There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Booking a transcendental meditation course seemed like the stuff of hippies and gullible idiots.  How could it possibly help in the real world?  I remember reading the brochure and being far from convinced.  In the end, I agreed to go and I left the first session knowing one new word and the proud owner of a hankie.  

Great, I thought I’ve spent several hundred pounds for a word and a hankie – this is the greatest scam since Delboy’s Peckham Springs bottled water.  The following day I went to a group meditation session and still to be convinced, I was bribed with lunch at Bill’s.  It’s true what they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

So after another session, I still had my doubts and now convinced this was a great little scam.  I’d worked out how much they had taken on this course and with a course every two weeks.  I began running it through my head about how I could replicate this and relieve some hipsters of their salaries.

Probably because I had paid for this and I hate to feel I have had poor value for money, I kept it up.  Now I have to say I actually miss it if I don’t meditate.  It may simply be its the only time of the day I don’t have a screen in my field of view.  I get some peace and a break from the world and I now believe everyone can benefit from this.  It’s something I now recommend and if you want to know more about TM, click here.

My first CBT counselling appointment.

Turning up for your first anything, is tough but NHS counselling is probably one of the hardest thresholds to cross.  I was anxious and contemplating not attending but the trigger was simple, I knew I needed help and this was my chance to get fixed.  When I arrived, I walked through the automatic door, up to the desk and my mind went blank.  I felt paralysed with fear and couldn’t remember the name of the person I was meeting.  How could I forget such a fundamental thing?  The basic rule of attending a meeting is to know who you are meeting.

When I finally managed to book myself in, I went through and it was completely different to what I had expected, now straight jackets, no padded cells, in fact, it was nothing like the movies.  Just a couple of chairs, a voice recorder and a PC in the corner on a standard computer desk.  The room itself reminded me of Amsterdam, it was a converted loft space and I felt comfortable almost immediately.  My counsellor started by explaining the plan and helping me by understanding what goals I needed to set.  I settled on three.  The first; to improve my mood, the second; to get job ready and finally manage my procrastination and rumination.

My first step;

I began to add structure to my day.  Assigning tasks to every hour of the waking day.

E.g.

0600hrs get out of bed and have a coffee
0700hrs have a shower
0800hrs go for a walk
0900hrs have a coffee at Starbucks

You get the idea, recording my mood, pleasure and achievement scores for each task.  Ticking them off as I achieved them.  Adding structure really helps as it gives you a to-do list and I found this was the first step towards my recovery.

If you need help from the NHS then click here.

Letting go of the past.

One of the first things to hit me was a loss, I no longer had an income.  Being unemployed is always tough but this felt different.  I have worked for other people and lost my job, hey I have even been sacked but this felt different.  The sense of loss was much greater.  It wasn’t simply my income I’d lost, I’d lost something far more precious my sense of identity.  I was Mr Bitcoin, now I was lost, for the first time I had no idea who I was, what I was doing or where to go.

I had been a successful digital entrepreneur, now I was someone clutching at straws, struggling to find their place in the world.  Who was I? What did I do?

For me this one of the hardest things to discover, I had to work out who I was and mourn the death of my Mr. Bitcoin alter-ego.  I had amassed a collection of trinkets from Bitcoin and these now felt tainted, they reminded me of a past life, one I wanted to escape.  Suddenly the trappings of success felt like a curse rather than a privilege.

One of the good things about the situation was parting with items was easy.  Bizarrely I felt I didn’t deserve them, I felt I had been richly rewarded for failure, so shedding these items made it easier to sleep and having read “The Power of Now” they didn’t even matter anymore.

Reading was my only source of comfort at the time and I’ve probably read more books in 2015 than at any other time during my life.  Books gave me solace and offered me comfort.  If you ever find yourself ruminating, I’d suggest reading as a first step.  It really helped me, I particularly enjoyed travel books and stories of skiing disasters.

The side effect of shedding possessions was money and as the saying says, “time is money”.  I could afford to take some time out to contemplate the way forward.  If this was a good thing I doubt, but at the time it was necessary.

The mourning after.

Some say I was lucky, I woke the next morning and I remember feeling like a complete loser, how can anyone fail to take enough tablets to kill themselves? I felt like not only a failure at business, a failure of life and now to top things off I was a failure at death as well. Great.

I was taken to my local accident and emergency department for treatment. I never knew A&E departments have a mental health team. I remember being assessed, questioned and feeling like I was sitting an exam, the only difference being now I was the one being assessed. It was an odd feeling being asked about every aspect of your life from your financial, friends, relationships, family to do you know what day it is and who’s the prime minister.

After spending the best part of the day with the mental health team, I was in the system. I was about to begin being treated for mental health issues. Ironically for someone who had been busy planning their funeral, convinced they had no friends or, in fact, anyone that cared of them began worrying what other people would think when they found out.

People struggle to sympathise with mental health issues. If I had been diagnosed with cancer and prescribed a treatment of chemotherapy everyone would have been rushing to help, being diagnosed with a mental health issue and being prescribed CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy) and Citalopram makes people feel uncomfortable. Making the patient feel paranoid, not ideal. The key is to treat them like a normal human being chances are one in four of your friends is suffering from some type of mental health issue but are yet to diagnosed.

Sometimes suicide seems like the answer.

After having spent some time as a guest of Her Majesty and, at least, my room had an en-suite. Looking back, I’m pleased I can laugh about it but at the time, I was in a very dark place, as I previously mentioned I was now a social pariah, a potential criminal and pushing me down further to my lowest ebb was a solicitors’ letter. I was being sued, a group of investors had decided to try and sue me and another had tried issuing a winding up order against my BVI Company. So there I was in tatters, home again when the door knocks and I’m served with further legal papers. If you have never had this pleasure again, I hope you never do. It was the final straw and I could no longer cope. I had some codeine left over from a previous issue and decided the world would be a better place without me in it.

I remember thinking it through, running through my head the process, how I was going to say goodbye and had convinced myself my funeral would be a non-event. I doubted anyone would miss me.

I sat on the sofa, crying and thinking things through before beginning to take codeine tablets. I can’t swallow tablets and have to chew them – codeine tablets taste vile. I remember the taste getting stronger and stronger as more and more tablets went into my system. For the first time, I felt in control. I felt relieved and felt I’d put everything in place, I posted my suicide note to Instagram and said my goodbyes, updated my will. I was ready to die. I remember feeling better with every tablet. Finally, I passed out, I was at peace.

Free Love* T&C’s apply.

During many drinking sessions at the hospital club, I came to realise that most of its members are somewhat false. Sadly I didn’t realise this early enough and I took their advice seriously. I key thing I have learnt on my journey since is that you cannot have it all. You have to make choices and those choices don’t define you but change the paths you walk along.

Having not being born in the sixties, or even conceived, I wasn’t au fait with the hippy rules of “Free Love” *^

*Terms and conditions apply.  ^The value of the friendship may down as well as up.

This was probably the hardest lesson I had to learn and boy did I decide to learn it the hard way. I viewed this group as friends and confidants and indeed they were friends but not of Jonathan but Mr Bitcoin. Sadly with the passing of Mr Bitcoin, my alter ego their friendship died with it. I cannot absolve myself from all responsibility; I decided to take their advice and more worryingly allowed them to invest in Bitcoin. They joined the merry party and everything was going well, the “Free Love” flowed and friendships were formed. Sadly when things started to go wrong, things changed.

My mistake was trying to manage the situation personally. This I accept was for the sake of my ego, how could my sub-contractor get into trouble? Why didn’t I know what was happening? I was Mr Bitcoin and I thought I knew everything about Bitcoin, only to find, the one thing I didn’t know was how close to the wire my subcontractor truly was. I felt like I had been sucker-punched by Mike Tyson.

It hurt and I began to disappear and leave vague messages, avoiding calls and this only annoyed them further. The truth was my mental health was fast going downhill and I was in pieces, life, as I knew it was falling apart. The cycle of rumination began, my business partner can tell you I was on a hideous Halloween inspired carousel, going faster and faster, darker and darker until I blacked out.

For their part, they stopped taking my calls, discussing me in groups behind my back, cancelling meetings with me and turning me into a social pariah. I was cut off, abandoned and left out to sea.

During one of the meetings they decided to call the police and report me, the next day I had a police officer at my front door, put in handcuffs and taken to the police station. If you have ever been arrested you’ll know the sinking feeling of shame you suffer being escorted out of your home, in handcuffs and ruminating about what the neighbours must be thinking. If I’m honest I don’t know if I actually saw a neighbour but at the time, it felt as if I’d seen everyone I’d ever met. It was humiliating.

There I was stood in my local police station, a potential criminal. I was booked in for theft and escorted to a holding cell. If you have never been a guest of Her Majesty, there is something very strange about hearing a heavy cell door shut and lock. It’s the first time as an adult; I didn’t have the freedom to leave a room. I was a prisoner; in my head I was guilty. The police must have thought so too, surely the Metropolitan police had better things to do than arrest people willy-nilly.

It felt like hours but, in reality, was probably less than one, I was interviewed, I explained the situation and I was released, without charge. I was innocent, well the police thought so and when it comes to matters of freedom, their view is the one that counts.

Hiring a life coach.

It was October 2014 and I was sitting in the hospital club a trendy private members club in central London. Drinking and laughing with clients when the subject of life coaches came up, ego’s were in full flow and you could measure the testosterone in pints and once again I felt I was on the outside of the group. Was I the only person in the room that didn’t have either a shaman or a life coach?

It appeared the answer to this question was yes. So feeling a little bit of loss, the fear of being different kicked in and I decided I had to find a life coach. Mike recommended one to me and just like that I hired a life coach. Ironically I didn’t know if I needed one or even really want one but now I had one, what does a life coach even do?

You’ll be pleased to know after 3 months of having a life coach I knew exactly what one does and its value. Their job is simple it’s to give you the kick up the arse you need. They help you try and de-stress with techniques and help you get into “state” so you can deliver presentations and find confidence quickly. This is something I’m very grateful for. Also, I learnt how to outline a presentation in two minutes flat making long, tedious thought showers a thing of the past. For those that have been blessed and not had to attend a thought shower, a thought shower is a room full of people coming with ideas about a problem.

E.g. how can I make this phone sound sexier? What shall we call the gold version? Etc.

Anything that can reduce the amount of time I have to spend in a room of people that make a cockapoo look like a Ph.D. graduate is of great benefit to my mental health.

Although there are most definitely gains from having a life coach and some of the things I have learnt have saved me time and made me money, my reasons for hiring one, were ridiculous.

Counselling, my first steps…

During the autumn of 2014 I was cajoled into exploring my past and like most men, the thought of counselling is something only other people do. To begin with I saw it as a sign of weakness. I believed counselling was designed for those that couldn’t cope with life. I could cope; things at this point were going well.

Business was good, my self-worth and ego were keeping the demons at bay. Everyone has demons; these are the little voices in your head that pour cold water of your dreams. They are the self-doubt, the cause of procrastination and in my case denial.

Since I was little I have been without a father my father left me when I was very small and I never really knew him growing up. This left a void in my life; anyone who has grown up with the loss of a parent will know how it feels. Personally I found it creates a huge amount of self-doubt and not coming from the most supportive family led me to lie about my family and father. To this day, I still don’t know why I did this I guess, I was creating a life I would prefer. It’s tough to mention, especially 30 years ago to admit your father is nowhere to be seen. I guess I just wanted to be normal and ironically the only way I could be normal was to lie about it. This was keeping up with the Jones’s at a very young age. It also created my issues in later life as it blurred the lines of which lies are acceptable and when you build your formative years on lies, it’s hard to adjust when you get older.

I had decided in 2013 to look for my father and discovered he’d died in 2008 after a car accident, in a care home less than 30miles from my childhood home. This left me with more questions than answers and although I didn’t know it back then I was carrying a large burden, an albatross around my neck. I decided to look into this during a period of self-improvement and looking into my spiritual side. I’d listened to “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle and wanted to improve myself. I searched http://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/ and found a local counsellor specialising in dealing with loss.

Personally, the key learning was learning to let go by writing a letter to my father, saying everything I wanted to say and accepting I will never get to know him and more importantly won’t be able to have a lot of questions answered.

2014, A Christmas in Crisis…

I remember wandering around a Christmas market in Poland, sipping on a plastic cup of Mulled Wine when I received an email that changed everything.  Digital Mining were in trouble, they were part of http://www.pbmining.com and as it transpired, not all of the due diligence had been done properly.

They say when the brown stuff hits the fans, you find out who your friends truly are.

http://www.pbmining.com had allegedly been blackmailed and accused of operating a Ponzi scheme.  So you would have thought this was not the best time to “Go Ostrich” sadly my ego couldn’t handle the truth, my shiny life was about to come crashing down around my ears and not because of anything more than a sub-contractors company.  The first thought I had; I need time.  Time to think and clear my head so I began to ignore calls, letters and emails.

As most people that have had any sort of therapy will know one of the key things you do is produce a therapy blueprint and I know for me one of the first signs my mental health is deteriorating is I stop opening my post.

I began to ignore calls from worried investors and because the good times had been very good my lifestyle was about to deteriorate dramatically too.  I was in the unenviable position of being hounded for money from investors that knowingly took a gamble whilst facing eviction from my flat.

I was falling behind on bills and disappearing into a black hole, I even had an email from my landlord complaining about a mark on the bathroom floor and because of this he wanted me to pay him handsomely.

Everything was falling apart, especially me, my ego was in tatters and hope had turned into despair.  Friends were too busy to help me and my whole world became very small and unpleasant very quickly.  Threats of legal action, accusations of theft followed, being arrested I can tell you is not a fun experience, having your equipment taken and investigated doesn’t make for a great day.  Threats of bankruptcy followed, blacklisted from groups that less than six months earlier thought I was the toast of the town.  It was horrible.

2014 The Winter of Content…

As summer came to an end, autumn arrived, the leaves turned golden and fell to the ground, I was now travelling more and more.  Looking for tech support in Poland, trying to find a way of reducing costs further because although things were still profitable, the price of bitcoin had fallen back and the mining difficulty had risen.  To put this into context imagine you are growing banana’s and every day you can see the price of your bananas falling.  You know there will be a day that growing bananas will no longer be profitable and even if it remains profitable, it will no longer be sexy.

The key to solve this was simple, or so I thought.  Develop a debenture like product.  It took the freshly mined bitcoins, traded with them, so everyone via coin-mixing shared in the profits.  The plan was discussed a new snazzy brochure was printed and distributed, Google Analytics and http://www.CanDDI.com showed how effective the brochure was.  It wasn’t that the site had lots of traffic but when you’re converting one in three visitors, who cares?  On an average day, I would see sign ups galore most testing the water with $5,000 and then topping up a month later with a much larger investment.  The site was growing so quickly, even our partners were struggling to keep up with demand.  They say in 2013/2014 more money was invested in Bitcoin or BlockChain related companies than was invested in Internet Startups in the 1990’s.  It truly was the golden age of my generation.