I am not usually one for motivational speakers or TED Talks, but I happened to come across one recently that struck a chord. The speaker was Dean Furness, an analytic consultant for Wells Fargo. Dean was like a lot of middle-class fathers from the Midwest. He had a wife, children, and a house. In his spare time, he liked to tinker on a small farm he owned. Life was good.

In 2011, Dean was moving a large hay bale with his tractor — as he had done countless times. As he was backing up, with hay bale raised, the wheels of the tractor slipped in the grass. The hydraulics jammed, and the bale was lifted higher and higher until it fell. Furness was struck in the back, and he knew something was wrong. The pain was not unbearable, but he felt a tingling sensation run down his extremities. Pinned forward into the console of the machine, Furness yelled for help. Eventually, his wife heard him and came running. She asked if it was her help he needed or the kind of help that required her to call 911. He replied, the latter. He took his first ride in a helicopter that fateful day to the hospital of all places.

The damage to his back was not overly dramatic. He simply had broken a couple of vertebrae. The problem, however, was that the blow had severed his spinal cord. The doctors told Dean that it was unlikely that he would ever walk again. He was paralyzed from the chest down.

His new normal was to use a rope for sitting up in bed because his abdominal muscles no longer worked and to use a board to slide out of bed into a wheelchair. Furness was now dependent on others to help him reach things and to do the simplest of tasks that he had taken for granted all his life. His height, weight, and strength had all changed in an instant. As Furness describes it, his average was reset, and when he considered his capabilities, he constantly compared his current self to the man he used to be. He was less than what he had been.

He was frustrated and depressed — and rightfully so. His wife prodded him to cheer up and get moving forward, and he realized that he needed to stop using his former capabilities to measure his current progress. He had to forget his former self and pretend that person never existed. If he didn’t, Furness says, that his frustration might have turned into something darker.

A few weeks after his injury, he was transferred to a rehab hospital. That very first day, he was taken to a fitness class where he, along with others recovering from similar injuries, were broken up into teams. The idea was to combine a bit of healthy competition with some exercise. Furness, being a former competitive athlete, went all out, and he and his team won their competition. The problem was that he couldn’t move his arms for the next three days. For a wheelchair-bound person, this is a big deal, as you are completely dependent upon the use of your arms for mobility.

It was then, after his “healthy” competition, that Furness realized not only could he not compare himself to what he had been, but that he should not compare himself to anyone. Even people in a similar situation. He had to start fresh and examine where he, and only he, was right now at this moment in time. To move forward, he had to let go of everything, start looking at his current situation and set goals based only on that.

For the next six weeks, for 7-8 hours per day, Furness made incremental progress. Sometimes having good days and sometimes having bad days. During this process, he discovered that it was up to him to decide whether or not a day could be judged as bad or good. He also discovered that no day was truly bad. Sure, there were difficult moments, but no day was ever entirely bad. He found that the quicker he could move on and move forward when faced with a difficult moment, the less time was actually spent in a “bad” moment. With less time spent going through bad situations, more time is spent in good times; thus, the good outweighs the bad.

During the course of his physical therapy, Dean Furness was presented with an interesting challenge. His therapist suggested that he should compete in a half marathon in his wheelchair with only ten weeks to train. With uncertainty, he began to research techniques, workouts, and equipment. He was able to complete that race and eventually worked his way up to a full marathon. He improved on the times and progress he had built by tracking his own workouts meticulously. It didn’t matter what people with working legs were doing or what times they got. It didn’t matter what other wheelchair athletes were doing. The only thing that mattered was where he was at that moment compared to the day before. He was only concerned with his current progress.

Furness has since gone on to compete in many full, high-profile marathons such as Boston and Chicago. He applies his methodology of building on current progress, without comparison to others, to many aspects of his life. He maintains that his philosophy of incremental progress has made him a better parent, husband, coach, teammate, and person.

Like Dean Furness, the next time you are going through a dark time, do not compare yourself to others. Think about where you are and that it is only a moment in time. Then, move forward as fast as possible so that you spend more time in the light.