muster up

muster up (third-person singular simple present musters up, present participle mustering up, simple past and past participle mustered up)

1. Look within oneself to summon a particular positive quality, such as strength, energy or courage.

   I mustered up all my remaining willpower.

   • 1846, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “P.'s Correspondence”, in Mosses from an Old Manse:

     Nobody save myself so much as turned to look after him; nor, it grieves me to confess, could even I contrive to muster up any tolerable interest, even by all that the warlike spirit, formerly manifested within that now decrepit shape, had wrought upon our globe.