You can’t decide to be brave, it’s not a matter of intellect, it’s a matter of cause and consequence. One either has been brave or has not. To decide to be brave is an abstraction, you may as well decide to be purple. Our actions dictate solely whether we have or have not been brave. Bravery has no meaning in the future tense, it’s observed by its presence in action or the lack thereof, and in the spaces between the crises the coward and the paragon are much the same.
Your past actions don’t dictate your future, for good or for ill. Only the crucible does, and the crucible would appear to be upon us. Bravery then, is not the absence of fear, it is the conscious decision to ignore the imperatives fear provides and to do what honour, reason, and faith demand of us. And the past be damned, what matters now is what happens next. If a man could be relied upon to always be brave just because he was once brave, how dull that would be, it’s the exercise of the will, of the spirit over the flesh that gives animus to heroism, and faith.
God forbid it were ever easy.