We’re all too familiar with the adage, “Money can’t buy happiness.” But according to author Laura Vanderkam, in her empowering and thoughtful book All The Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending, “If money can’t buy happiness, perhaps we aren’t spending it right.”

Vanderkam encourages us to rethink how we view money.

Rather than money being “evil or soulless” or a point of comparison, she suggests we start seeing it as a tool for “acquiring, doing, and taking care of things that bring us joy.”

Let’s find out how.

In his book Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, author David K. Randall calls sleep “one of the dirty little secrets of science.” That’s because despite spending almost a third of our lives sleeping, we don’t really know much about the process of sleep.

In fact, Randall, a senior reporter at Reuters, notes that sleep is one of the youngest fields in science. Until the 1950s, researchers believed that our brains remained quiet during slumber.

But the discovery of the stages of sleep shattered this perspective. For instance, our brains are just as active in REM sleep — aptly named rapid eye movement because our eyes shift rapidly against our lids — as they are when we’re awake.

In Dreamland, Randall shares a slew of these fascinating, surprising and eye-opening facts, anecdotes and research studies. These are a few curious tidbits from his book.

It’s impossible to feel joy every minute of the day. Life is often a roller-coaster. Amid the good times are the inevitable stressors and tough moments. Our emotions also naturally wax and wane.

However, it is possible to rejoin joy, according to professor and psychologist Gerald Young, Ph.D. It is possible to keep returning to joy even after experiencing something difficult. It is possible, he said, to get on a path that leads to joy.

And creating that path is something all of us can work on. “In our efforts to rejoin joy, we can be the source of much of our change process,” Young said. And those changes can be anything from being a more sensitive partner to working harder to switching jobs to becoming more compassionate overall, he said.

Below, Young offered several suggestions on creating positive change in 2013.

There is magic in ordinary moments, in the mess of life. It’s just that sometimes we miss it.

Sometimes we’re so focused on the future or so buried in the past that we neglect the present. Sometimes we crave something so badly that we want time to speed up. And in that yearning, we gloss over the glory of today.

Other times we get so overwhelmed by daily pressures that we assume we don’t have time for the activities that feed us and bring us joy.

In her beautiful book A Field Guide to Now: Notes on Mindfulness and Life in Present Tense author Christina Rosalie shows us how to take notice, and take action, to live a mindful, passionate, truthful life amid the inevitable challenges and stressors.

Courage has very little to do with fearlessness. In fact, courage is all about fear. Courage is acting in the company of fear. It’s feeling fear, and doing it anyway.

Courage “is the ability to confront fear, pain, risk, danger, uncertainty or intimidation,” write authors Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons in their book The Courage Companion: How to Live Life with True Power.

Courage isn’t just heroic acts. Courage is many things. And often courage is quiet, spoken in hushed tones, like the well-known and beautiful quote from Mary Anne Rademacher: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Optimism isn’t rose-colored glasses, unicorns or eyes-and-ears-closed denial. It isn’t merriment every minute of the day, or utter delight on most days. And it isn’t a trait only some of us are blessed with while others are doomed to a deep, undying pessimism.

Optimism actually can be learned. And it actually helps us be more resilient. Optimism helps us bounce back when we’re facing trials and tribulations and stress strikes, writes author Polly Campbell in her book Imperfect Spirituality: Extraordinary Enlightenment for Ordinary People.

Optimism keeps us well. “Doctors, like positive psychology guru Martin Seligman, rank optimism right up in line next to exercise and good nutrition when it comes to good health-building behaviors,” she writes.

My first introduction to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), was standing in the kitchen of my parents’ home and witnessing my father in full rant.

My dad was a psychiatrist/ psychoanalyst of the old school. Which is to say he was brilliant, but also a man of his particular age. Which is to further say his fury was directed at the APA for taking homosexuality as a diagnosable mental illness out of the manual. It was 1973.

Hardly aware of what he was so upset about, I did hear him dramatically declare that he was withdrawing his membership in the APA. My dad loved being a psychoanalyst and he loved being a physician but he wasn’t that crazy (you should forgive the word) about being a psychiatrist. His prescription pad gathered dust as he focused on talk therapy. So his threat to quit the APA wasn’t idle. But it wasn’t like he was giving up his beloved couch.

During one of my routine trips to the library — I haven’t adopted the Kindle groove yet and still enjoy the physical act of turning pages — I was perusing the women’s fiction section to get my chick-lit fix, and landed on Robyn Harding’s refreshingly funny novel, The Journal of Mortifying Moments.

Kerry Spence, the protagonist in Harding’s novel, is quirky and kind of lovable, though she emits an aura of low self-esteem as a result of past rejections.

Her therapist recommends that she keep a journal of all of her painfully embarrassing and hurtful incidents involving the opposite sex, in the hopes that she can detect an ongoing pattern in her romantic relationships.

Gratitude is a lifejacket on a sinking ship. Gratitude is a door held by a stranger when you’re carrying lots of stuff. It’s a smile from your spouse after you’ve had one of those days at work. It’s a blanket when you’re cold. Soup when you’re sick. A call when you’re lonely.

Gratitude provides for us even when we think we have nothing or no one. Because we do have many things and people in our lives. Gratitude just lifts the opaque veil from our eyes so we can see that more clearly.

“People who are grateful about events and experiences from the past, who celebrate the triumphs instead of focusing on the losses or disappointments, tend to be more satisfied in the present,” write Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons in their book Living Life as a Thank You: My Journal.

In it, they feature practical exercises and inspiring stories and quotes to cultivate gratitude. Here are three exercises to try.

“Our need for connection and love is just as fundamental as our need for food, water, and shelter,” writes clinical psychologist Lee H. Coleman, Ph.D, in his book Depression: A Guide for The Newly Diagnosed. So when you’re struggling with depression — or any mental illness, condition or concern — having support is incredibly important for getting better.

In her book Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes, author Therese Borchard cites several studies about the power of support groups.

For instance, she mentions a 2002 study, where 95 percent of people with severe depression reported that online support groups helped their symptoms.

One of the primary reasons Intro to Psychology classes are so popular in college is because students are trying to figure themselves out. They believe that by taking the class, they might be able to shed some insight into their own behaviors and emotions.

Unfortunately, most Intro to Psych classes cover such a wide breadth of material, they’re practically useless in answering this question.

But many people gain a spark during those classes, and go on to do more research into their own psyche, habits, and underlying motivations.

A big part of how we act and react in our world is captured in the psychodynamic theory of defense mechanisms. Now there’s a new book to help you better understand these mechanisms, by our own blogger Joseph Burgo, Ph.D., called Why Do I Do That?

There are some days your brain seems utterly bare. Open it up, and you’d find empty candy wrappers and a few scraps of paper. Coming up with one decent idea feels unimaginable. Stringing a few lucid sentences together feels like a feat.

Whatever your profession, it’s probably safe to say that you’ve experienced a creative block — or 10 — before. It happens to everyone. We’re not robots. We don’t spit out ideas in seconds.

After struggling with his own bout of creative block — while writing a piece on creative block — Alex Cornell, a San-Francisco-based designer and musician, decided to ask for help. He emailed friends and artists for advice. That advice created a popular blog post.