it means when things are getting tough you have to get back up, dust yourself off and keep trying.

quit your bitching and be a man. when it gets tough start playing hard.

"Cowboy Up" is when you are injured or down and the prospect of doing whatever it is you're about to try is so bleak that the best you can hope for is to live through it.

When faced with a hard chore, it's a shift in attitude from "can't" to a positive "can-do" with confidence and a non-complaining spirit that becomes contageous.

Basically, another way of saying "Shut up and take it like a man" or "Quit your whining." The term is derived from the popular image of cowboys being tough, unflinching, uncomplaining, and hard-working.

Essentially another term for self-endowment of strength and moral, or to another. Essentially another term for a similar phrase like, "toughen up", or "stop your belly-aching and fight!", etc etc.

Another incredibly vacuous term that no longer has the same meaning it initially did, thanks to cultural theft and abuse by people who aren't really cowboys at all, but bored, middle-class white people. It used to mean to toughen up or approach a problem with a hard attitude, but now is used to refer to anything requiring effort, or anything in which people are competeing against each other.

People sport the logo on their clothing or their car because they think it gives them credibility as a cowboy or a redneck, since it is now cool to be associated with these groups once again. But when you get down to brass tacks, most fans of the cowboy up marketing scheme are those who have no connection with the cowboy way of life at all. See poser, git er done and white trash.