What if your biggest wins hid your deepest drift?
We sit down with entrepreneur and coach Jamaul Ford to unpack how scaling businesses—and serving everyone else first—cost him his identity, his marriage, and his connection to his own body.
Jamaul opens up about the moment he realized he’d been living on borrowed goals and “nice guy” patterns that masked a fear of vulnerability. Therapy, prayer, and a hard look at covert contracts helped him stop caretaking and start caring—without resentment. He describes the shock of mind-body detachment during divorce and how grounding practices, from feeling the wind to touching grass, rebuilt his ability to sense and name emotions. We talk through the power of journaling, honoring grief, and celebrating milestones so you don’t outrun your own life.
He reshaped his schedule to serve from overflow, not exhaustion, and created Focus Forward, a program that weaves mindfulness, movement, and business frameworks to align health, wealth, and relationships. Along the way, we explore redefining masculinity to include feeling and asking for help, setting new goals after surpassing old ones, and using consistency as your quiet superpower.
If you’ve ever felt wildly successful yet strangely empty, this conversation offers both language and tools for the turn: presence over performance, boundaries over burnout, and small, faithful steps over grand gestures.
Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to tell us the one habit you’ll practice tomorrow. Your purpose gets clearer every time you show up.
To connect, work with or follow Jamaul Ford, do so by visiting his website at www.jamaulford.com or on Instagram @jamaulthemaven
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry, and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Because I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me.
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Released Out Reveal Purpose. And today is Jamal Ford, and he’s hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana. And I’m just so thrilled to have him on because the conversation we had prior to the podcast was really juicy. I know we have an amazing episode set up for y’all. He has a quite a story to share with y’all. It is a story of someone who lost his identity along the way. So who hasn’t done that in life? You start off in a first act and you make you are able to have these businesses and scale these businesses to millions and millions of dollars, but somewhere inside of you, you feel empty. Now, I know anyone who’s listening right now, some of you have been on that path, and some of you have faced a crossroads before. That same as Jamal, where a little voice inside your soul is saying, Stop, this isn’t who I created you to be. You need to surrender to the true purpose in your life. And so without further ado, Jamal, thank you so much for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Thank you so much for having me, Sylvia. I’m super happy and super glad to be here.
Oh my goodness, I know I’m so excited about this interview. I know it’s going to be awesome because I really want to learn from you. I want to learn that amazing story of transformation that you had. How did you scale those millions of dollars? And what was that moment like for you? That turning point that just stopped you dead in your tracks. And how do you question like, am I really meant to be doing this in life?
Yeah, so that’s a great, great um question. And I think it goes into really me trying to find personal identity. So I’m a second-generation entrepreneur. I grew up in entrepreneurship. And so my mom was an entrepreneur, and my dad is a pastor. And so, because my dad is a pastor, a lot of times you can um, you know, being in church and things, you are typically always trying to be a servant and trying to help others and trying to be there for others and doing the best you can for other people. And so the combination of growing up in church and having that, and then also my mom being an entrepreneur, it was a lot easier for me than most to be an entrepreneur and to scale my businesses, but then also help other people scale their businesses. But somewhere along the way, I realized that I was not walking in my true purpose. I found myself taking on other people’s goals as my personal goals and not really knowing what was true to me and finding myself being lost in the process of being there for other people. I even find myself a lot of times even putting more energy towards other people’s goals than they were putting towards their own goals. And so when people will come back and say, Well, Jamal, what do you want for yourself? I would really have no clue. You know, for me, it was more like if everyone around me is happy, then I’m happy. And somewhere along the line, I realized that my true purpose and my happiness and my fulfillment can’t be found in other people’s gratification, if that makes sense.
Oh my goodness, yes, it does. Can I tell you that as you were speaking, the Holy Spirit was kind of leading me down a like a vision, because that’s how he communicates with me, showing me the vision of my past life, of how I did the exact same thing you were doing, as I was en route to my purpose, to this purpose that I’m living out right now as podcast host, as author, as mastermind facilitator. I was doing it for everybody else. First, I did it for the John Maxwell team because I got certified under him. And I remember mentors of mine saying, But so you have so much more to give. You know, why are you promoting his books? Why not write your own books? Halfway through the writing of my first book, uh a good colleague of mine, Amy Lovelin, told me, you know, I’m being led by the spirit to tell you that you have worth inside of you, you have gold inside of you. You need to share that more than your mentor’s information. It’s just tarnishing, it’s blocking you, it’s blocking your light. You need to create your own stuff. And and I remember like thinking, wow, that’s that’s very eye-opening. And even before that, like I remember in before, before the pandemic even happened, I was being pulled into somebody’s goal to make him millions of dollars using my worth, using my light. And luckily the pandemic happened and everything shut down because I started to realize that that it was in my path, that I was just being afraid. Like my fear was blocking me completely. Was that the same for you? Did you find that to be true?
Yes, and it was a subconscious thing. It wasn’t really a conscious thing that I had fear to put myself out there and be the front-facing thing. I was a front-facing person. It was a lot easier for me to say, okay, let me put this other person first and let me put my energy behind them and have let them have success. And it was like a subconscious lack of vulnerability or a subconscious lack of putting myself out there. And it was a form of control that I didn’t realize. I actually, one thing that really helped me was I read this book called No More Mr. Nice Guy. And it and it was a really revelational, like it was a huge eye-opener for me in regards to how I process things and how I grew up and how I actually, how I grew up actually formed the way I actually do things. And it even put me to a certain degree of questioning, should I continue doing consulting? And then it helped me actually reframe the way I go about consulting and go about actually helping people and still having the same energy and drive, but understanding how to still put myself first while making sure I’m doing my absolute best for other people. So yeah, I absolutely uh we’re definitely in line in regards to that. Yeah.
And I I, you know, as a life coach, because I I landed in the life coach not purposely. Let me explain what I mean by that. So in 2017, I had already retired from medical sales. For those that listen to my and see my biography, I was in corporate sales for Pfizer pharmaceuticals, big time job, six-figure salary, bat, you know, full-on, you know, go-getter, type A personality. Because I was raised by one. My father was an immigrant to this country, he came from Mexico, and he was a surgeon in Vietnam. And, you know, when you grow up with someone who is a big time go-getter, and his idea of success is you gotta achieve, and you gotta achieve not just things, but knowledge and position yourself in a certain way, your mind subconsciously takes that as your truth. And it’s not, it wasn’t my truth, that that was his truth. See, but halfway through that first act and after a major medical complication, God kind of took a hold of me and said, Baby girl, you are on the wrong path. Like, that is not the path I had you on initially, and I find that that’s the alignment between you and I, but there was a crossroads where it just, because you mentioned divorce, not in this. We tried doing the podcast interview for those listening, and something was happening with the connection, but I was like, no, no, no, we need to get back into that story. I know you said divorce. Was that your turning point where you finally just said something is up and I’ve got to figure this out?
To be honest with you, it was the start of it. It I wouldn’t say it was the main point. It was the point where, you know, I felt I had done everything I could in my relationship and I did the best I could to make it work. And I was really disappointed because I had always grown up knowing that if I put all my energy toward someone else, I’ll do the absolute best I can in a situation that it would always work out, you know, and it was really like a head scratcher to me that it didn’t when I was putting so much energy towards it. And so I would say it was the start of my journey to finding and realizing um my path um from the stand, and then post my actual divorce, talking to other people and like going to therapy, and then like actually like starting to find and understand myself and understand how, and even the consideration of maybe how I grew up and maybe what I was taught as a child may not be 100% correct, or I may not 100% be, and that’s a really hard thing to grasp from this not from the standpoint of that it may be wrong to see things in black and white and not realize there’s a gray area or there’s areas in between, and then also when you realize that, hey, maybe I have to change my mindset about this, because it’s so ingrained in you to even know where to start in the process, because you don’t know anything else but that. And so, like, it’s it’s what I guess was what’s considered a paradigm shift, or like something that is subconsciously built in you that you have to start to like dive deep in. And so obviously, there’s a lot of prayer, a lot of reading of the Bible, a lot of those things, and like trying to understand, you know, God, why did this happen to me? God, like, where do you want me to go? A lot of those questions, and then also realizing that to get where you have to go, things have to happen before that, right? And even when God wants something for you in the future, the things that happen prior to that have to happen in order for you to be in the position to actually be there. Because if those things don’t happen before, then you would ever never even be in a place of that. I don’t forget one time my ex-wife asked me, she was like, Well, Jamal, what do you want? And I was like, I had no clue. I was like, Yeah, I’m I’m fine. Like, whatever you want to work on, we’re gonna work on that, you know. And she got so upset with me, and I didn’t understand why she was upset with me. You know what I mean? I was like, like, why like you know, because I I would it was for me, it was like, I just want to be there for you. I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can. You know, if you’re happy, I’m cool, whatever. And then there came a point in time where I realized that I was looking for fulfillment through helping her, and then she in return didn’t have the ability to like reciprocate that energy, you know what I mean? And and it can cause resentment, it can cause a lot of things and a lot of subtle things that you can’t people like me, uh people who are considered like, I guess, in the book, nice guys that are that you know, the no one is a nice guy, it’s always said to try harder. Like if you you definitely find yourself trying harder and harder and harder, doing the same thing, not realizing that that’s not what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re supposed to be doing something and trying to find yourself to become a better version of yourself. And then I start to realize that was a reflection in my business practices as well, in regards to, and when I would have certain clients that like a lot of my clients will have success, and a lot of my clients do have success, but the 10% of clients that was not having success, I would take it so personally because I would it would be like, man, like, and I would be putting so much energy towards them having success because I I felt like it was a part of me. Like it, like I felt like if they were failing, then I was failing, right?
It’s funny how we do that to ourselves, right? When that’s not how God shows us. I the way he sees us and the way he loves us is so beautiful. Why is it that we always turn to the failings? We always focus our mind on the failings. That’s a subconscious thing that we’re doing, right? I my therapy, and I’m in therapy myself because of various reasons. I’ve always been very open about it. As a coach, we’re always recommended to get coaching or get therapy so that we can have a clear mind to guide people, right? So there were some issues that were clouding my way, and I proactively sought a therapist. And one of the things that she guided us on when we were in marital counseling was the mind is so focused on the negative. You have to do an intentional thing every day to focus on the positive. Otherwise, it just overruns, it overwhelms you. And like you, we are very quick to be very hard on ourselves, but to reward ourselves for doing the good and promoting the good. Like we couldn’t focus our mind on what we were doing right. Notice how we do that a lot, and it’s very common, very, very common. So in my coaching practice, I always have to remind people and empower them. Look at your journey. You, because you brought this up earlier, God equips us in those dark chapters for what’s coming next. Where we are right now, we are fully equipped to handle. We don’t know that though. We think we we don’t have the equipping, but if we go back in reflection into those dark chapters, we we learned lessons. And when you sit in reflection and you understand that, you realize, wow, I am fully equipped. Like I have this armor, and it’s I have the armor of God, for example, you know, and I have my identity in him. And to produce the fruit of the spirit, we know that we must take those thoughts captive that are not in alignment with Christ and make them obedient to him. And we also have to sacrifice, and I think Paul says it best in the New Testament, crucify the desires of the flesh and make them spirit-led, like really allow the soul to guide. And I find that when we start doing that purposely and we get our fulfillment from Christ and our validation from Christ, we don’t need the noise that we think we do from the outside world. Have you experienced that since stepping into your light?
Yeah, and I would say, you know, what I’ve learned is like in my journey, I know, like the Bible says, you know, my flesh dies daily. So, like for me, it’s one of those things where I’m constantly on my journey. Like, I’m always, so there’s no real finality to my journey from the standpoint of saying, oh, I’ve made it. And I think that’s super important for me because it doesn’t allow me to become complacent. It always puts me in a position to constantly keep growing. One of the things that I started doing, and it was really hard for me, was, and you said you talked about journey and like being on a journey, is actually journaling, like doing the actual journaling part, because that’s more of what we could call self-therapy. Because from the standpoint of focusing on the negative, and you know, when you have those ruminating negative thoughts or those thoughts that aren’t like great for you in the moment, to be able to have a journal and look where you came from and actually be able to actually see it in real time, it is a part of it. Like it is the part of like letting you realize, hey, I’m not where I used to be, and I am growing, even though I may not have like be 100% where I am, uh where I want to be, I’m still on the path. And even I would tell you this one thing that I found that people and I had an issue with was I would set a goal. And then when I would set a goal, I would surpass that goal. And then when I surpassed that goal, I never took the time to set a new goal. And because I did not set new goals, once I surpassed those other goals, those were the times where I found myself most lost because I didn’t real, like I do know I passed the goal up. I didn’t celebrate it the way I should have celebrated it. I just kept working. And because I kept working, I found myself lost in life. Like, you know what I’m saying? And then, and then I found myself not having a point of reference to go back to to find myself back on the journey, if that makes sense. You know, when you you have to have a point of return to be able to move forward when you find yourself lost. But because I never set that goal, because I never set that point because I passed up the old one and I just kept working, that’s when I find myself the most like not where I needed to be. And so journaling really helped me in my journey. And I want, to be honest with you, grounding helped me the most in my journey, like because um I dealt with a huge mind-body detachment, like from the standpoint of I well, people were asking Jamal, how do you like I was to therapy for a year and a half, and my therapist would ask me, Jamal, how are you feeling? And I’d be like, Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. It took me a year and a half to realize he was really asking me, how do I feel? Like, how am I feeling? And the scariest part was I had no clue of how I felt. You know, um, as men, a lot of times, you’re telling you’re put in a position to suppress your feelings, always be manly, always be strong, not express yourself. Like, you know, like we find ourselves in that position a lot of times. And so, and then we grow up sometimes in environments where we’ll see our fathers, our uncles communicate and say, oh man, I’m all right, I’m all right. We never see them expressed when they are vulnerable. And then so now we have an underlying expectation to say we can’t be vulnerable. You know what I mean? And so it affected me so significantly that I did not know how I felt. And so I literally, I want to say like at least three to four months, had to go outside and start to practice mindfulness from a standpoint of like, let me feel the wind, let me touch the grass, let me actually feel things to actually know how to get myself in position to know how I feel, if I’m upset, if I’m frustrated. I when I went through, I will say this when I went through divorce, I in my mind, I was perfectly fine. My body was doing something completely different, like my teeth would be chattering, like I would be experiencing all these physical things, and I’d be like, Well, what’s wrong with me? Like, what’s going on? Like, I was like, but what is like why is my body doing this? Like, I and it, I because I had such a detachment from mind and body, you know what I mean? And it came from, I believe, how society, how I interpreted what society was telling me to be as a man, right? Or to be as a human, right? And to push through it and to, you know, um just kind of man through it, a muscle through it, if you will. I want to say there are a few things that I read that really helped me. And one of the things was in in the Bible, they talk about mourning and time of mourning. And when someone dies, that you know it’s not someone that you’re close to. When someone dies, there’s a three-day mourning period where you’re supposed to mourn, and you’re not supposed to do anything but like just mourn that person. Like it’s not it’s not working, it’s not any, it’s like take the time, let those feelings out. I believe, and I could be wrong. So if someone’s watching this, I will say I might be wrong, but um, if it’s someone you’re close to, it’s usually about like nine months of a mourning period. That you’re not supposed to, you’re just supposed to grieve or mourn. And mourning is not always negative, it has such a negative connotation, but it is putting in the process the the happy times, the sad times, like just and fully embracing. All those emotions. And then once I knew that, I felt like the it gave me permission to be able to not always be great at everything. To to like to say, Jamal, you suck right now. Like not in a bad way. Not in a bad way, but see, I’m not my best version of myself right now. Because I was always taught to push through those times, right? And to say, hey, look, I’m not the best version of myself right now. Let me just sit here for, let me give myself an hour and a half to figure out why I’m not the best version of myself. Let me sit in it, let me feel the feelings. Maybe there’s something subconsciously going on. Let me stop. Let me not try to continue going. Let me give, I’m going to give my and I come to an agreement with myself. I say, I’m going to give you an hour and a half to figure out what’s going on with you, what’s going on in here, but after an hour and a half, we got to push forward. And that’s so much better for me than to keep going, to keep going. Because that that is burnout. That is starting to have resentment towards other people because you find yourself pushing through things for others. If you are a person that works for others and like not fully grasping where you are. And so these are significant things that I think have happened post-marriage in my journey that maybe would have never happened had I still not been going through this journey, if that makes sense.
Yes. Oh my goodness, yes, it does. And I have lots to say. Okay. So here, let’s start unpacking what you said. The whole presence bit of especially men, how you are expected to not feel but to provide, right? So if we take from biblical concepts, the men are actually given the full responsibility of Christ. Christ’s at the head, then the man, then the woman, and then the children, right? So the man’s supposed to lead the spiritual home, spiritually, and not just lead, but but protect and take care of, right? And all of these are big roles to fill, right? So you carry the responsibility. And in our world, in our fallen world, they have told you guys, you can’t feel yet be the strong one. You can’t, you can’t have any kind of feelings about anything. You just have to swallow it and keep going. Because that’s the way, you know, be a man. Stop crying. Don’t do this, don’t do that. It’s such a wrong way to be because we’re all human beings. We are all his heirs and his children. And we all have the same capacity to shine very brightly. And then we come across the layers of doubt that you know are in the layers of our modeling and what we saw at home and the mistakes, the generational trauma that got passed on generation to generation. Nobody’s broken that cycle, right? You probably broke your cycle. I broke mine. And we were the first in our family to probably do that because I actually saw that in just this past weekend when we went to go see my mom for her 85th birthday. I saw how she really lacked the self-love. You know, she kind of kept sacrificing the way that women are supposed to be. You know, the you’re supposed to be this way. You’re supposed to take care of everybody and not take care of your own, yourself. And you’re the caretaker, you’re the nurturer, but some people take it way too far. Like it sounds like you did too. You took it to a point where you stopped feeling. You detached your mind and your body detached from itself, and it’s easy to do. So I just wanted to commend you for recognizing that in yourself to say, wow, that my goodness, that’s what I am doing. And how how do I fix that? Well, let me be in the present moment and just be enjoy, like go out and and put my feet on grass. Like what I did this weekend with my mom. We were on the beach at South Pottery Island. Uh, my daughter was busy, you know, messing with the seagulls and running through seagulls, and it was so joyful to watch her. And we found these two chairs that were from a hotel. And you know, she’s 85 years old. I didn’t want her sitting on the sand. So I we sat down on the on chairs, and I remember just holding her hand and remembering that moment, like making a memory of that moment. And our feet were hitting the sand. Like, what did it feel like to put our feet in the sand? And what did it feel like to smell the ocean and to hear it and to see it? And then the sky was a brilliant blue, like my my blouse. It was so gorgeous outside, and we could feel the wind. And I remember just thanking God for that one moment, and it was so precious, but it’s the way we can continuously be in joy, be in presence, be in our bodies and in our minds, and it’s in full alignment with spirit. Because I find that when ego being our self-image, our soul and our spirit are one, we are in total alignment to who God created us to be. And when that happens, when that alignment happens, it’s magic. It’s there’s not you thrive because even in your darkest chapters, and I’ve faced pretty dark chapters recently, there is joy even in that journey. There’s always joy in the journey, but we must fix our eyes on what’s important, and that’s him. He’s the only one that can show us what we’re doing and our the the shortcoming and the pitfalls. When we read his word and we internalize his word, I’ve been reading it, and not only I’m a big journaler because I’m an author. As you know, I I wrote a book in Faith, I thrive, finding joy through God’s Master Plan. And the whole purpose of that book is to give readers a journey, a glimpse into these big turning points in my life, how I came out of darkness, freed my soul from that fear, stepped into joy unapologetically. And then from that present moment, how to fully surrender to God’s sovereignty. Because when we do, when we surrender to it, we allow Him to take the wheel of our life and stop controlling our circumstances. Like you mentioned earlier, how you controlled your circumstances by not feeling and giving so much of yourself, it is a form of control because then you can hide behind people. You don’t have to look and learn. That’s where most people that most people miss that part, but you caught it. And that I want to commend you for that, because men are very self-reliant. And when that self-reliance can block you from the divine purpose of your life. So tell us more about how you did discover that divine purpose. What are you currently doing? And do you think it’s here to stay, or do you think this is just a step?
Yeah, I have, I have, and I know we only have a little bit of time, but I do have like one, two quick things to say. The first thing I want to say is because you said something, and there’s a big difference between caring and caretaking. Yeah. And a lot of times being caring and giving out of caring is so much better than giving out of caretaking, because caretaking sometimes can have an underlying what we call covert contract. Like if I do this, then I expect this in return. And then sometimes you don’t you find yourself not expressing it, and when you don’t get what you were looking for in return, you can have resentment in those things. And you were talking about that, and I just think it’s super important to make sure that when you are giving, that you’re giving from a place of genuineness, and it’s not something an expectation. And also, men have such a difficult time allowing people to do stuff for them. Like to say, when someone offers, like even in my journey post-marriage, I was dating someone, and they were like, Jamal, like, I don’t know what to do for you. I have no clue how to even be there for you, because it seems like you have everything you need. And in my mind, I was like, oh yeah, it’s fine. But it was not fine because I was not giving that person, to be honest with you, I wasn’t showing up as my authentic self for them to even see where they could help me. Because I found myself showing up as a version of myself that wasn’t old, if that makes sense, right? And and all these things happen on the journey. Now, to answer your question as you ask, how I got to the point of finding myself is very interesting. It’s probably more a lot different than what most people will say. So I’m very business-minded, I’m very logical, and I’m not necessarily an emotional person. And so, which is also I found my to be as in my journey to not to be shielding my emotions as a not a great thing. But how I got to it was from a logical way. So in business, I know that there’s 8 billion people in the world, and all 8 billion people are having issues in one of three things, and that’s health, wealth, and relationships. It’s actually, if you look online, it’s the things that are most sold, right? Either health, wealth, or relationships. And they have a lot of sub-layers like emotional health, physical health, um, psychological health, when it comes to wealth, the same thing, regular wealth, uh, mental wealth, like having a mindset of abundance and relationships, relationships with people around you, relationships with God, spiritual relationships. So all these things kind of trickle down. And so, me understanding that, I realized that I, in my mind, logically, I had to approach it from that standpoint of what is going on with me and looking outward at relationship things, saying, Hey, I can’t deal with that until I deal with the internal things. So let me deal with my health. And one of the most significant things I found was walking. Walking became my thing. And I walk what 30,000 steps a day every morning. Uh and I through that, through that journey, I probably lost like a hundred pounds. But this is very interesting. Like I didn’t start off walking that far, but I started walking because it was the only way I knew that I could show up every day. Like I didn’t have to go to the gym, I didn’t have to work. I just let me just be, let me, I feel like everything’s everywhere. Let me find consistency in something. I can walk, let me just ground myself in walking, right? And so walking became my center or my, it is, it is still today my center. And so as I started walking, my walk started to evolve into like a section of mindfulness, like a section of, like I literally have a section, I have a like I walk maybe three hours a day, like three, three and a half hours a day. Um, and I get so much done on my walk, like from an emotional standpoint, from a learning standpoint, from a business standpoint, but it is a structured walk. And I want to say this because this is important to say influence is really consistency, how you show up every day. Like when you see people online being called influencers, or you see people in your life that have influence, or you see someone that is muscular or come into a place, they have influence on you because even though you don’t see them doing it, you can see the results on it, and you can see that they’re consistent in doing it. And inadvertently, me finding one thing to do every day, I became a professional walker, which is which is really crazy to say. But then I started when people started seeing the mental health benefits, the physical benefits, they started saying, Oh, let me start walking, let me actually start doing these things, because I was around them and I was having influence in how they were showing up, right? So I have um I would say the first 15 minutes of my walk is mindfulness. The next 20 minutes of my walk is prayer. I pray. And what’s interesting, I sometimes I pray my mindfulness. Like I’m like, God, thank you for the wind. Thank you for the birds that I hear. Thank you for me being able to touch the grass, thank you for the river that I can hear. Like I like I like sometimes it’s just being thankful. It’s not asking for anything, it’s just the ability to be here and to be present and to be have the ability to find my way, right? And that’s super important. And then from there it becomes so it it approaches my mental health, my physical health, my emotional health. Then I may find myself listening to audiobooks to help me grow. Then I may find myself, um, you know, I will find myself like learning about how to interact with people better, how to show up as my authentic self better. I sometimes I walk and I just I have a microphone that I talk and I talk to and I keep notes on how I’m feeling. And then I come back and put them up on the computer and kind of journal that way, right? I journal talk. And my walks have helped me so significantly, not only personally, but the people around me from the standpoint of how I show up. Because I put myself first and from the standpoint of like before I would wake up at 5:30 in the morning, I would start working at 8 a.m. Everyone who knows me knows I’m not gonna have my first meeting till 11 a.m. And I’m not gonna see my first client till 1 p.m. And that’s because at 11 I have a meeting with my team to make sure that they have everything that they need going. And then I can show up for other people after lunch, but I have to show up for myself first, right? And and and that was so significant for me in my journey of finding peace and finding myself and finding some level of you know, just in this journey that I’ve been going, like in like I like I say, I always it’s not a fine, it’s not a finality. I’m always going through the journey, right?
And it’s we’re always growing. We’re always leveling up. It’s not a journey to, it’s in the journey, and that’s something that God came up to me recently in one of the dark chapters I was referencing. Baby girl, you’ve already learned this, but let me teach it to you again because obviously you’re forgetting this. You’ve already discovered that there’s joy in the journey, despite the trials and tribulations you’re facing. Because you’re always gonna face them. But I’m with you, and joy is with you, and presence is there for you, and that’s what you’ve been describing these this whole time, Jamal. This is what people are missing, this is what they’re missing. This connection to spirit, this connection to soul. We have been so programmed to pay attention to the outside world. It’s so noisy, man. It is awful, and we have to do the work to truly detach ourselves, and I’ll use your word, from the outside world, and to really be very conscious of our choices of who we surround ourselves with, what we put our energy towards, because it does impact, it does project outward. You can see it in the way, whether you have harmony inside your home, if in your relationships, whether you have harmony in your body, your body tells you when you’re in disalignment right away. It’s super intelligent. It shows you when you’ve burned it out and you’ll collapse. Like in my case, God used my choice of taking birth control pills after the age of 35, even though I was in pharmaceuticals and I talked about side effects day in and day out. I became the statistic and it was like a minor statistic, but there it was. I ended up with pulmonary embolisms, which you and I both know are deadly. Yes. And I had a syndrome called Bud Carey syndrome that was basically um a blood clot in the vena cava that was putting pressure on the liver. I was about to go into acute liver failure and require a transplant. And the doctors had basically told my entire family of doctors um, she has an 80% chance of dying and a 20% chance of surviving the night. And it was Easter weekend of 2012. How interesting that God chose the three days that He was crucified, died, and resurrected to show me what I needed to do with my ego and the desires of my flesh, which were pulling me in the direction not meant for my purpose, not meant for my divine purpose, which is what I’m doing today as an author, as a podcast host, as a coach, uh guiding people. And I will tell you, I’m sure that people that saw you years ago, and people that see you today, they can notice that transformation, right? Yesterday I had a phone call with a former colleague of mine from Pfizer, and he was telling me, so you’ve transformed so much. There’s like no question, you are totally different than the woman I once knew. And I I thanked him for that because sometimes we need uh God sends messengers along our journey to remind us just how far we’ve come. And I know we’re coming to the end of the interview. So how do we find you, Jamal, if we want to work with you? Because you know, you sound like an amazing coach and consultant.
Yeah. So um you can find me on Instagram under Jamal the Maven. Um, you can also go to Jamal Ford.com, J-A-M-A-U-L-F-O-R-D.com. I also have a program called Focus Forward, which is a program that helps people with focusing forward. It is mindfulness, it is walking, it is a lot of helping and guiding through, you know, just things. Many I started focus forward because I realized that in business, when people are having issues in business, sometimes those are reflective in personal life. And sometimes you want to have frameworks or what I consider to be called stacks that not only help you in personal life, but help you in business as well. And so focus forward is really set up for people who are trying to get somewhere in life, are entrepreneurs who are having issues in their business, and it is helped affect them in their personal life and help them find their way. Yeah.
It sounds wonderful. And I’m definitely going to connect with you on Instagram because I’m at coach Sylvia Worsham. That’s how I’m known on Instagram. And I’d love to connect with you there and follow you because I want to get some tips. You know, there’s always blind spots as coaches, so we can coach each other and just say, hey, I saw that you did this, you know. And I really want to collaborate with the people I interview and not or I’m interviewed by. Um, any last words of encouragement you want to leave the listeners of released out reveal purpose?
The only thing I want to say is you want to be, and I say it even before, like you want to be relentlessly consistent. Like you want to find a way. Like when you find yourself lost in life, you want to find you can be really, really lost. And sometimes it’s just that one thing that you can show up and do on a regular basis that can help you find your way. Whether it’s reading the Bible as soon as you work, wake up. One of my favorite scriptures is seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. You take it literally, as soon as you wake up in the morning, you read the Bible. And if you consistently do that, you consistently just find one thing in life to be consistent at and just be relentless at being consistent. You can always use that as the focum to help you find your way.
Oh, wonderful! Thank you so much for that. Words of wisdom, truly. I’ve been blessed just getting to know you, Jamal. Thank you so much for joining me on Release Out Reveal Purpose. It’s been my honor. And for the listeners of Released Out Reveal Purpose, remember Matthew 5 14 to be the light, shine your big bright light for all the world to see because we need you. This fallen world needs you to step into your divine purpose on purpose. We love you. Have a super blessed day. Bye now.
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