I've reinvented myself many times in my life. I thought I'd become a concert violinist but burned out at 17. I thought I'd go to law school but became Miss America.
I want to prove to people that every single business can be reinvented and fixed. And I want to prove to myself that I'm good at it.
I guess I reinvented myself about 18 times throughout my career.
I got great opportunities on 'SmackDown' - myself and Daniel Bryan, we reinvented ourselves; we got steam behind us again on that show.
Middle school was my most awkward stage. I switched schools after the sixth grade after having gone to the same school for six years with the same group of 40 kids. It was a shock. I reinvented myself. I experimented with different styles, different groups of friends, and different types of music and not knowing how to be cool.
I love reinventing my music and myself as well, and that's something my fans love about me.
I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself.
What I do is I basically make records to please myself first and foremost, and so one of the most important things for me as a musician and a writer and a producer is to feel like there's always a sense of evolution and reinvention with each record.
My mom would say Iβm a good kidβ¦ but I put them through a lot. I was rejecting religion and, not permanently, also kind of rejecting the things that theyβd taught me, and just trying to think for myself.
I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.
Part of recovery is relapse. I dust myself off and move forward again.
Whether I'm running, working, relating, parenting, learning - whatever I'm doing, I want to surround myself with people who push me.
I'm just a purist. What is important in my life is that I can do something that can influence many people and influence China's development. When I am myself, I am relaxed and happy and have a good result.
My wife keeps on telling me my worst fault is that I keep things to myself and appear relaxed. But I am really in a room in my own head and not hearing a thing anyone is saying.
My mind is always going. I'm always thinking what I need to do, what I haven't done, what I did do, what I didn't do as well as I could - I'm relentless that way with myself.
I was well indulged as a child by my relentlessly self-improving, working class parents to express myself.
I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I'd far rather see for myself what's going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.
I get the sense people sort of imagine that in my personal religious life I must be an intense rigorist wearing a hair shirt under my clothes while scourging myself. And, really, I'm not a rigorist by temperament.
I make no apologies for the fact that I have a religious life of my own. I'm speaking as a Christian because I'm speaking as myself.
I am not a conventionally religious man, but in the wilderness I have come closest to finding myself and knowing the universe and accepting God - by which I mean accepting all that I don't know.
