Pump Up Your Book Chats with “Finding Home” author Joleen Bridges

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ABOUT JOLEEN BRIDGES

Joleen is a life-long Missouri resident and currently resides in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Besides writing, Joleen’s favorite things to do are; hang out with family, travel, read, and pretty much anything related to nature. Joleen is passionate about the topics of consciousness, enlightenment, spirituality and personal empowerment. Her debut book,Finding Home, Breaking Free from Limits, available at Amazon.com and on the book’s website, represents over 10 years of research and a lifetime of inspiration to present readers with a comprehensive look at understanding and releasing our self imposed limits to discover your authentic potential and divine authority to live a life by design.

Joleen also has other inspiring articles on her book’s website, www.breakingfreefromlimits, that may interest those on a path of enlightened consciousness. You can contact Joleen for speaking engagements or for questions about her book via email @ jhallo03@hughes.netor through the book’s website. Joleen is currently working on her next spiritual empowerment book and is now accepting feedback and comments on her website towards topics of interest to the spiritual seeker.

The Interview

Q: Can you tell us why you wrote your book?

First of all, I want to thank you so much for the interview. I wrote this book because I felt there was a need to write about what I learned and experienced after what many might call, “a walk through hell.”
My original intent as a writer was to write fiction, and I had spent many years researching and preparing to write a historic fiction that I had been dreaming of writing. But then, my life took a turn towards some tough life challenges and during that time I began a serious quest to find a deeper meaning and purpose in life. Ultimately, this led me to a compelling interest and study of religion, spirituality, metaphysics, psychology and philosophy. I read well over 100+ books on these topics and I experienced many residual awakenings. After all this reading, inspiring as it was and life changing certainly, I felt that there were gaps in many of the author’s approaches and in their ability to both inform and teach. In other words, using a simply example, I might tell a reader how their sink got dirty, but then only share that you need to scrub the sink to get it clean, not necessarily share with you the many ways you can scrub or what products to use, or how to care for it after cleaning.

I began to feel compelled to write a book that filled in some of these gaps and provided readers with a new perspective on the human condition of personal limitations and then share the many, many ways to transcend them. I was driven to share what I learned and was experiencing in my life. Honestly, I never dreamed that I would end up writing a non-fiction book when I began my dream about being an author, but writing this book was truly something I felt directed to do after my journey out of the “valley of shadow of death.”

Q: Which part of the book was the hardest to write?

I would have to say the beginning. I had a strong outline of how I wanted to approach the book, but just the first impetus to get the book started was probably the most challenging.

Q: Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about?

Definitely. The overall theme of the book is overcoming limitations. We all have our own versions of how we limit our highest self and our divine life to prevent spiritual evolution. No matter how many changes we make in our lives, unless we get to the belief systems and conditioning that created the limit in the first place, then these changes may likely be overshadowed by the same limitation again. In order to touch true change, the limit must be understood, contemplated in a compassionate way, and transcended or dissolved into nothingness. Freedom, which is another way of describing unbounded limitlessness, is the goal within the book. The book shares with readers the reasons why we have a hard time overcoming these limitations and then provides the readers with many choices to develop a practice towards freedom, unlimited living, and personal/spiritual empowerment.

Q: Besides books, what else do you write? Do you write for publications?

I regularly write new articles on personal and spiritual empowerment on my blog, www.breakingfreefromlimits.com, as well as contributing similar articles to several blog and article sites, such as HubPages, Squidoo, Ezine, and Articlebase.

Q: Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share?

Probably not anything too original, but here are a couple quick tips that work best for me. First, find a place and environment where you are most comfortable writing. You should feel like you have everything you need right at hand and you should be very comfortable. Secondly, pick a writing schedule and then stick to it. And finally, if you get stuck, sit back and do a little meditation. Try to completely free your mind in a relaxing repose, keeping your focus on your breath. Release the anxiety about what you should write next out of your mind and just open to the fullness around you. If you are still stuck after your mini-meditation, then intend strongly to yourself to be into a powerful writers flow right now, but get up and do something else for about ½ hour and completely take your mind off the book. Then sit back down to write. You should immediately be back in the flow.

Q: Would you like to tell us about your home life? Where you live? Family? Pets?

Yes, I just recently moved into a wonderful small home that is nestled in a densely wooded area of our community. The property is shaped like a peninsula, so on both sides there are dramatic cliff faces and rocky ledges. There are so many places to explore, like small caves down the cliffs and nearby at the bottom of one side of the peninsula, there is a creek that runs through the bottom of stunning shale rock formations. Weirdly enough I came to be here as a result of a rather dramatic loss of my beloved family home of over 20 years. So, the end result has been a major demonstration of allowing the fullness of infinite possibilities into your life. Every morning I go out on my porch and just get embraced by the wonder of nature. The entire environment is energizing and extremely peaceful at the same time.

I also am the blessed mother of two amazing daughters, both of which are grown now and I am also the grandmother of 3 beautiful grandchildren. My entire family lives in the same general area of Kansas City. Additionally to my children and grandchildren, I also feel so blessed to have both of my parents nearby and we also spend much time together. I live with my boyfriend of over 20 year, my dog, Rusty, a brown lab adoptee who is the light of my life, and my cranky-old-big-fat-black cat, Cola. I am honored to be babysitter to not only my grandchildren a couple nights a week, but to their dog, Sonny, a sweet faced black lab. Rusty and Sonny are the best of friends.

I am a huge animal lover and I leave all sorts of food out for my new friends at my new house. I have deer, turkey, foxes, raccoons, and many other smaller critters and a plethora of birds that visit me every day. It absolutely thrills me to see them.

I spend the majority of my day writing, which is nothing but a joy to me, especially when I have this type of environment surrounding me. Since it’s been rather hot out lately, I am relegated to the indoors, but I have lots of windows so I can keep an eye on my back area all the time.

I have a regular meditation practice, which if I can, I make sure I do outside, and I am a regular at yoga class, which gives me an hour of deep energy and focus on my oneness with mind and body. I always feel so “alive” after yoga. I try to go to yoga at least 3 times a week, sometimes more.

Q: Where’s your favorite place to write at home?

Outdoors! I have created a nice writing space for me to insure I have everything I need close at hand. Honestly, sometimes after my morning coffee, journal writing and meditation, when I begin my writing, hours may go by and I literally lose track of time. It’s like I have become a part of the space I am in, writing and all. It all begins to blend into one big creative space.

Q: What do you do to get away from it all?

Well I meditate, which is always refreshing and relaxing. But I am also blessed to have a veritable nature sanctuary in my back yard. Sometimes when I am meditating I will feel compelled to open my eyes, and there within 10 or 15 feet of me will be a deer or a turkey just hanging out at around the feed area. Awesome! I also like to hike and take nature walks, so I get out for that regularly as well.

Q: What was the first thing you did as far as promoting your book?

I sent the book to all my friends and family and to my immediate sphere of influence. I asked those I felt comfortable with to read and provide their feedback on Amazon or a couple of other sites. I also asked some of my closer friends to share my book on their social networking sites. Then I sent out copies to several spiritual teachers and institutions as well. I figured if they read them, great, otherwise if they give them away or even throw them away, if it gets in someone’s hands and it might potentially help them – I’m good.

Q: Are you familiar with the social networks and do you actively participate?

Yes, I do engage in social networking on a regular basis. Whether we like it or not, I believe as a writer, or any business person for that matter, we must build our brand on the internet and social networks in order to stay relevant today.

I’ll admit it is a lot of extra work, and sometimes it doesn’t seem to be paying off, but I encourage all writers to stick with it. Set aside about an hour a week to learn about a new internet or social networking tool, or a new blog sight where you might be able to promote yourself, or even a new technology that might benefit you and your work.

Besides my blog, which is by far where I spend the most time, I also participate in several other article based blog sites. My favorite social media network is Twitter. I like Twitter the best because I don’t like to routinely be talking about my work on Facebook or LinkedIn. With Twitter, I feel no issue introducing my newest blog article or promoting my book, perhaps several times per day. Don’t forget to use hashtags in your Tweets! By doing this, almost every time I post something on Twitter, I get at least one new follower. There is an anonymity about Twitter that I like so I don’t feel pushy when I self promote. I feel this freedom from Google+ as well although I don’t get the residual following like I do with Twitter.

Q: If you had one wish, what would that be?

I don’t want to sound corny or even self pretentious, but if I could know that my book helped even one person, that would be my wish. I listen and speak to people every day, and what I hear is different levels of suffering going on in people’s lives. I want to share that there are many ways to transcend this suffering and live a life of unbounded joy, love, peace and unlimited abundance.

I am particularly interested in getting this message across to the younger folks. When I think of how much of my own life I gave away to worry, anxiety, fear, lack, and suffering of many forms and how pointless it all was, I am motivated to keep my message going loud and strong. I think, imagine one young soul, inspired to live a fuller, richer life by seeing the infinite potential in themselves and in others, then what would the world begin to look like. This is my wish then, to touch one more person with this message of hope and that by the lifting up of that one in spirit, then they touch the next with their light, then the next and so on.

ABOUT FINDING HOME-BREAKING FREE FROM LIMITS

Within our soul, we are already free. There is within us an indescribable place where we know this instinctively and intuitively – this is a place we call “home.” Finding Home, Breaking Free from Limits is a charter to discover that place, and in doing so, transform our lives and the lives of others.

Finding Home, Breaking Free from Limits intention is to energize the mind to challenge the propaganda of fear and limitations and enable one to embrace a new attitude of personal and spiritual empowerment. The condition this book addresses is limits – personal limits that impact our individual spirit, and subsequently, our relationships, communities and our world.

Finding Home creates a paradigm shift away from limits and into a realization of unlimited potential. Never again will you look at yourself and the world around you in the same way after you found that place of “home.”

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How do you make sales happen for you?

A lot of hard work! I sponsor a lot of on line parties, festivals and contests. Book sales don’t magically happen, believe me. An author has to work hard to earn her readers. And then she has to work hard to keep them by giving them something they’ll enjoy reading. I try hard to make my books worth a reader’s time.

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