Here’s how to REALLY better the world.

Imagine driving home on a cold winter’s night when, out of nowhere, stabbing pain fills the area behind your eyes. Then it’s as though a curtain drops around you. In a snap, you are completely blind.

That’s exactly what happened to Linda Cruse some years ago, before she became the celebrated humanitarian aid worker and social entrepreneur she is today. I had the pleasure of interviewing Linda last week and cannot wait for you all to hear her story.

“I have no idea how I stopped the car,” she told me. “Intuition, angels… But I sat there on the hard shoulder of the highway, scared, frightened, completely lost. I would never see my kids again. I’d never work again. And then I started, ‘Why me? What have I done wrong?’”

No one stopped to help as Linda sat there feeling terrified, angry and perplexed. Moments like these, she said, force you to wake up.

“I started to pray,” she said. “My prayer was, ‘If my sight comes back, I promise I’ll find what I was born to do, and I will live it. I will find my passion and my purpose and I will live it.’ That was my promise.” 

Her sight did return, and she has fulfilled her promise in remarkable, world-shifting ways.

Changing the world, Linda shows us, doesn’t require some magic formula (though magic can be involved, as you’ll learn!). Nor does it require loads of cash or even leaving your home (though both can apply in some cases). It does involve trusting our instincts, embracing our unique gifts, respecting and listening to the people we wish to support and having fun in the process.

It’s such a privilege to share her voice and message with you all. I can’t imagine spending time with or listening to Linda and not going away somehow changed or deeply inspired. One of her many gifts, as Sir Richard Branson has pointed out, is making the impossible possible. She’s quite skilled at lighting similar fires in others.

Listen to the episode on iTunes or below! It also features wonderful thoughts from Dr. Megan Fleming, on making long-distance romance work. (If you do decide to pack up and live out of one suitcase as Linda does, this may be helpful. ;))