I have everything I wanted, and I'm not OK.

Before you start reading this article, I just want to put this out there. I don't have a mental health condition. I am OK, I'm not at risk and not going to do anything to hurt myself or anybody else. But what I am going to do is talk openly about how I feel at the moment, and maybe - just maybe - it might prompt someone else to pay attention to how they feel too.

With that out of the way, let's set the scene. I'm 38. Married, 2 kids, good job, big house, brand new car in the driveway etc. A few uni degrees on my wall, plans to do another and if I'm being reeeeeeeeeally honest I'm quietly planning in the background how I might be able to buy a boat in time for summer.

I also feel about as visible as a needle in a haystack, and I feel like when my time is up and I've got to explain to that higher power what I actually did with my life in my mid to late thirties I might not have what they will consider a decent answer.

So on one hand I'm ticking a fair few boxes, but on the other I am not really feeling like life is going my way at the moment. How does that work? It is a question I've tried to answer more than once, and having done a bit of psychology study over the years I think it is a combination of things, some of which I have probably been too embarrassed to talk about publicly before.

The first - and I think the biggest - is that I don't fit the stereotypical mould for 'me'. I've got big goals to achieve, not much time to do it and I am forever bombarded with inspiration/motivation/successful people/bullshit that I think is supposed to spur me on to achieve those goals but instead just becomes a whole heap of background noise. Does Tony Robbins have an overdue electricity bill, the eternal struggle of kid's lunchbox choices and the thought of what will happen if i forget to put the bins out to deal with every day? I think not.

The second part of this is internal. As I mentioned, I have some pretty big stars in my eyes and being on the wrong side of 30 I'm starting to have that creeping feeling of 'crap, time's kind of running out a bit here' too. With big goals comes incredibly high internal standards that seem like failure when they're not met, and you soon get to the point where I am right now. Everything's looking pretty good on the outside, but on the inside you do fight yourself a bit and really question whether that standard you've set - you know, the one you are absolutely sure you can reach and knock out of the park - is the one you genuinely believe in, or just the one all the beautiful people have put in your head.

So my appeal to the LinkedIn community (or at least the few of you who might read some of this) is this - accept the feeling of despair, and embrace it. It is 100% OK to not be OK and even though you feel like a bit of a hypocrite because you're not celebrating how wonderful things are for you right now, it does not mean it will forever be the case, and there are many, many other people who feel EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. That awesome looking and sounding job might not be your forever one, that new car you love doesn't have to be perfect and you're allowed to find things on it you want to 'fix' and while your family is your greatest achievement and you would do anything for your kids it is 100% OK to want 'a bit more'. The motivators call that 'drive' - I call it 'life'.