After seeing Boston’s very own Team Hoyt (Dick and his paralyzed son, Rick Hoyt) doing an Ironman back in 2016, even though 46 years of age, so inspired was I, awestruck even, that I took up the Ironman challenge. At the time I couldn’t really swim, but the thought of that father and his son with cerebral palsy taking on 140.6 miles together, swimming, biking and running, moved me, and today I am going to move you — to action.

The Ironman was an impossible challenge for me, indeed only 0.1 percent of the population have taken one on, but (Lesson #1) I took responsibility. If swimming was going to be a problem, then I had better learn to swim the 2.4 miles and toughen my mind for the 112 miles on the bike and then prepare mentally to survive the marathon and all within a 17-hour window.

But if they could do it together, then surely I could too! We, all of us, have our heroes, those who hold a torch up and show us the way, and it is an incredible honor for me to be speaking in Boston, the hometown of my heroes, Team Hoyt. If you haven’t reached out to your hero, coach or mentor, now is the time and this is the place.

Lesson #2: You know that when you “follow your bliss,” as described by Joseph Campbell, the “impossible” suddenly shifts and goes to “anything is possible.” Empowered with purpose, I have now completed seven Ironman races and have another three to do this summer, but because I started to believe in me, this has opened the door to so much more: I sold a six-figure business recently and completed the Marathon des Sables (six marathons back-to-back across the Sahara Desert; I was self-sufficient, carrying all food and kit). Becoming an ultrarunner was another impossible task — it really was — but when you start imagining yourself across the finishing line, wherever your finishing line might be, you are mostly there. That wasn’t enough for me, and I hope it is not enough for you. I am blessed with four children and taking them to school and still being able to make it home at the end of the day to read to my youngest his bedtime story completes me. Like the Hoyts, if you are doing it for yourself, you may go a long way, but when you do it for and with others, you’ll go the distance.

Just as another famous Bostonian, President John F. Kennedy, said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.… ” That was said 60 years ago, but ask yourself today, right now, Where am I going? Am I using my best energies and skills? None of us can find our true path while on autopilot.

Let me challenge you: If a quadriplegic man can turn me into an athlete and his father can help me focus on what truly being there as a parent is — if they can do all of this and have brought out the best of me or a part that had been sleeping for most of my life, what are you waiting for? Who is your hero? What is your moonshot? (Lesson #3) And when will you say to yourself, MDRT and the world, “It’s not impossible. It’s I’m possible?”

Good luck in mastering your I’m possible and going places you never thought of and doing great deeds and achievements that you always thought were for others. Go out there and start your own hero’s journey, and, just like the Hoyts, take people with you. Success is so much better when it is shared.