I am a corporate designer (paying the mortgage, providing for my kids) but I want to increase my income and also dive into my art passion. In that vein, I am pursuing a wild idea for a side hustle as an artist. A friend contracted me to create 4 pieces of art for her, but we didn’t settle on money. Although she once said she would pay me, we never talked details. I’ve now spent hours on deliverables that she likes (with lots of rounds of revisions) but I have this simmering resentment towards her and towards myself for being too chicken to talk money with her. Thoughts are: “I’m not good enough to deserve payment for this. She will get mad at me if I bring it up. It will impact our friendship. This is a major hurdle that I cannot clear. I’ve never done this before.” To get different results, I need to do things differently. How do I jump into this new pool? I jumped into the pool of weight loss, which felt impossible but now I’m half way to my 50lb goal; likewise with money, it felt impossible to even look at the numbers, but now I’m truly feeling abundance, asked for a raise, and have wrangled my budget and spending. How can I transfer these skills to the “hurdle” in this creative endeavor? I have proved my value to the ‘client’, but my brain says, “Oooooh, this is not you! You’re not a good artist and you hate confrontation… run away!”