Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Kindness, honesty and fairness sound easy until holding to them costs you something. The moment there is a price, every other quality needs nerve to survive the moment. Without it, your principles stay theoretical, admired in private and abandoned in the room where they mattered. That is why nerve comes first: it is what carries the rest into practice.

Think back to a time your values went quiet under pressure, and what the silence protected. This week, choose one small setting where saying the true thing costs little, and say it. Practicing when the stakes are low is how you build the nerve you will need when they are not.