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Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient

wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some

of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoke.com.

Labels make you worse. It's an interesting fact, not once in any of his writings or speeches

let alone meditations. Does Marcus Aurelius call himself a stoic? Other people might have

applied this label to him, but he never identified with it. He never saw the need. This is often

a distinguishing feature between foolishness and wisdom. It's easy to put the world and

other people in tiny little boxes to come up with names and stereotypes for them. But

when you accept those names and labels for yourself, when you begin to self-identify, all that

is really doing is limiting your perception and creating the illusion of clarity when

in truth nuance reigns. As Paul Graham would write, the more labels you have for yourself,

the dumber they make you. Not just for yourself, but for other people too. Liberal, conservative,

Republican, Democrat, entrepreneur, writer, elite. Great leaders know that you have to take

things as they are for what they are. They know black and white is the exception, not the

rule. They know that there are good people on every side of every issue. That truth

is not partisan and that insight is not limited to one religion or school or persuasion.

FDR, as he filled his administration explain, I am trying to get across the idea that if

we have the right kind of people, the party label doesn't mean much. Whether you want

to call yourself a stoic or not is not really the point. Actually, that is the point.

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