Everyone has a holy place, a refuge, where their heart is purer, their mind clearer, where they feel closer to God or love or truth or whatever it is they happen to worship.
A huge lesson for me was that if I was gonna be successful, I had to be successful as myself - I couldn't be successful doing what other people were doing. I had to do what I believed in and what felt real to me and felt true to me, because the worst thing to be is successful as someone else.
The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.