Maybe you have an idea about writing a book that is urgently needed, one that will fill a need not addressed in any of the books you have read.  You understand the gap, have a clear concept, and have access to the research sources that will yield positive results, but you hesitate.

If you live in a small town in the South or the Central section of the USA, you may have dreams of moving to the California coast, New York City, or London, where the cost of living is much higher than your comfort zone allows.  You would need to find employment, and live with a period of uncertainty.

Or perhaps you just want to lose the extra forty pounds you have added in the past two years…or you want to pay off those credit cards.  Both may appear like monumental tasks that live on the far horizon.  Achievement of such goals seems remote.  Sir Edmund Hillary insisted, “You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things - to compete.  You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.”  Accept the challenge.

Susan Polis Schultz wrote, “If you have a goal in life that takes a lot of energy, that requires a lot of work, that incurs a great deal of interest and that is a challenge to you, you will always look forward to waking up to see what the new day brings.”  The challenge is in being clear about your goal, and picturing the successful results in your mind, with daily persistence, until you reach that goal.  Sticking with your vision of achievement, through all the interruptions of daily life, is as simple as focusing your mind.  Nothing physical is required.  Yet, few manage to achieve this small task of focus.

Researchers at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA have astounding results from ongoing studies at the Department of Communication.  Led by Dr. Jeremy Bailenson, a team of researchers are collecting data on immersive VR (virtual reality) communication systems.   They write, “According to social cognitive theory, models can be valuable stimuli for encouraging the imitation of particular behaviors.”  When presented with an avatar that is a model of a person’s optimal self, the person begins to internalize the avatar. 

The Stanford researchers create this virtual self that is then displayed to you within a head-mounted display.  This creates a virtual 3-D world in which the virtual self can do things you have never done.  For a person who is trying to lose weight, for example, he would see himself running, exercising, and losing the weight.  He, in turn, unconsciously increases his own physical activity, resulting in successful weight loss.  They call it “vicarious reinforcement - If you see it, you believe it is possible.”

Those presented with attractive avatars see themselves as more attractive.  They become more comfortable and confident in social settings, and actually stand about one meter closer to people at social gatherings. 

What Napoleon Hill wrote in “Think and Grow Rich” – that the achievement of success is dependent on seeing yourself achieving it – is more powerful than the cynics care to admit.