In 1999, I lived for a brief time in an apartment about a block from a Barnes & Noble bookstore. I used to go over there every day or two to and stand at the front racks, imagining that there was a book with my name on it right on the front table.

I would also go over to the “Inspiration & Motivation” rack in the business section where the parables were, like The One Minute Manager, and do the same thing.

You might call it, literary visualization.

When my lease was up a year later I moved on—but I kept up my regular Barnes visits. For the next few years, I kept going in and standing there, picturing my book on the racks in my head. Then, in 2005, Bob Burg and I wrote The Go-Giver. And by the early months of 2008 guess where it was?

On the “Inspiration & Motivation” rack at Barnes & Noble.

Since then, I’ve had more than a dozen titles on the Barnes & Noble shelves.

About two years ago, I started doing something new.

I started going into the supermarkets, Targets, and Wal-Marts, walking over to their bestseller racks, where they displayed the latest Dean Koontz and Stephen King blockbusters, Stephanie Plum and Jack Reacher thrillers, Harry Potter and Breaking Dawn–type adventure fantasies, and whatever other slim handful of bestselling titles they were carrying at the moment, and — you guessed it — picturing my book sitting there on that rack.

I had no idea what specific book that might possibly be. Just pictured it being there.

And here we are today: The Red Circle is on the racks at Stop & Shop supermarket …

… and at Target …

… and at Wal-Mart!

Man, that human imagination thing … it’s something, isn’t it?