Courage Before Confidence Part 1: Lessons Learned Through a Wall of Flames

I once got left behind in a wall of fire because I couldn’t handle a drip torch.

Let me rewind a bit.

I was a fresh uni graduate, in my first role in the government department I’d end up spending twenty years in. I didn’t end up doing this particular role, fortunately. I was filling in for a scientist on maternity leave, and I had no idea what I was doing. I was hopelessly unqualified, wrong degree entirely.

My first task was to lead a group of enthusiastic volunteers on a rescue mission for Striped Legless Lizards. These are endangered, possibly even extinct now (but not because of me, I promise). They were sheltering in an area of grassland earmarked for a controlled burn, and we needed to relocate them before they got barbecued.

Here’s the thing about Striped Legless Lizards: they look exactly like snakes. Seriously, google it. They look like baby brown snakes. I was supposed to instruct a very hairy man in stubbies and a BO-stained singlet to use his mini excavator to turn over rocks. If I spotted a lizard, I was meant to dive in, grab it with my gloved hand, and drop it in a cloth bag held open by an eager volunteer.

The volunteers were looking at me with admiration. They thought they were helping a real scientist on her worthy scientific mission. They were definitely mixing me up with the pregnant woman I was replacing.

Fake it ‘til you make it, I told myself. Never mind that I legitimately could not tell the difference between this lizard and a brown snake.

We turned over rock after rock, me sweating from more than just the summer heat. I did look, really, I did. Mainly because I didn’t want to step on an actual snake. But we found nothing. No Striped Legless Lizards were rescued that day. I farewelled the crestfallen volunteers and thanked Larry the excavator operator, hoping he didn’t expect me to arrange payment because I had no idea how that stuff worked yet.

At least that trauma was over.

Except the following week, my manager cheerfully announced I’d be taking part in the controlled burn itself. Like it was a special treat.

I’d never done any training. I didn’t have proper gear. The best I could manage was jeans and Doc Martens. The lead firey looked me up and down in horror when I arrived on site. He double-checked I was supposed to be there. Yes, I assured him. My manager had asked me to come.

He handed me a drip torch.

I’d never seen one in my life. They literally drizzle fire. This was the late nineties, and OH&S wasn’t quite the thing it is today. Apparently you could just hand a twenty-two-year-old with no training a canister of flaming fuel and point her at some dry grass. Sure! What could go wrong?

We lined up in a row and started walking forward, using our torches to light a line of flames behind us as we went. Except I kept struggling with the weight (the fuel made it heavy) and tipping the end up, which made my fire go out. I’d fumble to get it going again while everyone else kept walking.

Before I knew it, there was a line of fire on either side of me. Growing bigger by the minute. I swear it felt like I was in a tunnel of flames. OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration; over the years this story has become more horrifying in my mind’s eye. But I WAS surrounded by fire. I DID get left behind. It was boiling hot. Sweat and soot were running into my eyes. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t given me goggles.

Actually, yes I could. It was the nineties.

I was shaking. Terrified. Completely out of my depth.

But I survived.

I got some very strange looks on the tram home, black with soot and reeking of smoke, but I survived.

Why Confidence Doesn’t Come First

Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I was standing in that field, surrounded by flames, convinced I was going to die: confidence doesn’t come first. It comes after.

I always thought confident people felt confident before they did hard things. That they had some inner certainty I was missing. That one day, I’d wake up and finally feel ready.

I was wrong.

Dr Julie Smith, a clinical psychologist whose book Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? (2022) has helped approximately everyone I know, puts it this way: ‘Courage comes first, confidence comes second.’ You don’t wait until you feel confident to do the scary thing. You do the scary thing, terrified, and confidence builds from there.

I was genuinely annoyed to discover this. Seriously, I’d been getting this backwards the whole time?! I had spent years waiting to feel ready; for job applications, for difficult conversations, for putting my hand up in meetings. Deep down, I believed confidence was something you either had or you didn’t. Something you were born with, like being tall or having nice teeth.

It isn’t. Confidence is something you build. And the only way to build it is by doing things you don’t feel confident about yet.

(I know. I didn’t like it either.)

The Stretch Zone

The problem with waiting until you feel confident is that confidence doesn’t just show up. It’s not going to tap you on the shoulder one day and say ‘Right, you’re ready now, off you go.’ That’s not how it works.

Dr Smith explains this using a framework called the Learning Model — originally developed by Luckner and Nadler back in 1991. Imagine three circles, one inside the other. The innermost circle is your comfort zone — the stuff you can do without thinking, the situations where you feel fine. The middle circle is your stretch zone — challenging but manageable. The outer circle is the panic zone — overwhelming, too much, shut it down.

Confidence grows in the stretch zone. Not in the comfort zone (nothing new happens there) and not in the panic zone (you’re too overwhelmed to learn anything). The stretch zone. The bit that feels uncomfortable but doable.

When I think about that controlled burn, I wasn’t in the stretch zone. I was in full panic. But not because fire is inherently terrifying; it was because I’d been thrown in with zero preparation. No training, no proper gear, no gradual build-up. I went from ‘never held a drip torch’ to ‘walking through flames’ in about thirty seconds. No wonder I froze.

What would have helped? Starting smaller. Watching a burn first. Learning how the equipment worked. Building up to the scary thing instead of being launched into it and hoping for the best.

But here’s the important bit: even WITH preparation, I still wouldn’t have felt ready. That’s the point. The stretch zone is still uncomfortable. It’s still scary. You’re still doing it before you feel confident.

The difference is that you’re giving yourself a fighting chance, not waiting until you feel ready (which will never happen) but setting yourself up so the scary thing is challenging rather than completely overwhelming. You’re not removing the fear. You’re just making sure you don’t freeze.

Courage before confidence. Always. But maybe start with a smaller fire.

Coming Up in Part 2

That’s the external side of building confidence — doing it scared, finding your stretch zone, courage before confidence.

But there’s another side. The voice in your head that tries to undo all of it. That’s coming in Part 2: imposter syndrome, the comparison trap, and why we keep losing a game that’s rigged against us.

References

Luckner, J. L., & Nadler, R. S. (1991). Processing the adventure experience: Theory and practice. Kendall/Hunt Publishing.

Smith, J. (2022). Why has nobody told me this before? HarperOne.