One thing that I noticed in Julie Becks “Life Stories”, was when she said “There’s something about the narrative form, specifically–while expressing thoughts and feelings about negative events seems to help people’s well-being…”. I can personally atone to that, whereas this has happened to me. When reading this, I thought of the day at work when poop hit the fan. I was having a very bad day at my job, where I was put in a stressful position. When my day was over, I reluctantly told my family my misfortunes of the day and everyone was laughing. It turned out my story was actually very amusing, and telling the narrative out loud, I myself felt much better about the situation. I strongly believe that expressing a negative narrative can help someone just as much as a positive narrative.

Another quote in the article said, “People take the stories that surround them–fictional tales, new articles, apocryphal family anecdotes–then identify with them and borrow from them while fashioning their own self-conceptions”. I feel this is very true, and I see this in many forms, from my friends and family’s stories, to news outlets, movies, and even myself. Overall, people are always learning and “stealing” from each other and I’m not surprised that story telling is one of those things. By learning the trade of story telling from each other it allows us to become better at story telling, and the cycle repeats.

Lastly, in a section of the article, it mentioned how McAdams has “3 aspects of self”, which being an actor, developing goals, and then author. Although this find is interesting and makes sense, I feel that there are more layers to a person than just those three listed. From person to person we see variants, so why would we box everyone into these same three categories?