “For a long time, the equation I operated on was net worth = self worth (which has no end in sight).”

Even with abundant salaries from her financial services roles, Manisha fell into The Cult of Never Enough, often displayed in “the peacock feathers of possessions.” Listen to learn more about the powerful shifts she made toward joy-based spending instead.

More About Manisha: Manisha Thakor is the author of MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your "Enough” and has worked in financial services for over thirty years, helping individuals of all ages to balance financial health and emotional wealth.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

Societal forces are constantly telling us we should earn more, so we can buy more, in order to be more, “the peacock feathers of possessions”
Buy few, but buy the best you can afford at that time
MoneyZen (calm, confidence, clarity) = Financial Health + Emotional Wealth

✅ Try This Next

Try joy-based spending. Take a piece of paper, and every time you spend money, write down the item and the amount. At the end of the week or month, highlight anything you spent money on that didn’t bring you joy, what Manisha calls money leaks. Bonus: Every day, eliminate one thing you no longer need from your life (either clutter around the house or even obligations or meetings you no longer want to keep).