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As a practicing dentist for nearly 20 years, I dealt with a lot of people in terrible pain.

A toothache can really bring a person to their knees.

Even if you hate going to the dentist, a “hot” tooth as we say in the biz, is hard to put off for long.  Many patients wouldn’t have come to see me otherwise, either because they were terrified of dentists or simply couldn’t afford it.

But another, stranger thing about pain is that our perception of it can change radically, depending on what else is going on.

In practice, I would hear the same story over and over again:

“Doc, it wasn’t so bad when I was at work, but the second I tried to go to sleep, it became unbearable.”

I would nod and listen, seeing the dark circles under their eyes and knowing what terrible suffering they must have endured the previous evening.

Many of my patients had experienced the pain earlier in the day, but were somehow able to deal with it. Why was it that the pain always seemed to be worse in the evening?

What I was noticing was the human capacity to shift focus. My patients who had a toothache during the day actually willfully pushed it out of their mind in order to focus on their job. These were long-haul truck drivers and factory workers. They had jobs that required them to be alert at all times, observing safety protocols with a high level of vigilance.

They were focused, so much so, that the brain’s perception of their toothache was actually altered. In fact, as long as they were meaningfully focused on work, the pain was manageable. It might have been perceptible, but they weren’t suffering.

But, after work was done, they would head to bed, shutting off all sources of external stimulation.

There, in the quiet, the discomfort would return. Their minds could now redirect fully available attention to the problem. Now, they were really feeling it; they were suffering.  And, because pain is present to help us survive, when it finally gets our attention, it does so to great effect.

Post retirement, I’ve experienced a similar massive shift in focus. Even though I am retired earlier than most people, there is something rather cliché about this particular phase of life. People often wake up to problems that they didn’t have time to deal with before. In fact, it’s not uncommon for people to get divorced around this time, or undergo other large shifts in their lives.

In my working years, I knew I had issues. But the fact was, there was no time or bandwidth…no available focus for these problems. Much like a person’s ability to mostly ignore a terrible toothache, I was able to shove my many emotions under the rug for a long time.

I reasoned that reaching my saving and investment goals would largely eliminate most of my issues anyway. I mean, my job was part of the problem, so once I was retired it would all be good.

But…

It was actually weird.

For one, I knew no other people that I could “hang out” with during the day…which mostly left me alone with my thoughts until after around 5 pm. And, I realized, I wasn’t just alone with my thoughts…I had feelings to go with each of them. None of them good. 

I could no longer put off the problems. I couldn’t apply drug store salve to a root-canal problem.

Like many people, I was only ready to change when the pain of remaining the same became too great.

My personal plan of attack involved copious quantities of meditation and a re-evaluation of what I really believed. I had to break a lot of things down before I built them back up again. I had to figure out my priorities at this new point in life.

For the longest time, my priorities had been targeted goals like getting into a good school or saving a specific amount. And now, I knew that these things weren’t going to help me actually feel better about life.

I developed the visceral understanding that money is a solution to some problems, but rarely or never all problems. In short, the hole that I was filling with money wasn’t about money.

The money problem, in my case, solved the problem of having to go to a job I didn’t like… giving me free time. Which allowed the real problems to come bubbling to the surface.   

And while all of this is painful, not dealing with it certainly wouldn’t have made it go away. Much like an agonizing toothache, trying to ignore it may land a person in a far worse place than a dental office. I needed to dive head first into the cause of the suffering, to get to the root of the problem (pardon the dental humor).

I would have been far freer, far happier, if I had started to shift my focus just a little bit during my working years. To acknowledge the the vague stirring of discomfort, to get curious about it.

I wish I would have done some preventative measures.

Sort of like how I told my patients to floss to avoid toothaches.

I’ve come to believe that, far more fundamental than money, is dealing with the uncomfortable stuff in our own lives. Maybe it means going to therapy. Maybe, like me, you find meditation to be helpful. Maybe you take up journalling or some other way to express what’s happening inside.

Whatever it is, it all begins with a shift in focus, a change in where attention goes, even if it means dealing with the painful stuff.