Who do people get when they talk to you? Is it your true self or someone you show for approval, acceptance, or attention? Many of us battle with our inner and outer selves. But if there is one thing that is inevitable, it would be how we’ll reveal our true selves one way or another, sooner or later. And when the veil has been lifted, people would ask: “how can you live with yourself?” In this episode, we take a deep dive into ourselves and reflect upon who we display and whether it is in alignment with who we really are. Joining Dr. Kim Grimes is Dr. Joseph Umidi, the Founder and President of Lifeforming Leadership Coaching, Inc. Together, they talk about the importance of being unapologetically you. Dr. J shares his insights on being real versus being religious, going through life with blind spots, and taking care of your inner man. Full of great wisdom, this conversation will enlighten you to become healthy on the inside. Tune in to not miss out!
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How Can You Live With Yourself?: On Being In Alignment With Your Inner Self With Dr. Joseph Umidi
I’m so excited that you are back. Welcome back to another episode. I’m always excited to have you join us. I’m grateful for each and every one of you who has taken the time to read this. I love you for it. We’re still on the same topic. This is the third episode on the topic. Let’s do this. Let’s jump right into the episode. Here it goes.
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Every day and every week, we hear in the news or read in the newsfeed that there’s somebody who was found out. This person had a secret. No doubt. They had something going on in the background of their life. Everybody knows. It has been discovered that they have been living a double life. They have been lying to the people that depend on them, their family, friends, colleagues, coworkers and the people in their community. They have been found out, discovered, uncovered, busted or however you want to say it because they have been harboring and living a secret.
How can they do such a thing? You may ask. How could they live with themselves? How could they carry on for so long, keeping up the charade? Can you see them showing up for dinner, acting normal as if nothing happened and looking into their spouse’s eyes and the children’s faces? How could they betray their friends, their family and their community? They know that one day, it may become public knowledge and once it does, it’s going to destroy everything. It’s going to destroy their family and friendships. It’s going to undermine their career and life.
How can they live with themselves? That’s the question and also the title right of the episode. The reason why it is so difficult to imagine how could they live with themselves is that we put ourselves in their situation and we think, “I couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t do what they did and live with myself.” We tell ourselves, “My conscious and my integrity wouldn’t allow me to do such a thing and live with myself,” but here’s the truth.
The truth is you could live with yourself and I could live with myself. Think about it. If my current self is left untended, if my current inner self is neglected and if the current inner being does not see a better future for myself, I could live with myself. My current self will live with myself in spite of the unhealthy version I have become.
Let me get to the point. When my external self, the side people see, is so far away from what I truly am on the inside, it’s easy for me to think it can’t happen to me and it’s easy for you to think it can’t happen to you. People think about it all the time. It happens all the time. Believe it or not, that is why it happens. In this series, we’re talking about how you guard your inner self or your true being so you can live with yourself. This series is all about you living with yourself.
How can you live with yourself? That’s the title and the topic. Allow me to share a scripture reference to our topic because I am a Jesus follower. I use the word of God as my foundation. Proverbs 4:23 says, “We should guard our heart with all diligence because from out of it flows the issue of life.” This scripture implies that whatever we allow entering into our hearts that is not examined and evaluated properly will undoubtedly be expressed in our lives and our actions in positive and negative ways.
James Allen is the author of a book called As a Man Thinketh. The title is influenced by scripture in Proverbs. It comes from Proverbs chapter 23, verse 7. It says, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” I read this book. It’s a good book. It’s a short and easy read but what I want to do is share a quote from this book. I love this quote. It says, “The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater his success, his influence and his power for good. The calmness of the mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. Men are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves. Circumstances do not make the man. It reveals him to himself.”
In this series, we are interchanging our hearts with our inner selves. I’ll intervene. This is my heart but when you think about it, our mind is our heart as well because that’s how easily thoughts enter into it. We know life has always been kind. We have not always been kind. We know that you don’t have to live long to know that life is hard on our souls. When I say soul, I’m talking about our interior life, our inner being and our hearts. That’s what I’m talking about. You know that inner part of you that fears, worries, hopes, dreams, wishes and experiences disappointments and failures all while putting on a happy face.
Here’s a question. Whom do people get when they get you? Whom do people get when you show up, go to work and go to school or when hanging out with your friends, interacting with loved ones and spending time with your spouse and your children? Whom do people get when they get you? How do you show up? Are you one way with a group of people and another way with persons of another group of people? Is your person on the outside different from the person on the inside?
Here’s the thing. Whether it’s our appearance, our performance or our reputation, we attend to those outward things so much faster than we do our inner things. Why? It’s because we know people are watching and expecting. We’re competing for approval, acceptance, attention and progress. It’s natural to pay attention to our exterior. We all have a public life that is on display every single day but there is only one person who can be attentive to your soul. There’s only one person who can be attentive to what’s going on inside your heart and inner being.
The question is this. How can you live with yourself? What habits do you have that will ensure that the self you’re living with is the self that is on display? What convictions, values and beliefs do you have that will ensure that what people see on the outside is what they’re getting? Here’s a fact. Even if your inner being, my inner being or our inner being is a super healthy inner being, if left unattended becomes super unhealthy. We all know that nothing gets better when left unattended.
The health of our inner being determines our capacity and ability to live with the version of ourselves that we don’t like or the version of ourselves that we never desire to be. The health of your inner being and my inner being determines how wide that gap is between who you are and whom you pretend to be. It determines how far that gap can expand before you finally crack, confess, break down or be found out. The health of our inner being, your heart, my heart, your soul and my soul has very little tolerance for a lack of integrity.
A healthy heart realizes when what is going on the inside is not reflected on the outside and what’s reflected on the outside is showing up better than what’s on the inside. This healthy inner being will say to itself, “We got some work to do.” The healthy inner self is one. Their integrity on the inside and the outside is in sync. The health of your inner being, my inner being and our inner being determine how far things can go before your conscious and my conscious won’t let us pretend any longer.
The health of your soul determines how willing you are to lie to other people and how easy it is for you to lie to yourself. When you are no longer the self you used to be, when you’re no longer the self you want to be and when you’re no longer the self you always thought you would be, that’s the true you that people can see. You are truly neglecting the health of your inner self. Neglect the health of your inner being and it will ultimately come back and haunt you. It will hurt you. More specifically, it will hurt the people who are most important to you.
Don’t fool yourself. I’m not going to fool myself either. I have the potential. You have the potential. We all have the potential to become someone whom we despise. Our inner beings are left unattended. We could become unimaginable. You could do the unimaginable and live with yourself. I can do the unimaginable and live with myself because people do it all the time. It happens all the time because they think, we think, I think and you think, “It could never happen to me.”
Don’t get it twisted. The difference between those who avoid becoming unimaginable and doing the unthinkable is the health of their inner beings, the health of their heart and the health of their soul. They have the willingness and the ability to pay close attention to what’s going on inside. Let me ask you. Do you pay attention? If not, how can you live with yourself?
This is our second guest that is coming on and diving into this topic with me. You know what we do here. We pick a topic and bring multiple guests on to talk about the topic. We want different perspectives because we have diverse audiences. Before we jump into the conversation of how can you live with yourself, I must introduce my guest. This guest is phenomenal. Every guest that I bring on is phenomenal but this guest of mine, we go way back. This guest has influenced my life in a major way. I am so grateful for it. Without this person’s presence, who knows what prefix would be in front of my name?
My awesome and phenomenal guest serves as the Executive Vice President and a professor at Regent University, having also served as an interim dean and professor during his 32 years of service. He has researched and discovered keys to accelerating student retention and trained all the university staff in developing a retention culture. That’s a powerful culture. During his tenure, he has served in senior leadership roles in several churches. He is the Founder and President of Lifeforming Leadership Coaching Incorporated, a coach training organization worldwide led mostly by alumni in 25 countries.
In fourteen languages, he has authored numerous articles and books dealing with organizational and personal transformation. He is working on community and international transformation strategies in developing nations. He is married to the beautiful Marie, Founder and President of TMCJ Incorporated. They’re delighted grandparents of three grandchildren. He is truly a trailblazer in so many ways. I appreciate his awesomeness to the uttermost. Please help me welcome Dr. Joseph Umidi. I call him Dr. J. I’m excited for you to be here. Welcome. Please share with our audiences, they must know, how we met.
Regent University has been a privileged platform that I’ve had. I was pastoring in Canada for thirteen years before I came down to Virginia Beach in 1985. Somewhere close to the late ’90s or 2000, I developed a coaching curriculum. I believe you were one of the early adopters in there somewhere. I forgot what year it was but I met you in Master’s courses in which you took the entire coach training curriculum. Once you got ahold of it, it got ahold of you. You were so good at it and passionate about it that I was amazed. That’s where it started. I don’t know if I gave you the idea or if you came back to me with the idea. Next thing I know, you’re going after a doctorate.
Let me tell you the story. Dr. J is correct. I was doing my divinity. I wanted to start in divinity. I had to do the Master’s program. You were one of my professors. When I went into your class, I was like, “This is so amazing.” You’re so real and down to Earth. I loved everything about you. I believed it was a divine connection because you began to start talking about coaching and that was the path that I was on. I was looking for that. I realized, “I don’t want to do this divinity thing.” It was you who made me aware of the doctorate program that Regent had with an emphasis on coaching.
Once I changed, I signed up for your program as well, which was amazing. I wound up finishing your program through Regent because you had it within Regent as well. You introduced coaching to Regent, which was amazing because a lot of the academia wasn’t on that train at all. It was an amazing thing that you did. It’s a huge accomplishment. I want to say thank you for that because if it was not for you, I would not have my coaching certifications and I would not have Doctor in front of my name.
I want to acknowledge you for that. Thank you so much for playing an instrumental part in me making that decision and influencing me so that I could go down that road. I am honored to have you on. We go back. We have been communicating and connecting with each other. It has been over ten years now, which is cool. Thank you again for being here, Dr. J. I call him Dr. J. His last name is Umidi but Dr. J is so much easier. The J is for Joseph. It’s Dr. J all day long. Let’s jump into the topic. Here’s one of the first questions that I like to ask all of my guests. What does it mean to you, Dr. J, to be you unapologetically? What does that mean to you when you hear that?
That is great because I wasn’t always me. I was a religious person, meaning I had rules and policies. I always could measure, compare and judge others by them. I was a mess. You’ve heard me say this. I hope my tombstone will say, “He was getting to be more real than religious.” When I’m me, I’m an open book. I’m able to not have prepared notes. I go with the flow and trust that what I say is up to date. It’s not rehearsed. It’s going to be real. The only way you can do that is if you’re living that way because you can’t tell other stuff. Something could slip out.
I’ll never forget the time that my wife and I were tag team teaching. We rarely do that because she has musical gifts and stuff. All of a sudden, she told this group of about 100 singles, “One day my husband got mad and threw a shoe at me. I ducked and it hit the wall.” I turned red in front of all these people. The people thought that I couldn’t be real. The problem was I couldn’t remember it. That night, we were in bed. At about 2:00 in the morning, my wife sits up and goes, “It was me that threw the shoe.” In other words, I was so embarrassed but I had a turning point where I had to tell people if I threw a shoe. I couldn’t remember it and I felt like I was hiding something.
I’ve thrown shoes. I’ve thrown a fit. I’ve had road rage. I’ve been that way. I’m not perfect. When you’re up in public, you can’t fake it until you make it. If you’re going to be real, people are going to hear you. Here’s the deal. I believe that so many young people listen and see the PowerPoints and the polished presentation. Here’s what they’re asking, “Does this stuff work when they’re off the platform? I have enough problems in my life. It doesn’t work with your relationships, marriage and finances. I got enough trouble already. I have to add religion and pretend to the pressures I already have. No, thanks.” That’s the problem with not being real and being religious.
I appreciate you saying the religious compared to being real because that’s something that I tell people as well. I’m not religious. I’m a Jesus follower. Jesus told us to do one thing and he said, “Follow me.” I follow him. I appreciate that so much. It’s about being ourselves. That’s why the name of this show is You Are You, Unapologetically. We want you to be yourself. With that, let me ask you. Are you happy with yourself? Would you say you’re still working to become the person you can live with?
I’m a lot happier camper than I used to be. When you saw me, I was a young man. I’m having my 50th wedding anniversary in 2023. Can you believe it? If you’re asking me if I’m happy with the person I am, you better ask my wife because she’s the one that has to live with me. Here’s the deal. We all have blind spots. We all see through a glass darkly. We all prophesy in part. We all have sinned. Everyone has turned his way and because of that, how do you deal with the blind spots?
If you Google something called Johari Window, it explains it in a secular scientific way that when you have a blind spot, you don’t have a blinker on the side of your car. I’ve got this thing that blinks if there’s a car in my blind spot. My wife’s car doesn’t have that. I get nervous because I can’t see the blink. What is the blink? The blink is other people have access to speak the truth to you in love that you’re going down this road again. You’re stuck. You’re thinking. It’s your limiting beliefs that you’re making excuses for. If you don’t have somebody blinking the light, then you don’t get to have that light shine on the blind spot. You go down the road of your life every day with part of your life that you don’t know.
You don’t see it but you see the wake you leave behind with other people. It’s an emotional wake. It’s a not-very-friendly wake. People don’t feel that great when you’re around them. Dr. Kim, you’re amazing. You have so much energy. You don’t put it on. I’ve never seen you like, “She’s putting her makeup on and her pretend happiness.” You’ve always been that way for the 15 or 20 years I’ve known you. You are the real deal. You’ve allowed people to speak into your life as well. That’s one of the keys to this whole thing I’ve discovered.
I love the example you shared with the blinking light and the blind spot because we go through life. We do have those blind spots and we do make mistakes. It’s owning the mistakes. Like what we’re talking about, we’re looking at and managing our inner beings. That’s why we can live with ourselves and say, “I can live with myself because I’m not leaving my inner being unattended. I’m guarding it.”
Dr. J, I’m in that space as well where I’m guarding my heart. I am being mindful. When I say my heart, I mean my mind as well because I’m mindful of the people who are allowed to speak to me because I’m not quite clear or sure where they’re coming from. I have to guard my heart. It’s something that I share with people as well in doing that but not only that. Guarding my heart is critical because of different incidents and situations that have occurred in my past that caused me to doubt myself or second-guess myself. With that, I’m even more cautious. Has there been an incident in your life that caused you not to want to be yourself and show up fake or phony?
One time, I was preaching. After you preached, the preacher or the pastor goes out in the lobby. People go out and greet you. A woman came up. She’s one I appreciated. She shook my hand. There are people standing all around. She said, “Pastor, I’m going to the hospital for cancer this week.” I interrupted, blurted out and said it too loud on purpose, “I will come and visit you every day until you get out. I’m a man of God.” Here’s the problem. I hate going to hospitals. The hospital was an hour’s drive away. She was in for 40 days. I had to say what I meant and meant what I say.
I learned that day to not huff and puff and put on a show because I had to show up if it killed me. I said, “From that day on, I was going to say what I mean and mean when I say.” How do people know what’s the barometer to even measure how you’re doing in your heart? The Bible says, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” What is your mouth speaking? If it’s flattery, if it’s overpromising and under-delivering or if it makes you look good, those things don’t work for me.
I’m a big learner of conversational intelligence and how to ask more and better questions. The thing that I’m learning is I can snuff out a fire or fan it into a flame depending on what I say to myself and others. We’re in a little bit of a season where God is doing personal revival in people’s hearts. It’s happening on college campuses. I’ve been seeking the Lord. I was spending a couple of hours with a small group of people. This elderly woman came up to me and said, “This may sound weird but I have something for you. It’s two words. Trust God.” I couldn’t believe she said that because I was doubting some things.
God was putting me over my head in having to believe, having to have faith, having to speak faith and having to not criticize myself or others. That simple phrase got me back because my heart was getting way down with the worries and anxiety. Somebody said something to me that I hadn’t heard that way before. He’s talking about the financial pressures people are under, the stock market, the banks and everything going on. His phrase was this, “Nobody can take care of you like Dad.” He meant the Father God. I thought, “That cuts through all the worry. God has got this.” How often do I say things like that to cut through the anxiety and worry in people’s lives?
Nobody can take care of you like God the Father. Click To TweetIs my heart also filled with worry, fear and stuff so that when I talk, it doesn’t drive out the worry or fear? That’s the key for me. Either my words fall on the ground and don’t bring forth anything or my words are apples of gold and settings of silver. It’s the words that sustain the weary, uplift and cause people to feel prized. It’s words that are life-giving, Eulogia is the Greek word for build up and bless. That’s how I measure. When I’m not doing that, it’s a good indicator that I’m not attending to the inner man and the heart because the thermometer or the barometer of that is the words that I’m speaking.
That is so on point, Dr. J. I was listening to Joseph Prince. I follow him a lot. He said something like, “When you meet people, how do you leave them? Do you leave them wishing that they never met you? Do you leave them wondering? What are the words that you’re using when you do meet people? Are you saying things that are derogatory where you’re making them feel bad or not valued or you’re making them think they don’t matter? Are you edifying them, pouring into them, lifting them and ensuring that when you leave them, they’re better than when you appeared or showed up?” They’re smiling more. They’re happy. You see the joy in them. I get it.
Let me ask you. I know that in times when I was not managing my inner being where I left it unattended, I noticed that it not only impacted me but it also impacted the people that were around me, my husband and my family members. I wanted for you to share if there was a time when you weren’t managing your inner being well enough to where you are now. How did it impact the people that are around you negatively or positively?
I’m trained. I got degrees and certifications but then because there was a time for a couple of years when I was not attending to my inner man, I didn’t have up-to-date stories. I didn’t have any testimonies. I didn’t have anything exciting. I was a boring professor, pastor, husband and father. One day, I went to a restaurant to pick up this well-known gentleman. I didn’t want to talk to him much because I was boring and I didn’t want him to know. I walked into a restaurant. I never met him.
I was driving for twenty minutes. He stood up and walked over, “Dr. Umidi, I recognized you from the website. Can I ask you a question?” “No problem.” I’m hoping it’s a question like, “Tell me about Williamsburg. Tell me about the history.” I could have talked all day about that and he never would have known how boring I was. Here’s his first question, “If you keep doing in the next five years what you’ve been doing in the last, where will you be in terms of God’s dream and purpose in your life?”
I about dropped dead on the spot because I told him the truth. I don’t know the way he asked it. I said, “I’m not in a good place here. I haven’t been attending to my heart. I’ve been coasting. I’ve been on a plateau. I’ve been drifting. You don’t drift into flourishing. You drift into a ditch or a rut.” All he did for the next 20 minutes was ask me 5 of those questions.
I went into a tailspin of reflection for the next few weeks and made a decision. I said, “I want to do what that guy is doing somehow. I’m going to train people to do it so that every time they meet somebody if we are intentional, we can make a difference in total strangers.” That has been my passion. The only way I can do it is I have to be awake when I’m in the grocery store or the gas station. I can’t live in my little shell. I have to say, “Lord, here am I. Send me. I’m commissioned.” I get to have the fun of asking somebody a question. I say, “Are you having a good day? What’s making it a good day for you so far?”
“You mean you’re interested in what I said? Do you want to know?” You take an interest in a person and then come back a week later. Pretty soon that person’s looking for you because you’re the only one that’s looking for them. You are making their day. You’re intentionally using words because your heart is on fire. My favorite verse is Luke 24 where they said about Jesus on Emmaus Road, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us on the road and while he opened the scripture?”
We all know that the word of God brings fire but what you’re talking about is to attend to your inner man or your heart so that out of the abundance, the words you speak will ignite, as Jesus did, fires in people’s hearts even when it’s plain glass, not stained glass and even when it’s Emmaus Road, not Jerusalem Road or some other road. Any road in our life is a candidate for building people up through our words and our hearts.
I love when you said you’re awake. I call it being present because we’re too busy being busy that we don’t know how to stop and get present with someone. You’re calling it being awake and intentional. I too love to do exactly what you do. Stop and be present with someone. I tell people, “You don’t have to say anything sometimes. You can show up. Your presence alone will fill the room and touch people who are in the room because you are in the room.” I appreciate that. Let me ask you. What advice would you give someone who realizes that their outside or exterior is different from their inside, interior or inner man? How could you support them to become healthy on the inside?
Get it right down to the bottom. It’s a battle for their identity. There’s self-talk. People have childhood tapes. They have been bullied, minimalized, marginalized and categorized. What they say about themselves keeps them separate from who they want to be and can be. In many ways, you go to your grave with those voices but you need another voice to trump that and speak better things. You need to learn how to build yourself up. You need to learn how to be with people that are building you up. You need to practice building up others. Give and it shall be given unto you.
A lot of it has to do with realigning the talk with the walk and the words we say about who we are. Just because you messed up doesn’t mean you’re a mess. You’re not a mistake. Your identity is not defined by some mistake you made. If a righteous man or woman falls seven times, they get up. You keep your eyes on the prize. You’re not going to be defeated by some experience. I do believe you are on the right track. People have a champion spirit. They’re becoming conversational champions. They have the heart of a champion. They’re going to have a lifestyle of creating other champions around them.
Just because you messed up doesn't mean you're a mess. You're not a mistake. Your identity is not defined by some mistake you made. Click To TweetThank you for all of the amazing tidbits and examples. I love to call it a juicy mouthful of wisdom that you have given us and shared with us. There are people I’m quite sure that would love to be in contact with you. Can you please share how can they get in contact with you? If anyone wants to reach out to you, Dr. J, how can that happen? Can you share some takeaways or some closing remarks based on the topic? I am so elated that you’re here. Please share with our audiences how they get in contact with you. What is it that you want them to take away based on what you shared?
I can be reached through Lifeforming Coach, which is my website and my nonprofit. You can reach me at Joseph@LifeformingCoach.com. You can look around there. There’s something called Real Talk or Conversational Champions. My passion is to help change the quality of the mealtime table talk, change the quality of nighttime tuck-in talk with your kids or grandkids and change the quality of those moments. I call them Teachable Moment talks. When we can shift the quality of the conversation in the home, we’re going to have people who are in alignment. They’re not fragmented but they’re integrated. There’s integrity. They’re coming aligned with the inside and the outside.
Conversations make the difference in the kingdom of God. It’s like real estate. It’s about relationships but in relationships, it’s about conversations. That’s the way God has designed it. Our words speak life or death to ourselves and others. I would encourage people to get some training, self-study or a workshop on how to have better conversations. It will change everything at work and home. I call it conversational intelligence. With that alone, we could see a huge difference in our young people and the people that are mentoring them being in alignment and not being one way for one person or one for another.
That was amazing. Thank you so much. If you are interested in reaching out to Dr. Umidi, please reach out. He provided his information. Thank you, Dr. Umidi. Thank you so much for saying yes. You will always be my friend. You will always be the person who pointed me in the right direction and said to me, “This will work for you. Consider that. Think about that.”
You were right. I am so grateful. Thank you. It’s because of you, your influence, your insight and your guidance and because you were real. That is why I draw to you in that class, even though you were saying, “By the time I met you, you weren’t born.” I’m glad that part is over. I’m so grateful for you being you. I’m grateful that you said yes to being on my show. Thank you. I can’t thank you enough.
Keep up the great work. See you soon.
Here’s what we know. We know that it’s easy to lose ourselves in clashing ideas, conflicting beliefs and the flood of information. With that, ask yourself. How many decisions are you away from screwing up your life or wrecking your life? In society, we know there are rigid expectations and endless opinions. Self-expression and self-appreciation feel challenging and daunting because it’s not accepted. When you are around people that don’t embrace self-expression or self-appreciation, most of the time, it pushes you to dumb down, hide and not be whom you were created to be. You go with the flow instead of being you unapologetically.
It means being true to yourself, being true to how you were creating and not allowing people’s opinions to affect how you show up in life. Do not allow that to happen because, at the end of the day, people are going to talk no matter what. I want you to be you unapologetically. You have no time whatsoever to be intimidated by the presence of others and think little of yourself. We don’t have time for that. Who got time for that? There’s no time for that at all. When you show up without pretense and hesitation, the world can’t dull your glamor and light.
Most importantly, you will be inspired to not only shine your life. You will share your gifts and talents and help others to tap into their brilliance. Let’s put an end to the disparaging mindset and begin to own our authentic selves because that’s what people want. They want your authentic self. Join me here on the next episode. Remember, we always create a safe place where we will initiate influential conversations about you being you because you are you unapologetically. No one is better at being you than you. Thank you so much for checking in with us. We will see you in the next episode. Take care, everyone.
Important Links
- As a Man Thinketh
- Lifeforming Leadership Coaching Incorporated
- Joseph Prince
- Joseph@LifeformingCoach.com
- Real Talk
- Conversational Champions
- www.LifeformingInstitute.com
- www.NewLife.cc
- www.Regent.edu/acad/schdiv/faculty_staff/Umidi
- www.ThePlay.net
About Dr. Joseph Umidi
Dr. Joseph Umidi serves as Executive Vice President and Professor at Regent University, having also served as Interim Dean and Professor during his thirty-two years of service. He has researched and discovered keys to accelerate student retention and has trained all the University staff in developing a retention culture. During this tenure he has served in senior leadership roles of several churches.
He is Founder and President of Lifeforming Leadership Coaching, Inc., a Coach Training organization world-wide led mostly by alumni in 25 countries and 14 languages. He has authored numerous articles and books dealing with Organizational, and Personal Transformation and is working in community and international transformation strategies in the developing nations. He is married to Marie, Founder & President of TMCJ, Inc. and the delighted grandparents of three grandchildren.