There's a lot of talk right now about being happy. Social media is filled with lifestyle Instagrammers and bloggers who all claim to be insanely happy, and if you just follow their tips, you'll be the happiest person ever!

With all due respect to those people, most of what they say is BS.

Constantly chasing beautiful, perfect, unrestrained happiness isn't realistic, and it isn't healthy. It encourages us to ignore the good things about the space we're in at a specific moment, in favor of always looking for something that will make us even happier. It is so, so important to be happy with your life, but you also have to be realistic and understand that you aren't going to be happy every minute of every day. Life doesn't work like that, nor should it. The highlight reel of social media teaches us to believe that life should be perfect, easy, and beautiful, and that every day we should wake up and be happier than we were yesterday.

Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes you oversleep, have to run to work or school in the rain, and spill coffee on yourself all before 9 a.m. It's OK not to feel happy when that happens to you. It's OK to be pissed off sometimes. Of course, if you constantly feel unhappy with your life or with yourself, there are people to talk to and steps to take that can help you get into a better situation. Overall, however, we need to remember that being happy every minute of every day is completely unrealistic.

What we see on social media (especially from lifestyle bloggers/Instagrammers) is a highlight reel.

It's a carefully curated representation of a life that doesn't really exist. Honestly, most of what we see on social media more closely represents an art show than it does an actual life. No one is happy all the time. No one's house is always spotlessly clean and no one's fridge is always filled with perfectly healthy and organic food that they can cook a meal from at the drop of a hat. It's not real life, and the perpetration of the myth that it is real life hurts the people who can't see the curation behind it.

If I went through life claiming to live a perfect existence and always be happy, my friends would smack me upside the head. Positivity is important, but only to a certain point. Beyond a certain level, positivity becomes naïvety, and that's no way to live. Moderation is so important in all things, and I think it's especially important when it comes to happiness and positivity. Try to find the good in every situation, but don't find the good and be blind to the bad. Use the good to handle having to deal with the bad.