The Dangers of Becoming Goal Orientated with Left Brained Introverts

This week I was lucky enough to be invited to go to Wisconsin with my horse and stay for a few days at Parelli Professional Fran Latane's house.  As usual, I learned exactly what I needed to learn-but not necessarily what I wanted to hear.  I'm still soaking all the lessons, but the main lesson I learned can be expressed in many words, but it comes from the same understanding and the same feeling.  I had become so goal orientated towards my professional goals that I did not put my horse first.  And being a left brained introvert and a true friend, he just grit his teeth so to speak, and took it.  There really is NEVER an excuse that's reasonable enough to justify not putting your horse first.  Never. 
But there are reasons that explain it. 
In 2012, I lost myself in a fog of stress and depression.  Things were hard at home, I was worried about the future.  I felt like the only way to keep my family together if my mom passed away was if I could support the family financially.  And she had been sick enough that it looked like that was going to happen very, very soon.  The dream had become a necessity.  And in that necessity, I lost the joy in it.  I needed to get to that goal, and I needed to get to it as soon as I could. 
On top of that, my body frustrated me.  It still does, more often than I'd like.  I'm an extreme extrovert who can't move as much as I need to without my lungs protesting and endangering me.  And in the time I could have used the support the most, one of the main support beams of my life for the past four years cut off all contact suddenly, without warning.  I know enough now not to take it personally, and I'm extremely thankful for the people who gave me support through those times, but at the time, it was a very hard blow. 
All in all, everything came out in my horsemanship.  Everything.  And it wasn't fair to my horse at all, and it became a behavioral habit.  I became a demanding dictator instead of a friend to him. 
So for a while, I'm not going to focus on my goals.  And when I do come back to my goals, I'm certainly not going to come at it with that attitude.  I'm going on a level 3 hiatus to rebuild the relationship and trust with my horse that I broke.  I'm going to focus the time spent together on undemanding time or grooming, and any riding I do is going to be trail riding only, and my main priority is going to be allowing my horse to take the lead, and ignore the nagging feeling I have in my head to 'get going, get this done get that done, ect'. 
In 2012 I lost myself.  But in 2013, I'm going to find the person I am again.