When you confront with a situation that people believed false accusations made against you, you need to think about why did they believe these accusations? You may be jealous of people who gain the respect of your friends and feel that you are being discriminated against, but do examine the situation clearly. Imagine yourself on their shoes, and go through the whole situation as it unfolded. Did it make you look guilty? Are you guilty of what people are saying about you? You need to understand that there is no smoke without fire, and if people believe something bad about you, you have two choices. You can defend yourself and prove them wrong, or you can just face up to it that you did wrong and need to apologize. There’s no need to dramatize the situation or let it affect your self-esteem levels. If you did wrong, admit it and apologize, putting an end to the speculation and learning to move on in a more positive way.
The only time that humiliation has to affect your self-esteem is if you analyze the situation and find that you were wrong and others were right. People often have difficulty admitting that they are in the wrong, but this beats living with self-esteem issues for years and feeling jealous of those who don’t. Apologize, learn from it, and move on, and if the humiliation is the fault of someone else who has wronged you, let them know that this kind of treatment is unacceptable, thus retaining your self-respect.
If people criticize you for being who you are, and you feel this criticism is unfounded, argue your case. It's their problem, not yours, but you can often smooth the waters by letting them know that they are mistaken. Prejudices and all kinds of problems such as this come about because people don’t know any different. Educate people, and give them no reason to humiliate you in the future.
Once there was a little Hindu girl in our night class who was humiliated by people who were ignorant about her Hindu beliefs. She showed me a perfect example of how to deal with humiliation. She corrected the statement made by the guy who was trying to humiliate her, and educated the whole class at the same time about Hindu beliefs that are contrary to the accusation that was made. I thought it was a very brave thing to do, and that's how everyone should deal with something like humiliation. We should not use it to make ourselves feel smaller and consequently jealous when people appear to be bigger than us. No one really is. You just need to know how to conduct your life and have confidence in what you believe in. When you do, you don’t have to deal with petty jealousy at all.
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