just thoughts....Being true to yourself is true courage. As said above. sometimes being brutally honest with yourself is the highest virtue. Also, if you can stand as an individual when confronted by a group of individuals, that is courage.
Being honest to your self allows you to find out what being true to your self is. One can not come to know yourself if your head and your heart are full of self deceptions.
In a religious context, being brutally honest with self is the same as being brutally honest with God. (judgement day is every day)
In a self esteem, psychological context being brutally honest with self is needed to get past all the conditioning that makes you other than yourself. Thus being able to discover who you really are and not what your world has conditioned you to be.
It takes courage to face your demons ( deceptions) and it takes sometimes brutal honesty to find out what those deceptions are.
The inner "Jihad" is about eliminating the self deceptions that prevent you being unified with yourself (religion: God)
dualism ( ego - disunity) - non-dualism ( unity )