“At one point in time, I so desperately was trying to be somebody else. Now I’m finally comfortable with just being myself and really learning who I am. I’m still on that journey.
“It’s interesting to hear other people’s opinions about me. Of course, it might hurt me at first. But if it does, that might mean they were right and it’s something I need to work on.
“So that’s what I do. I sit here and take your opinion, I look at myself and I work on it. I do that with everything. If a relationship has gone bad, I look at what I’ve done first before I blame anything on someone else. I ask myself, what did I do that was wrong? OK, I know I did this and this. But also, what did that person do?
“I think you have to evaluate yourself first before you can evaluate somebody else. Overall, if I find that I can’t love myself for who I am, then I probably won’t be able to love somebody else.”
— Bruce Avery II