Everyone wants confidence before they act. “Once I feel ready, then I’ll start.”. That’s nonsense. Confidence never comes first.

What comes first is courage. And courage isn’t glamorous. It’s not a battle cry or a heroic pose. It’s simply this: the stubborn belief that somehow, some way, you’ll figure it out.

When I was 15, I had zero confidence. I wasn’t a top student. Teachers didn’t call me
“Promising”. If anything, they probably called me “absent”. Then came my infamous encounter in Sg Wang Plaza, where a fortune teller studied my BaZi chart and told me, “You’ll be poor until 45”. At that moment, it felt like my life had been sentenced.
But instead of surrendering, a ridiculous thought popped into my head: If I’ve got 30 years before 45, I have 30 years to figure this out myself.

Did I know what I was doing? Absolutely not. Did I feel brave? Not at all. What I had was the foolishness to try anyway. And that’s the funny thing about courage, it doesn’t show up fully formed. It grows as you do. Each book I struggled through, each embarrassing mistake I made, each time I refused to quit. Those weren’t signs of confidence. They were the tiny bricks of courage being laid, one by one.

This is where people misunderstand BaZi. A chart doesn’t guarantee success. It only shows potential. If your chart suggests creativity, that doesn’t mean your first painting will hang in a gallery. More likely, it’ll end up in the recycling bin. If it suggests athletic talent, you won’t pick up a racket and suddenly beat Federer. Potential is just the seed. Courage is what waters it until it grows.

And courage is not the same as confidence. Confidence is what you feel after you’ve succeeded a few times. Courage is what you need before that, when you’re failing, fumbling, and wondering if you’re an idiot for trying. At 15, I didn’t feel courageous. I felt clueless. But I acted anyway. And only through those actions did courage begin to take shape.

Now, some of you might be wondering: Which element in BaZi represents courage? Which one represents fear? Here’s my take. None of them. No single element owns courage. Every element can become courageous through doing, through taking action. That’s what the old masters got wrong. Courage isn’t a feature of one element. It’s a choice that any element can develop. That’s how I changed my life. That’s how I turned a negative “fortune telling” moment into a turning point.

And courage isn’t just for the big moments either. Most of the time, courage is quiet. It’s the small, daily acts that no one notices; speaking up when silence would be easier, sending that application even if you think you’ll get rejected, saying no when everyone expects you to say yes. Those little acts matter. Over time, they stack up into the kind of courage that can change the direction of your life.

The truth is, I never had a perfect plan. I didn’t have a roadmap or a guarantee. What I had was the silly belief that I’d figure it out eventually. And you know what? That was enough. That’s all courage really is, moving forward without having all the answers, trusting that you’ll work them out along the way.

So, let me ask you this; where in your life are you waiting for confidence, when what you really need is courage? What decision are you putting off until you “feel ready?”. Because here’s the thing; you’ll never feel ready. That’s the point.

You don’t need confidence. You need courage. And once you act, you’ll figure it out. Somehow, some way.