Mandy grew up as a farm girl in rural northern Ontario, Canada. She enjoyed a truly enriching and a self-sustaining lifestyle, with many great lessons for a young girl to learn. However, it’s fair to say that not everything was hunky-dory. She had a father who pushed her way too much. She learned from a young age that being a super-achiever was the way to get love and validation. The 3 P’s were a huge part of her life growing up: Be pleasing, passive and perfect.

Everybody in her family besides her, was musical. They could all sing or play musical instruments and she was just the smart one. It was like a clubhouse that she didn’t have the key to.

She did end up being the first woman in her family to ever to go to university. Her super achieving attitude earned a PhD from Cambridge University. She always had a massive passion for creative writing and in her twenties, she was obsessed with writing for a particular big-deal glossy magazine in the UK. She pitched ideas and wrote to the Editor again and again. When she finally heard back, commending her on her tenacity, she was encouraged to submit a piece. Mandy ended up chickening out and deleted the email.

It was while working as a maternity nurse that an unexpected opportunity came knocking on her door. It led to Mandy getting a job in an investment bank. She learned the ropes and climbed the ranks extremely quickly. She looked incredibly successful to the outside world. However, her overachieving habits ended up with some heavy consequences, because inside she was dying. Her relationships were falling apart, she crashed through two marriages, and her health started falling to pieces as she suffered from severe adrenal fatigue. Yet she clung onto her ‘winning life strategy’. Her journey to heal herself involved acupuncture, seeing a shaman, joining a top coaching mastermind, a spirit animal retrieval meditation, and a dialogue with her vagina.

In 2009, she resigned from investment banking and started her own coaching and corporate training business. For the past few years, she’s been having a love affair with herself, resting, nourishing, meditating, and slowing down. Letting go of old stories and ways of being that no longer serve her.

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

Let’s find out what it means for Mandy Lehto, to be Ridiculously Human.

Your fellow beings,

Craig and Gareth