'When People Believe in You, Prove Them Right'

Holding strong to "the treasure from the people who believe in you."

Irina Mihaela

Investing belief in another person or being the one on the receiving end can be a powerful, life-altering experience.

“The only person who believed in me was my grandmother,” remembers Irina Mihaela, a nuclear engineering manager turned executive coach and the president, consultant and speaker at Entrepreneur Enlightenment.

“She lived in the country. I would only see her during summer vacation. She didn't know about my grades and kept saying that one day I would go to university,” Mihaela says. “I grew up in an abusive family during communist times in Romania. To rebel against my family. I didn't study, and I was last in class from grade 5 to 8. I never had the heart to tell her the truth.”

Having that one person who saw her potential and verbalized it meant the world and helped build determination and confidence.

”My father put me down and beat me up. I failed the grade 9 exam, I failed the grade 11 exam, but somehow I finished high school,” Mihaela says. “Because of my grandmother, I had the desire to go to university.”

Her own household, was less supportive and encouraging.

“My father was against it and demanded me to be a hairdresser. I refused and rebelled against him,” Mihaela says. “I took the university exam, but I failed. I still stood my ground and tried again. I failed three times until I got in the fourth time.”

That academic adversity wasn’t all she emotionally and psychologically had to endure.

“It was grueling to have to put up with my father's beatings before exams, but I wanted to prove him wrong and my grandmother right,” Mihaela says. “I loved my grandmother dearly and wanted to make her proud of me. She was the only person in the world whose love I felt.”

Her dad’s violence became the mountain that she was going conquer in different ways.

“I despised my father greatly for believing that he had the right to tell me what I could do, labeling me and wanting to subdue me. He drank a lot, didn't keep his promises and was boastful, but his life was a mess. I became very fisty to withstand his punishments. I looked him in his eyes defiantly, which drove him crazy. I wanted to prove him wrong with every fiber of my being,” Mihaela details. “Maybe without this inner fire,” she thinks, “I would have given up trying to get into university, I don't know.
Proving him wrong was a must for me.”

The ultimate educational and career outcome very likely met or exceeded her grandmother’s confidence. “I finished with 100% on my master's thesis and was the valedictorian,” Mihaela says, adding that, “I proceeded to build a successful career in nuclear engineering in two countries. I emigrated to Canada, where I reside now.”

As for her family, “Later in life, my father was proud of me, desiring my presence and love,” Mihaela says.

She talks about what those experiences taught her that she would like others to know.

“No matter what, listen to that voice inside that says ‘you can,’ believe in yourself despite external circumstances and keep safe in your heart the treasure from the people who believe in you,” Mihaela says.

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