YOUR "TOOTH" DOESN'T HURT ENOUGH
Aug 14, 2026
Written By Bart Berkey | Founder of Most People Don't
Find a "Reason" Large Enough To "Do" Something
Nobody goes to the dentist early.
You know you should. You have known for months. But the tooth only aches a little, and only when you chew on that one side, so you keep telling yourself you will call next week. Then one night the pain becomes something else entirely, and by nine the next morning you have found the time, found the money, and found the courage you swore you did not have.
Nothing about the dentist got easier. Only the reason changed.
I spent years telling audiences how to build better habits and better teams, and I kept watching the same thing happen. Everyone already knows what to do. The recipe for success and happiness is out there. However, almost nobody does it until something makes them. Until something or someone pushes them enough.
Seven years ago something made me (and you may have heard my story before).
I had a health "incident". Not a scare, not a warning, an actual heart attack, and it put me in a place where I had to look honestly at how I had been living. I had been told for years what I should change. I understood every word of it. I had simply never had a reason large enough to make me act on any of it.
Then I did.
When the Why Becomes Bigger Than the How
Here is what I want you to notice about what happened next.
I did not become more disciplined. I did not find a system, or a coach, or a morning routine that finally clicked. What changed was that I stopped negotiating, because the reason was no longer about me.
I did not want to leave my family. I did not want to leave our kids. That was the whole of it.
So I stopped drinking alcohol, which I had always assumed would be the hardest thing I would ever attempt. I stopped eating red meat and I stopped eating pork. And the strange part, the part I still find remarkable, is that none of it felt like willpower.
When the why is big enough, the how stops being a negotiation and becomes something that you focus on (your should do list.)
If the why is important enough, the how becomes easy.
The Toothache Test
I call this the Toothache Test, and it is the fastest way I know to find out whether you are actually going to do the thing you keep saying you will do.
Take whatever you have been putting off. The conversation with your business partner. The physical you canceled twice. The idea you have been carrying around for three years. The messy kitchen table filled with papers. The apology you owe someone. Now ask yourself honestly whether your tooth hurts enough yet.
If the answer is no, you are not lazy and you are not broken. You are just waiting, whether you have admitted it to yourself or not.
And here is the part that matters, because there are two doors out of that waiting room, not one.
Two Doors: Bad Enough or Good Enough
The first door is bad enough. This is the one most people take. The health scare. The lost client. The marriage that finally cracks. Life applies the pressure for you, and you change because you have run out of room not to. It works, but the price is set by someone other than you.
The second door is good enough or even better. This one almost nobody uses. You look at what is on the other side of the change, and you decide the good is compelling enough to move toward before the bad ever arrives. Not because you are hurting, but because you can see something worth having.
I took the first door, but I would've given a great deal more to have anticipated years prior and to have taken the second.
Why We Wait for Pain
Most people wait for the pain because pain is loud and possibility is quiet. Possibility never wakes you up at three in the morning. It never sends you to the emergency room. It just sits there, patiently, being available, while you get around to it.
Three Things You Can Do This Week
- Write your why as a person, not an outcome. Not "lose twenty pounds" and not "grow the business." Write the name of the human being on the other side of it. Outcomes are negotiable. People are not.
- Run the Toothache Test on one thing. Pick the item you have been carrying the longest and ask which door you are standing at. If you are waiting on bad enough, name out loud what bad enough will actually look like when it arrives. Most people have never said it out loud, and saying it changes things.
- Do the smallest version today. Not the whole change, just the piece that takes eleven minutes. Book the appointment. Send the one sentence. Make the call you have been rehearsing. The why gets you moving, but momentum is what keeps you there. Take ONE STEP toward DOING YOUR BEST to make your most important things happen.
What Is Your Tooth?
Somebody reading this has a "tooth" that has been aching quietly for a long time.
You already know what it is. You knew before you finished this sentence.
What would have to happen for it to hurt enough, and are you honestly willing to wait for that?
Most people don't. But YOU do.
- Bart
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