What are some of your best ways of making yourself braver?

For me, it's the use of my imagination. One example: I tell my inner sissy (unfortunately a major player in my inner self): "You've been working way too hard! You need a vacation." Then I hand her the keys to my imaginary navy blue custom painted Ferrari and tell her to go to Palm Springs for a week using my imaginary pre-loaded credit card and enjoy a week's vacation in Palm Springs. Then we both get a break.

As a kid, the only way I could get away from my abusive mother to a safe place was to travel to an imaginary city I created. It may have saved my life. Or at least kept me out of a mental institution. My life was hell.

I once read a story by Stephen King about a writer of a series of detective action novels who finds himself confronting a homicidal maniac at a highway rest stop in the middle of the night. To save his own life and the life of the woman being attacked by the maniac, the writer uses his imagination to assume the character of his own fictional hero and is therefore able to adequately handle the situation.