Courage and fear feel exactly the same in your stomach. Only your feet decide which one it was.

The physical sensation is identical in both cases, which is why waiting to feel brave never works. The racing heart before something frightening and before something exciting is the same event, and the name it gets depends on what you did next. There is no separate feeling that arrives to authorize you.

When the nerves show up, treat them as evidence that something matters rather than as a warning to stop. Decide the action in advance so the feeling does not get a vote at the last moment. Afterwards you will call it courage, and it will have felt like fear throughout.