I reckon you're right on the money. If you don't exercise your courage you may become paralyzed by fear. I have known a few people who remained prisoners of their own making due to fear. Sadly, they can rarely be prompted, coached or goaded into facing those fears. It is something they alone must do.
Fear sometimes creeps in on me for one reason or another, and I do my best to alleviate it, but on occasion it lingers until I get mad enough to say the hell with it, let's do it.
Fear is often the reason people give in but I see it as strong motivation to dig in and dig deeper...that seems to deliver much better results although it's not always the easiest to do.
The older I get the more the 'fear focus' shifts to self preservation. I might fall and break a hip or fall down in my chicken run and get my eyes pecked out. Then I realize what I'm doing to myself and how stupid it is and get back to the business of living....without that fear. E'ryone gotta go sometime lol
We all feel it at some stage, but if we've played the rest of our lives well (or learned from not doing so) we have that ability to overcome it, see a way forward and move that way.