Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon

music. Download the app today.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. On Friday, we do double-duty, not just reading our

daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations

on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator,

and a literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, it will give you a quick meditation from

the Stoics with some analysis from me and then will send you out into the world to turn these words

into works.

You are the solution to your problem. The girl couldn't have been much older than four or five,

and it was one of those lazy, boring days, and she was bothering her mother. She wanted

attention. She wanted to be entertained. But instead of giving her that, Joan Didian's mother

gave her a gift that would last a lifetime and change the shape of modern literature.

Handing the girl a blank notebook, her mother said that if she was bored, then she ought to go

write a story which she could then read. I had just learned to read Didian later,

explained. So this was a thrilling kind of moment, the idea that I could write something and then

read it. We can imagine Epictetus having similar exchanges with the students that he taught.

A philosopher must blow their own nose, used to say, they must understand that they hold in their

hands and their minds the solutions to almost all of their problems. No one but ourselves can truly

alleviate our boredom or our anger. No one else can make us feel better. No one else is responsible

for our time. And this is a lesson we need to learn when we're young, of course, but it's so

easy to forget when we're older. We hold in our hands all the tools that we need to be happy,

to be stimulated, to be productive, to have purpose. We just need to put them to use. We just

...