Quote of the Day: Doug McClure on Daily Inspiration (Jan 15)

The digital age asks you to decide faster than your nervous system can breathe: who to trust, what to buy, which opinion to adopt, and where you stand in the endless scroll of comparison. In that noise, your mind reaches for shortcuts, labels, vibes, quick judgments, just to keep up. A surprisingly calming antidote is to notice how flimsy those shortcuts are, starting with something as “objective” as a name: “What you think of a name depends so much on the people you know by that name.”

McClure is pointing at the hidden machinery behind many of our preferences. We tell ourselves we like or dislike something because of taste, logic, or “fit,” when the truth is often association. A name isn’t a fixed meaning; it’s a scrapbook. One “Amanda” becomes every Amanda. One bad meeting with “Frank” becomes an invisible filter over every future Frank. If you want more peace, start by treating your first reaction as a memory, not a verdict.

This is practical leadership and quiet resilience. When you catch yourself thinking, “He doesn’t seem like a Kevin,” translate it: “My past experience is speaking.” That one sentence creates space for better decisions, fairer hiring, kinder introductions, cleaner collaboration. It also gives you agency: you can choose to update the file. Ask one more question. Run one more test. Let a new person earn a new association.

Doug McClure spent a career inhabiting roles in the 1960s Western era, where names, personas, and first impressions were the currency of storytelling. An actor learns early that what people “see” is often what they’ve already stored.

January 15 carries the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy: being judged by character rather than surface signals. Today, pick one person you’ve mentally filed under a label, by name, title, or “type”, and meet them again with fresh eyes, as if you’re creating the first page of the scrapbook. May you trade reflex for attention, and attention for grace.