Picture Your Prosperity

What if prosperity wasn’t about how much money you have—but about how intentionally you live your life? In Picture Your Prosperity, financial experts Ellen Rogin and Lisa Kueng argue that true prosperity is a holistic combination of wealth, purpose, generosity, gratitude, and joy. The book invites you to shift from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance by literally picturing what prosperity looks like for you and then designing your financial and personal life to support that vision.

Unlike traditional financial advice that focuses purely on numbers, spreadsheets, and spreadsheets of investment options, this book blends financial strategy with neuroscience and psychology. Rogin and Kueng contend that prosperity isn’t a cold accumulation of wealth—it’s a warm, living practice that connects your money to your meaning. Their approach combines left-brain financial planning with right-brain visualization, belief reprogramming, and gratitude techniques. You’ll learn how to create a “Prosperity Picture” that maps out your dreams, recondition your brain to notice opportunities that align with those visions, and build the supportive habits and systems that sustain them over a lifetime.

The Prosperity Picture: A New Way to Think About Money

At the heart of the book lies the Prosperity Picture—a visual, collage-style map that helps you translate your values and dreams into something you can touch, see, and revisit every day. Like a vision board engineered for financial success, the Prosperity Picture helps you prime your brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS), the neural filter that decides what you notice and what you ignore. When you repeatedly visualize the life you want, your brain literally tunes itself to notice opportunities to create it. This is why athletes imagine their wins before they compete; the same principle works for your career, your retirement goals, or your dream home.

Rogin and Kueng blend brain science with practical application. Through visualization, you imprint your goals into your subconscious, making it statistically more likely that you’ll act on opportunities you might have previously missed. Combined with financial planning, visualization becomes a high-leverage habit—one that bridges imagination and execution.

Beyond Money: Redefining Prosperity

The authors redefine prosperity as well-being, not wealth in isolation. They open by asking readers what prosperity means to them, noting that answers span from peace and time freedom to travel, generosity, and joy. This shift—from pursuing money to cultivating holistic abundance—undercuts one of society’s most persistent myths: that financial success alone guarantees happiness. Instead, prosperity is about purpose and alignment. When you spend money consciously, invest in what you love, and channel your wealth toward meaningful causes, you experience what they call a “Prosperity Zone”—a mental state where financial and emotional well-being converge.

The Psychology of Wealth and the Science of Belief

To help you reach and stay in this Prosperity Zone, the authors explore how subconscious money beliefs shape reality. Drawing on research from Dr. Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief) and cognitive psychology, Rogin and Kueng reveal that most of our financial behaviors come from subconscious programming formed before age six. These hidden narratives—from “money is scarce” to “I’m not good with finances”—govern adult decisions until you consciously reframe them. Throughout the book, exercises like “cancel/clear” and “Truth Talk” show you how to replace fear-based financial thoughts with expansive, empowering ones. In this sense, Picture Your Prosperity functions as much as a tool for rewiring your habits as for organizing your budget.

From Vision to Action: The Seven Steps to Prosperity

Rogin and Kueng build the book around a seven-step journey. You begin by defining your vision (Step One) and move through practical financial planning, emotional intelligence, relationship-building, generosity, resilience, and legacy. They advocate integrating hard financial planning—like saving, investing, and managing risk—with soft skills—like gratitude, belief, and giving. By weaving both, the book helps you “picture” your prosperity and then make it tangible.

Key takeaways include: creating clear visuals for your goals, setting up structured savings systems (“financial flowerpots”), maintaining a gratitude practice to reduce financial anxiety, and becoming an “Abundance Activist®” who uses wealth as a force for good. They also emphasize community and accountability—through “Prosperity Circles” or partnerships—to sustain the transformation. Over time, this process turns prosperity into a practice rather than a destination.

Why It Matters

At its core, the book argues that personal wealth is inseparable from collective well-being. Rogin and Kueng champion the idea of women as global changemakers, pointing to research from economists like Muhammad Yunus and Nicholas Kristof showing that when women have financial power, families and communities thrive. With trillions of dollars soon to be controlled by women, they see financial literacy not just as self-empowerment but as a pathway to save the world—literally. Combining neuroscience, positive psychology, financial planning, and social purpose, Picture Your Prosperity positions money as both an energy flow and an ethical tool. When you align your financial life with your highest vision, prosperity isn’t just possible—it’s inevitable.

Taken together, the book’s message is profound yet practical: You can create the life you imagine by first picturing it, then infusing your finances with purpose, positivity, and momentum. Prosperity starts in the mind but manifests through consistent financial action. And when you live from that sense of abundance—both emotional and material—you don’t just change your life; you change the world around you.

Ellen Rogin and Lisa Kueng begin with an unconventional premise: daydreaming about money isn’t frivolous—it’s foundational. Visualization, they argue, has the same neurological effect as real experience. By picturing your goals in vivid detail, you activate your brain’s reticular activating system (RAS), the filter that spots opportunities aligned with your desires. This is how you 'train your brain' to notice the people, ideas, and circumstances that can make your vision a reality.

How Visualization Reprograms the Brain

The authors cite research from Dr. Srinivasan Pillay of Harvard Medical School showing that when you imagine performing an action, your brain lights up in the same regions as when you actually perform it. Olympic athletes, for instance, improve performance through mental rehearsal—a principle Rogin and Kueng apply to personal finance. They call this your “brain training” for prosperity. When you repeatedly see yourself paying off debt, traveling the world, or starting your dream business, your subconscious mind accepts those outcomes as possible—and begins filtering information to support them.

Creating Your Prosperity Picture

To operationalize visualization, they guide you to build a tangible collage—the Prosperity Picture. You select images representing your goals, then organize them into four quadrants: “Sooner/Less Money,” “Sooner/More Money,” “Later/Less Money,” and “Later/More Money.” This structure (combining vision and budget) helps you clarify not only what you want but when and how much it might cost. For example, yoga might sit in the 'Sooner/Less Money' box, while a safari or early retirement could belong in 'Later/More Money.'

The value isn’t in artistic precision but in emotional engagement. The physical act of arranging images makes your goals more memorable and real. As one participant named Susan learned after a painful divorce, organizing her Prosperity Picture helped her focus—from avoiding debt and rebuilding credit to nurturing friendships and gratitude. Her optimism literally reshaped her path toward financial recovery.

Science Meets Spirit

This step isn’t mystical wishful thinking. It’s neuroscience paired with structure. The authors’ definition of visualization echoes studies in cognitive psychology similar to those popularized in Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: thoughts create measurable shifts in awareness and behavior. By embedding visual cues in your environment—such as hanging your Prosperity Picture somewhere visible—you program your subconscious to continuously scan for alignment. Rogin advises clients to glance at their Picture daily, even while waiting for coffee, as a micro-habit to strengthen prosperity consciousness.

• Visualization teaches your brain what to focus on.
• Physical cues like posters or photos reinforce memory encoding.
• Daily repetition builds confidence and expectation of success.

By visualizing and repeatedly affirming your goals, you collapse the gap between imagination and action. As the authors summarize, “Visualization isn’t fantasy—it’s financial rehearsal.” The Prosperity Picture is not about controlling the future but conditioning your mind to see yourself in it.

While many self-help books stop at mindset, Picture Your Prosperity moves into financial mechanics. Once your vision is clear, you must align it with practical systems—tracking assets, setting goals, and making your money work for you. Using their 'More Money/Sooner' framework, Rogin and Kueng show how to blend emotion with logic by turning dreams into measurable action plans.

The Financial Inventory: Know What You Have and Owe

The first practical exercise asks you to make a thorough inventory of your assets and liabilities. Like calculating a financial GPS starting point, this helps you see where you really are. Take Kathleen, a doctor who thought she had modest savings but discovered over $500,000 in forgotten IBM stock after organizing her accounts. Awareness, the authors note, is often transformative—it frees trapped potential.

Creating Action Plans and Flowerpots

Instead of building abstract budgets, they teach you to create “flowerpots” for specific goals—essentially mental and financial accounts: a retirement pot, a solution (emergency) pot, and a dream pot for travel or causes. This behavioral-finance technique draws on Richard Thaler’s concept of mental accounting: people are more motivated to save when money is earmarked. Systematically 'watering' your flowerpots through automatic transfers builds momentum without requiring constant willpower.

Investment and Risk with Personality

Rogin and Kueng deconstruct investing with relatable metaphors. There’s the 'Minivan' investor (cautious, seeking stability), the 'Sedan' investor (balanced between growth and security), and the 'Sports Car' investor (aggressive and thrill-seeking). The goal isn’t to push for risk but to match your emotional comfort. They remind readers that fear-based investing leads to reactive decisions—the financial equivalent of slamming brakes on a mountain road. Instead, build portfolios that let you sleep well. (This mirrors approaches from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow about emotion-driven risk behavior.)

From Pictures to Portfolios

By combining the Prosperity Picture with disciplined planning—spending plans, goal lists, and visual motivation—you translate vision into tangible wealth. The strategy is simple: awareness, allocation, automation. Whether through automatic savings plans or diversified investments, the authors show that prosperity is not spontaneous luck; it’s systemized intention.

A core insight from Picture Your Prosperity is that financial success begins with your inner talk. Rogin and Kueng explain that most people sabotage their progress not from lack of discipline but from unconscious conditioning. They use vivid analogies—like Big Bird’s costume—to show that your inner beliefs are the real puppet master. The 'bird suit' represents your external actions; the person inside it represents your beliefs. If your inner dialogue says 'I’m bad with money,' no amount of spreadsheets will fix it.

Rewriting Subconscious Scripts

Citing Bruce Lipton’s research, the authors describe how most financial attitudes form before age six—through parental modeling and early emotional experiences. For example, one woman, Ellen, discovered she subconsciously believed that 'the man earns the money,' despite holding an MBA and financial credentials herself. Awareness alone helped her dissolve that myth. Others, like Joan the multimillionaire executive who still felt financially insecure, prove that no amount of wealth can override scarcity conditioning without inner work.

Tools for Reframing Thought

Rogin and Kueng introduce mental techniques such as “cancel/clear” (to erase negative thoughts) and journaling exercises from their “Truth Talk” process, based on cognitive psychology. When you catch yourself thinking, “I’ll never have enough,” you pause, acknowledge, and consciously replace it with, “I can create abundance.” These practical reroutes turn emotional panic into productive focus.

The authors even address physical responses like anxiety or envy, suggesting mindfulness to re-center. Just as Byron Katie’s The Work uses inquiry to defuse unhelpful beliefs, “cancel/clear” reopens creative bandwidth. Over time, it replaces reflexive scarcity with confident stewardship.

The Power of Emotional Calibration

Ultimately, changing money behavior requires emotional calibration. You can’t think your way into prosperity while feeling unworthy of it. By shifting belief from fear to gratitude, you rebalance your internal economics. Just as negative thoughts depreciate mental equity, supportive beliefs accumulate compound interest in confidence. This psychological rewiring drives every external financial victory.

Can happiness improve your net worth? The authors think so. Merging neuroscience and philanthropy, Rogin and Kueng argue that gratitude, generosity, and joy are the invisible interest your money earns when used wisely. Their research-backed thesis mirrors Arthur Brooks’ findings in Who Really Cares: giving not only makes you happier but often wealthier.

Practicing Gratitude to Shift from Scarcity to Abundance

Gratitude, they write, is a free happiness accelerator. Studies show that daily expressions of thankfulness reduce stress, increase productivity, and—remarkably—boost income by encouraging optimistic behaviors. The authors suggest writing five daily gratitudes in your Prosperity Notebook. These can be big (health, career success) or tiny (a morning coffee coupon). One participant in their workshops even used red lights as gratitude reminders—turning everyday frustration into moments of reflection.

Giving as a Prosperity Engine

They take gratitude further with giving. Beyond moral goodness, data from behavioral economists show that generosity produces a 'prosperity loop.' When you give to others, you feel richer (a rise in 'subjective wealth'). That emotion boosts creativity and financial decision-making, leading to higher actual earnings. One woman, Melissa, exemplified this: after giving $20 to a homeless man on a heartbreaking day, she felt her own pain diminish. The act of giving shifted her focus from loss to abundance.

The book distinguishes between 'gold-level' giving (donating money or time) and 'platinum-level' giving (connecting emotionally to your contribution’s impact). Nicole, for example, volunteers for Room to Read—a global literacy charity—and her realization that 'this will change the world' transformed her self-image. That 'light' became the fuel for more expansive generosity.

Receiving Without Guilt

Rogin and Kueng also remind readers that giving requires receiving. Just as exhaling needs inhaling, prosperity depends on circulation. Many, like Lisa’s grandmother Angelina, resist gifts or compliments, unknowingly blocking abundance. Learning to receive graciously completes the prosperity circuit. Together, gratitude and giving reframe money from a transactional object to a relational one—a tool that multiplies joy when it moves.

Life will test your finances—and your faith. In Step Six, 'Become Financially Resilient,' Rogin and Kueng teach how to weather downturns without collapsing into fear. They contrast two mindsets: 'Scare-City' and the 'Prosperity Zone.' Scare-City is the mental neighborhood of anxiety, blame, and competition. The Prosperity Zone is calm, creative, and generous. Your goal, they say, is to live primarily in the latter.

Mind Over Money: Managing Stress

The authors borrow techniques from cognitive-behavioral therapy and mindfulness. Practices like deep breathing, meditation, and yoga help you neutralize stress hormones that distort decision-making. They cite research by Dr. Richard Brown showing that conscious breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, calming the brain. Once calm, you make better investments, negotiate clearly, and see opportunities Scare-City blindness would miss.

Truth Talk and Perspective Shifts

For catastrophic thinking—the 'I’ll end up homeless' spiral—they recommend Dr. Tim Ursiny’s 'Truth Talk': distinguish the facts (what happened) from your perception (what you’re telling yourself), then reframe it with gratitude or empowerment. For example, a poor job review isn’t proof of failure but feedback prompting growth. Their real-world stories—from Tara and Andy’s bankruptcy recovery to Hannah’s steady income despite recession—show resilience as a skill, not luck.

Order, Preparation, and Protection

Resilience also means creating practical safeguards: an emergency fund ('solutions flowerpot'), adequate insurance, and an estate plan. Clearing physical and financial clutter boosts energy and clarity. As Lisa notes, 'When life feels out of control, create order wherever you can—even your handbag.' This emotional decluttering restores agency during chaos. And when protection systems are in place, fear loses its grip.

Ultimately, financial resilience blends psychology and practicality. When you accept that uncertainty is inevitable but fear is optional, you reclaim power. From that center—the Prosperity Zone—you can create wisely, give freely, and thrive regardless of the market’s mood swings.

The final step—'Build a Lifetime of Prosperity'—turns personal triumph into communal transformation. Rogin and Kueng see prosperity as contagious: your actions create ripples that uplift others. They call this the 'Prosperity Echo.' When you prosper with purpose, your influence extends to family, friends, and society.

Women as Change Makers

Drawing on the Dalai Lama’s famous line that 'The world will be saved by the Western woman,' the authors highlight the trillions in wealth transferring to women in coming decades. Studies by Nicholas Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, and Muhammad Yunus show that women tend to reinvest wealth in education, health, and community uplift. Rogin and Kueng therefore encourage readers—especially women—to see wealth as a lever for global good, not private luxury.

Even 1% of the projected $25 trillion women will control could eradicate hunger and fund worldwide education. Their examples—from Nicole’s literacy work to Maureen’s open-adoption advocacy—prove that purpose-driven prosperity multiplies impact exponentially.

The Abundance Activist® Movement

Ellen’s concept of an 'Abundance Activist' emerged during the Great Recession. Instead of succumbing to negativity, she wore a wristband to remind herself to spread positivity and kindness. She moved it to the other wrist each time she completed a kind act. This simple ritual refocused her mindset—and her business grew while the economy shrank. Compounding kindness, she notes, is like compound interest: small acts yield exponential outcomes.

From Vision to Legacy

The authors encourage readers to form Prosperity Circles or Partnerships—small collaborative groups that reinforce mutual growth. Revisiting and refining goals becomes a ritual of accountability and joy. They quote Maya Angelou—“When you learn, teach; when you get, give”—to remind readers that prosperity culminates in contribution. Or as they conclude with Eleanor Roosevelt’s words, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

To live as a Prosperity Leader is to shine your light—playing big, not small—and to use money as a catalyst for transformation. When aligned with generosity, creativity, and courage, wealth becomes not just personal freedom but collective empowerment. That, Rogin and Kueng insist, is prosperity for a lifetime.