Field Guide
Essential Concepts
The Foundation of Wealth Psychology
Ten core concepts that bridge biblical wisdom and behavioral science. These aren’t just definitions—they’re the intellectual architecture for everything I teach.
Why These Terms Matter
Ideas have gravity. A few core principles do the heavy lifting in my work—forming the foundation for understanding why we stay trapped in destructive patterns and how we break free.
This isn’t a comprehensive theology or neuroscience textbook. These are the ten concepts most essential to understanding wealth psychology through the lens of faith and science.
Think of this page as your intellectual foundation. Each term connects to the others, creating a framework for transformation that goes deeper than tactics or tips.
The Ten Essential Concepts
Start anywhere. Follow your curiosity.
Neuroplasticity
The brain’s capacity to reorganize itself
Your brain is not fixed. It physically rewires based on what you practice. This is the neuroscientific foundation for why habits, not willpower, create lasting change. Every repeated thought strengthens a neural pathway. Every new practice builds new circuitry.
Scarcity thinking isn’t permanent. Abundance thinking can be practiced into existence. But it requires repetition, not inspiration.
Mind Renewal (Romans 12:2)
“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind”
Paul’s command to “renew your mind” isn’t metaphorical—it’s neurological. Transformation happens when truth replaces lies at the level of thought patterns. This is the biblical equivalent of neuroplasticity: God’s design for how humans change.
Financial transformation isn’t about tactics. It’s about renewing how you think about money, worth, and provision.
Cognitive Bias
Systematic errors in thinking
Your brain takes shortcuts to conserve energy. These shortcuts (confirmation bias, sunk cost fallacy, availability heuristic) often lead to bad decisions. You’re not stupid—you’re human. But awareness of bias creates the possibility of correction.
Most financial mistakes aren’t ignorance—they’re bias. Recognizing this lets you design systems that protect you from yourself.
Heart (Leb/Kardia)
The core of the person—will, intellect, desires
In Scripture, the “heart” isn’t emotion—it’s the command center of the person. It’s where beliefs form, desires originate, and decisions are made. “Guard your heart” (Proverbs 4:23) means: protect what shapes your thinking and wanting.
Your financial life flows from what you truly believe and desire. Surface behavior change fails if the heart hasn’t shifted.
Idolatry
Giving created things the place only God deserves
Idolatry isn’t just bowing to statues. It’s elevating anything—money, security, status, comfort—to the position where only God belongs. When you trust created things more than the Creator, you’ve made an idol. And idols always demand more than they deliver.
Money is a terrible god. It promises security, significance, and freedom—but it can’t deliver. Identifying financial idolatry is the first step to freedom.
Embodied Faith
Spirituality lived through the physical body
You are not a soul trapped in a body. You are a body-soul unity. Faith isn’t just mental assent—it’s practiced through physical rhythms (fasting, rest, movement, posture). Transformation happens when belief moves from your head to your hands.
You can’t think your way into financial freedom. You have to practice your way there—through embodied habits, not intellectual understanding.
Sanctification
The process of being made holy, conformed to Christ
Sanctification is transformation over time. It’s God’s work in you, making you more like Jesus—not through striving, but through grace-enabled cooperation. It’s slow, invisible, and non-linear. But it’s real.
Financial transformation follows the same pattern as sanctification: slow, grace-enabled progress through daily cooperation with truth.
Formation vs. Information
Being shaped vs. merely knowing facts
Information is knowing what to do. Formation is becoming the kind of person who does it naturally. The goal isn’t more knowledge—it’s transformation. You don’t need another book. You need practices that shape you.
Knowing how to build wealth doesn’t make you wealthy. Being formed into a person with wealth-building habits does.
Spiritual Disciplines
Practices that open us to God’s transforming grace
Disciplines aren’t rules—they’re tools. Prayer, fasting, silence, study, generosity—these practices don’t earn God’s favor. They position you to receive what God is already offering: transformation. They’re the trellis that supports growth.
Financial disciplines (budgeting, investing, generosity) work the same way: they position you to receive the growth that’s already possible.
Repentance (Metanoia)
A change of mind leading to a change of life
Repentance isn’t just feeling sorry. The Greek word “metanoia” means “to change your mind.” It’s a cognitive shift that leads to behavioral change. You see differently, so you live differently. It’s the biblical description of transformation.
Financial transformation begins with metanoia—changing your mind about money, worth, and provision. New thinking creates new living.