Ep 83: The Difference Between Thinking and Looking

June 2, 2026
Love You More
Ep 83:  The Difference Between Thinking and Looking

Episode summary:

In this episode, Jen explores the difference between thinking and truly looking. Through personal stories about running, body image, productivity, and everyday habits, she reflects on what can happen when we pause long enough to question the beliefs and assumptions that quietly shape our lives.

Jen also shares how this practice of deeper inquiry shows up in her work with clients, particularly around body image and self-judgment. Drawing on the work of Byron Katie, she offers a gentle invitation to examine the thoughts that create suffering and discover what becomes possible when we see them in a new way.

Favorite Quotes:

"Looking is questioning."

"I don't believe once we see something, we can necessarily unsee it."

"We start to see it when we see that we're managing something and we're noticing that we're moving from discomfort."

"Only you can do this work. Only you can explore things in a deeper way."

"We get a wider lens on things, and we might have a shift in seeing something that would have never occurred if we didn't stop and pause and look at this stuff and ask more questions."

"The thoughts that need to be questioned the most are probably the ones that cause the most suffering."

"I think it's really fun to look at stuff in a new way and to maybe break free from some of these cages that we don't even realize we're in."

"Life feels a little more rich and I'm in it more. I feel like I'm noticing the birds more."

Resources 

Jen's Instagram
Jen's Substack
McDaniel Nutrition Therapy Instagram
McDaniel Nutrition Therapy Website
Past Podcast Episodes
2026 Silent Retreat 

The Work of Byron Katie
Dr. Amy Johnson’s Website
Changeable Podcast

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:14

One of the most meaningful experiences I've had in the last couple of years was attending a silent retreat. You don't really realize how much noise exists in your life until you step away from it. Noise from the media, noise from our sweet kiddos, but especially the constant chatter in our own minds. This is why I'm so excited to offer a three-night, four-day silent retreat. It's an opportunity to slow down, to experience real quiet, and to reconnect with a part of yourself that feels grounded, clear, and whole. During our time together, you'll be supported with nourishing, delicious meals, space for reflection, and intentional evening experiences like a sound bath and mindful body practices. The retreat takes place in the beautiful Ozarks at Kindred Forest, about an hour and 15 minutes outside of St. Louis. It will be held September 10th through September 13th, and it's intentionally small. We're only opening 10 spots for women so that the experience feels personal and supportive. If this speaks to you in any way, you can find more details and sign up through the link in the show notes. I would truly love to experience some silence with you. Welcome to the Love You More podcast. I am your host, Jen McDaniel. And today we are talking about looking. And I will explain what I mean by that in just a minute. But I'm also curious, I wonder if you can hear the birds chirping outside my office. I'm I'm at the office today and I feed the birds on my windowsill. It is like the thing that brings me the most joy, especially if I see a like a bird that is fresh and new, a new kind of bird. But anyway, I will say they love walnuts the most. That is their absolute favorite. It's kind of like probably filet mignon for birds, walnuts. But um anyway, if you can hear their chirping, I hope that makes you happy. Okay, so I am doing a lot of what I am going to talk about today. And that's usually the way this podcast goes, things that I'm just seeing in my own life, or I don't know, I don't really love the word working towards, but it's coming up quite a bit. And um I'm gonna give you three different examples of what it means to look, and there's a difference between looking and thinking. Thinking to me is just sort of the the thoughts that just come. I don't know where thoughts come from. They just they pop in. I have come to see that I don't control any thought at all. Um, thoughts just they come unannounced, they come sometimes unwelcomed, they just come and then they get batted around in there for a little while and then they go. And um I sometimes think of thoughts too as like a narrator. You know, I'm I'm moving through my day. Oh yeah, I've got to do that and don't forget to do that. And oh, is don't don't those clouds look pretty? And oh, the office is looking a little messy. Let me fluff up the pillow. You know, there's just this narrator that's also sort of narrating what's happening in my day. It might be what's happening just like physically here, but it might also be happening like what I'm thinking about. Um, so I might call those thoughts a narrator, I might also call thoughts like interpreter, you know, constantly interpreting and making meaning out of things. Um, but looking is is different from all of that. And thinking feels less valuable to me. Thinking has a place. Um, if I'm working on a corporate presentation and I need to figure out what do I want to talk about in the session, I might sit down and really think about that. That's intentional thinking and it's got a purpose. And I'm I'm, you know, I think about if my kids are in school and they have to think through a math problem, right? You need the brain to do that. I need to come up with what recipes. But sorry, I have to keep clearing my throat. It's like the lingering spring allergies, they're almost gone, but they are still there. Um, so there is a role for thinking, but I would say most thinking is just really unnecessary. And looking, on the other hand, has a real value that I am seeing. And I'll start with my first example. I was out for a run a couple of weeks ago, and I probably was literally a quarter of the mile in, and I I had this digestive issue, which I have talked about on a Substack. Um, I I don't think I've talked, I guess I talked about it here. Yeah, my last podcast. I talked a little bit about this. But anyway, I had gotten this whole thing figured out. Basically, I realized I just needed to cut my coffee in the morning in half, and I did not have any of these digestive issues. But right at this run, even though I had figured all this out, the digestive issue came back. And that's really not the point of this conversation. The point of this conversation is that I was so annoyed. I was frustrated, I was angry, and it was, it was really like the response did not match what the problem was, you know. The problem was is oh, you probably either should go back home and go to the restroom or you should just go for a walk today instead of a run, right? That is not a big deal. No one could care less about that except for this person here. But the person here was really having a hard time with that. Like I I intended on going on this run, I had planned on going for this run, you know, just sort of showing how attached I was to getting this run done or experiencing this run or whatever. And so once the tantrum kind of passed by, because at that point, I think I was just out for a walk. Um, yeah, once the tantrum passed, I something came up that made me want to look. There was a question that arose. And that question was, why something along these lines? Why are you so attached to getting that run done? Like, why was that so important? Like, why was that so disruptive to how you were feeling and your mood and all of that? And I wanted to look further, so I wanted to explore it. Um, and then a whole lot more questions came, and I just wanted to look at this. So I started seeing, you know, my relationship to exercise has evolved so much. And it's it's really like I would say, gosh, such a good place. You know, I I used to have a pretty dysfunctional relationship with exercise 10 years ago, and it is a world of difference. Um, but there's clearly there was still something there. There was still something there that felt like this run needed to happen. And I won't get into all of it because honestly, it's just a little too vulnerable to share here. Um, and I'm pretty open with sharing things, but you know, there's some things that either you're just not ready to share or don't need to be shared or whatever. But I saw things around body image that I am, you know, maybe still managing. I saw things around what does it mean to be a dietitian who's supposed to, you know, lead a well life. Um, I think I still I still saw attachments around what does it mean to be a runner versus being a walker? Uh what comes up for me when I think, oh, I'm I'm going to walk now for the rest of my life, I will never run again. Like what happens when I think about that? Um I just kept seeing a lot of things and and it wasn't, you know, it was hard to see some of these things too. It's not stuff sometimes that we want to look at, but we see how much management is being done to be living in a certain way, and how much effort and striving, and just I want to describe it as as cages, like these little cages that we I, I'll I'll use the word I that I put myself in. And I don't even really realize it. It's just sort of how life has been navigated for so long, and it's never been questioned. And looking is questioning, and so it it really brought some things up and it was emotional, and it was also very good to see because I I don't believe like once we see something, we we can't necessarily unsee it. I mean, I I do think that's maybe there's some truth to that, you know, once you've seen something, you you kind of have seen that. But it's another thing then to see when self-management comes back up to keep continuing in that same treaded path, well-worn path, or to see that that's what you're doing and to challenge that again. Um, so that got challenged again this week, actually. I was gonna go for a run, I didn't feel like it. And the old kind of version pre-this moment would have probably just pushed through and would have gotten through it, and it might not have been that great of a run, but I walked instead, and I still did feel I still did, I still felt kind of restless about it. Like I felt like there's something I think that happens for me when I go for a run that just settles the dust a little bit. Like it feels like a scratch has been itched, and I went for the walk and I couldn't scratch that itch. And so I kind of was there in that. And um that's cool, that's cool. I I I was able to be with that, and there was nothing to change, nothing needed to change, it was all right. Um and I that's also an interesting thing too, you know, because I think sometimes so much of our behaviors that we that we do are to move from discomfort or feeling some sense of discomfort. And so I check email, or I've I mean, I've talked quite a bit about this in different podcasts, but we start to see it, you know, when we when we see that we're managing something and we're noticing that we're moving from discomfort, but then when we also are able to be in the discomfort, and even that, even labeling it as discomfort is interesting too, because was it discomfort? Or was it just kind of feeling some energy that felt different than if I was running? And how would I even describe that energy? I took this course uh probably a couple of years ago. I don't know how long it's been now, but with um a coach that I've done some studying with and I've mentioned her work several times too, Amy Johnson. And the course was called Resting and Restlessness, and um and I I have a podcast about restlessness, but how would we describe restlessness? What is that? Is that it's definitely for me, it's definitely some kind of feeling in the body, and I might describe it as like uneasy feeling or antsy feeling. It's certainly it maybe a larger, more intense feeling might even be described as anxiety. Um, but in the end, if I really look at it and get kind of right up front with it, it's all it is is just some sort of like feeling in the body. And maybe sometimes those feelings might be associated with thoughts too. Probably a lot of the time they're associated with thoughts. Um at a subsequent um run or walk that week, it occurred to me that I also was kind of my watch was micromanaged me, micromanaging me a little bit too. I have a cool garment that I love. And the Garmin, the only thing I really use the Garmin for was just to see how far I went at this point. And I use my my garment a lot for steps and seeing how many steps I got in a day. And I don't really care so much about pace anymore. So I mean, every once in a while I'd see a run, and if it was a certain pace, I might, you know, give myself a little kudos, or if it was really slow, there might be a thought like, whoa, is this the new normal kind of stuff? Um, but I I did notice a little another cage around like needing to get a certain number of steps in a day, and like that kind of became a little bit of a focus for me. And um I was like, I don't, I think with everything that I've seen recently, that would be an example of something that needs to fall away. And so I got rid of the watch. I really love the watch, so I'm kind of sad about that, but um, and I got another watch. I I've talked about I talked about this on my substack, and it's just a watch that literally just tells the time there's nothing else involved in it. And I've I've had this watch now for a couple of weeks, and I remember when I first just made this decision or this is this decision was made. I told my husband, um, man, you know, I have been using like a watch to see how far my runs, how far, whatever, all the data that you you get. I've been doing that for like 20 something years. I mean, I think I had one of the first watches that did this. Like this massive garment uh that I would wear. And yeah, so tracking, tracking, tracking. And um it's been really interesting to not know any of that anymore. And I I can't say that I'm like, whoa, I'm so much more free. But it does feel like it does feel like there's always, you know, we have, I don't know how we even describe bandwidth, but I suppose there is a bandwidth or capacity that it feels like we have. And a lot of my like mind share would go there here and there. So now that's not really going there anymore. I mean, and and what's interesting too is I I would imagine activity is probably pretty similar. Um, you know, I still go for walks, I still move my body. It's not like that was keeping me doing all of that, but what that was keeping me doing is like kind of sort of constantly looking at it. And yeah, perhaps if I was really low, maybe I'd go out for a separate walk or something, but it was usually never that enjoyable, you know, it was in the middle of the day, it was hot, and I'm like making myself do this. That's just it's not it's not where I want it to be. So that's one area of looking um example that I wanted to share. The second one has to do with a day where I I had just extra freedom for some reason. Like I think I had maybe a couple clients cancel, and the day wasn't even that full anyway, to begin with. And um it's been an adjustment. You know, I've sold my company in January, and while I'm still practicing and probably even seeing more clients than I was seeing before selling the practice, I don't I don't really run the business anymore. And so there's a lot less you know, communication between myself and my office managers. There is a lot less time spent on social media with like marketing things. Um there's just not me carrying the weight of trying to grow a business and keep it. I mean, I I absolutely care about the growth of the business and I'm still doing things to grow the business, but the weight of if it all falling on these shoulders is not there anymore. But it's like sometimes my nervous system doesn't realize that, you know. And so I was, I just felt kind of going back to that restless description on this day, I was feeling like my mind was running through it, just sort of, it's like this never-ending circle, you know, of thinking about what to do next. And oh well, I could work on my social media for the following week and get that done, or I could go do this for the house, or there's laundry, or I could, oh, I could get dinner started and all of this just incessant, you know, incessant task mastering happening from the mind. And I just like could feel all of that in the body. The body felt a little contracted, it felt a little bit like, why is this happening? So I just I just sat down in front of my bed with a journal and I thought, what is this whole constant productivity conversation happening? Why does this, you know, what is this about? What is this? What if I what would it look like for me to not listen to that conversation or for me not to give so much credibility to the all those to-dos. And then of course, um a next question might be well, if that doesn't happen, you're gonna forget all you're gonna drop all these, all the balls will get dropped, and but you got to keep all this up there. And that's bullshit. I really, I really see that more clearly than ever, that that is not necessary. The mind does not have to hold all of that stuff. The mind does not have to keep telling me to go do something. It's just, it's just maybe the way it's been getting done. But let me look at that. Who is a per who and who is this person who might not always be productive? I mean, I have an association, I mean, there's some mornings where I was kind of thinking about this the other day. It's only 8 a.m. and I've gone for a run and I've done this and I've got dinner starting. I mean, I think that the the world applauds that. I have applauded that for so long, but is that really and what who is that person if that's not what she's doing? Like, what if this person did nothing? Like, is is nothing, you know, what does that mean? Worthless, lazy? Um, not reading all these, are you uninteresting? Who knows? But there's kind of looking at these things in a deeper way and looking at maybe sometimes a question that I might ask myself is sort of what is sort of what is being protected here? Is it is this was this protecting boredom? Was this per protecting, you know, like um even if I'm this is maybe something that comes up now, like if I'm at home and I'm just like resting, I'm not doing anything, and my husband walks in the door. Oh, okay, well, he's gonna see me doing nothing. What's that mean? You know, and and then looking at that, so anyway, I I I share all that because these are explorations that I think are allowing us to look at how the story has been running for so long and the possibility of seeing a new way, and this way, I would imagine I'm looking at this because there's value in this because life is is um better, is necessarily the word I'm looking at. Maybe you're just like here for life more, like you're in one of my coaches keeps asking me to look at like the raw experience of like what is what is here, and when we're in our minds or we're we're like just being run around by that taskmaster, but what is here now is all I have to kind of be with. I don't know, there is something there that settles and just makes life feel a little more like rich and and I'm in it more, and I feel like I'm noticing the birds more and I'm noticing the shifts of how I feel when I'm present or when I kind of come on board as a a gen trying to be a certain way, if that makes sense. The third example of looking has to do with conversations with clients and um I had this dear client. I love all my clients, but um, this woman was sharing with me how she had seen a recent picture of herself, and and then sort of she didn't say anything derogatory, you know, about it necessarily, but she said, Man, I gotta get my shit together. I gotta, I really gotta get going on this meal plan, and I'm I gotta get the exercise happening, and I just there was a lot of you could tell that something about the photo and how she interpreted and how the brain interpreted the photo, then launched into this more urgent sort of desire. And um I asked her, like when she looked at that photo, like if she could think of any kind of how did I ask this? I don't remember how I asked this, but basically the way I wanted to ask this. And then I remember her like being like, What do you mean by that? Definitely get that. Okay, yes, I need to ask this question better. But but what I wanted to know, it's like, what did why do you think it was like that? What are the beliefs underneath that? Like, do you why do you believe that that should look different? You know, um and this is this is the only work, only we, only you can do this work. Only only you can explore things in a deeper way, you know. But if if we stopped at, oh, I look like crap in that picture, I don't like my bot the way my body looked, and then we just kind of move on and move into the same narrative, which is I have to fix myself, versus looking at why, I don't know, a thousand different questions could come up, and none of these necessarily the right or wrong ones, but it might be like, why do I think that that's the way a body should look? Where did those messages come from that that is the way a body should look? Who thinks the body should look differently that way? Me, others, um what if my body looked a different way? How would that? I don't I don't know. I'm I'm I'm kind of struggling right now, personally, thinking about the ways to answer, ask those questions because it's easier to like go into the questions for myself that I'm struggling with, personally, not struggling but with, but looking at a bit more deeply. But when we do that, I think it just gives us some we get a wider lens on things, and we might have a shift in seeing something that would have never occurred if we didn't stop and pause and look at this stuff and ask more questions. And because I haven't done a very good job in this podcast, kind of giving you questions to ask, I will say um a great place to start if you're interested. And I've I interviewed a woman, uh, a friend that I met on my retreat um last year, but the work of Byron Cady and um that's B-Y-O-R-O-N, and I think it's C-A-T-I-E. Maybe it's K, whatever. You'd figure it out. Um, but she has uh she has like her four essential questions, and I think they're very good. And in short, they're you know, like, um can you know that that thought is true? How you know, can you be 100% certain that that thought that you just had is true? And then when you believe that thought, when you think that that thought is true, how does that what does that do for you? What is that, how does that change your behavior? Um how do you act? What do you say? How do you feel? And then if the final kind of question is if you never had that thought or that thought didn't even matter, it wasn't important to you at all, how would life go? And and and basically it gets us to see how much the mind really causes suffering and how much thoughts cause suffering. Because, as my client attested, before she saw that photo, she was none of that was here. None of that was here. She was feeling fine, her body was feeling good, she had had a good workout that morning. I mean, everything was great. And then the photo came around. And I guess if we're just literally looking at raw experience here, there is a picture of two women in a photo with bodies and faces and colors, and there's a hand holding a photo, and then there's maybe some feelings or sensations in the body, like all of that is safe and easy, and not easy, I shouldn't say easy. All of that is like the direct experience of life, but then the thoughts come in. I shouldn't look that way. That's the suffering. And it doesn't mean that this woman isn't going to still support herself with nourishing foods and still move her body in ways that feel good. But that thought then created anxiety and angst and urgency. And we all know that that those feelings will, you know, kick us off and usually last for a short amount of time. And then it kind of goes away, and then we're sort of back doing our stuff, you know. But if we look at the relationship of the thoughts and what we're believing and what we're seeing, that's just deeper work. That's like, that's like the what's underneath the tip of the iceberg stuff that I think is where the real work lies. So anyway, going back to Byron Katie, she's got um, she's got a website that has um like a couple of different resources, I believe, and some worksheets and some really great like ways to sort of kick you off if any of this, what I'm talking about today, feels like something of value to you. Um, because sometimes we need a little help, like, and the the thoughts that need to be questioned the most are probably the ones that cause the most suffering. Or the thoughts that are both suffering and also we tend to like repeat, you know, like, oh my God, seriously, I'm not, I'm not past this yet. That happens here all the time. Like, God, how am I still getting tripped up over this one? You know, that's kind of the stuff that I think is worth looking at. Um, or just something that like really makes, you know, maybe it's like that that run. Like I didn't even really realize that this was a problem for myself until it just sort of hit me that day. And I saw how big my response was to that. So, anyway, that's my conversation on looking. And um yeah, feel free to check out some of those previous podcasts that I mentioned or Byron Katie's work. But I think it's really fun to just not keep doing the same old, same old. I think it's fun to look at stuff in a new way and to maybe break free from some of these cages that we don't even realize we're in. Love you more, friends. Great to be here.