Darkest Before the Dawn

First off, the title of this post is well said, if I do say so myself. And I'm saying that because it took a complete breakdown on my part for an unexpected break-through to happen. I had to quit caring about progressing enough to get to the level to achieve my dream of being an instructor to start having FUN with learning, and to believe in myself.
My 'I can' is so much stronger now. So intense, and it's refreshing. It's refreshing, because it seems like all I've ever done since I've set my eyes on my goal of becoming a parelli instructor is put self-imposed pressure on myself to improve. Which is good, but not in the way I was doing it. Because in doing so, I also put a bar on myself which said 'this is where I should be'. And where I should be included level 3/4 students, level 3 definitely being where I should be because I have my blue string, and level four being what I should be looking at, because I should have sent in my level 3 a year ago. Or so, I felt like it was. I compared myself with other students of the program, and became insanely frustrated. Because I felt like I'd gone nowhere in the past year, and I've been out at the barn for two-four hours a day dedicating myself to my horse and my horsemanship. And by that, I meant every single day, or close to it. The only things that kept me from going to the barn daily included being sick or not getting home before the barn closed-and those instances were rare and far between. So I was putting all this effort in, and I still felt like I wasn't where I was supposed to be. And I got upset. So upset, in fact, that I cried about it, and actually became quite depressed about it. And finally, I gave up. After all, if I was putting all this effort in and not progressing, I must be seriously lacking something, and perhaps I chose the wrong career choice.
So I started looking into another career option-trimming hooves. I still played, but it didn't matter whether or not I was progressing.
What I didn't realize, is that suddenly, learning became fun again. All pressure off to succeed, and I now WANT to watch horsemanship videos. I wanted to before, but the fun had been lost in the obsessive drive to progress. Suddenly, my 'I can' thought process is kicking into gear. There's no need to progress under a time limit or to compare myself to others to figure out where I should be. I'm watching the videos with such a positive mindset that it's blowing my mind. I can't WAIT to get out there and try out whatever I'm going to learn next. Because I don't HAVE to progress. There's absolutely no pressure at all.
Anyways, I just had to type this out.