After studying time for more than three decades, physicist Julian Barbour has come to a fascinating and counterintuitive conclusion: Time is an illusion.
All that's real are instants that Barbour calls 'Nows.' Our brains are hardwired to take the experience of these 'Nows' and create the illusion of time. 'If you try to get your hands on time, it's always slipping through your fingers,' says Barbour in the Summer 2000 issue of Spirituality and Health magazine. 'People are sure it's there but they can't get a hold of it. My feeling is that they can't get a hold of it because it isn't there.'
Even if physicists eventually accept Barbour's theories, his ideas will, like quantum mechanics itself, be thoroughly understood by very few. Still, to the rest of us they offer a powerful metaphor to reflect on the moments of our lives and how we might best live them. As Barbour says, 'to see perfect stillness as the reality behind the turbulence we experience' is good for us all to learn.
Focusing on what matters, moment by moment (rather than thinking of reality as what 
happens when a series of still pictures runs through a projector), helps us reach clarity. B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D., tells us not to overlook the importance of attention. By refining our attention, we can focus and thereby rediscover the sense of well-being that emerges spontaneously from a balanced mind. Research tells us that geniuses of all kinds shared one mental trait, despite the wide range of their individual brilliance: They all possessed an exceptional capacity for sustained, voluntary attention.
Dr. Wallace's wife taught Tiger Woods at Stanford University before he emerged as a superstar of golf. What most impressed her was his powerful ability to focus---a skill that has evidently contributed to his golfing achievements. Woods uses his talent of sustained, voluntary attention to maximize his strengths (his extraordinary long-game and putting skills) and minimize his weaknesses, like that of chipping out of a bunker (he tends to score low in 'sand saves').
To some degree, we all have an innate talent for some activity.
By focusing our attention on building the strength of our individual enduring talents and applying damage control to our weaknesses, we can choose to move from satisfactory performance to excellence. When we know what our principle talents are and how we might apply them within the world, the application of attention allows our focused energy to push us toward success.
Check out stories on how others have built their innate talents into strengths.