There’s nothing I hate as much as being on the road driving behind a driver who is driving at the speed of 10 Km/h on a stretch where he could do 200 Km/h if he wanted to. Worse still, you realize that the said driver is doing this on a segment of road where there’s no one else in front of him, meaning there’s enough road up ahead but he just won’t take advantage of it! To add insult to injury, you find that you cannot overtake him because there’s too much oncoming traffic and the road is not wide enough to accommodate three vehicles at any given time. I am a speed freak and when something like this happens, it drives me insane (no pun intended) and at that point I feel like forcing the driver in front of me off the road. Unfortunately my car is not a Hammer and so I cannot do that but the more I think about it, the more I think that in future, all my cars should have some heavy bull-bars at the front.

I know a few people who drive that cautiously and when I recently got an opportunity to ask one of them why he does that, the answer he gave me was somehow predictable. You see, not so long ago he had an accident on one of those same highways and according to him, the other driver was the one on the wrong. In short, since that time he has this phobia of driving and the only way he can comfortably drive is by driving slowly even though all the conditions around him may be favorable for him to cruise like a rally driver. In fact, if you ride in the car with him he will annoy you because half the time he keeps stepping on the emergency brakes even when there is no emergency situation. It’s like he has emergency situations in his mind!

Someone like this can very easily become a reason for other drivers to cause accidents. I think the traffic police should have a “fear-blow” device that randomly checks the level of fear in every driver on the road, you know like the alco-blow device that some countries such as Kenya use to check the level of alcohol in a driver’s system? Yes, something like that.  Once the cop stops you, he asks you to blow into the “fear-blow” and if you are a fear-full driver (meaning you are full of fear) then the levels hit an all time high and without discussion or debate, the cop takes away your keys because indeed you are a traffic hazard waiting to happen. Anyway, that’s just me and my active mind.

By now if you are a driver yourself you are probably agreeing with me vigorously as you remember the many incidents you have felt like pushing some driver off the road. How about we twist this a little bit and instead of focusing on the drivers on the highways we focus on ourselves for a few minutes? You see, it is unfortunate that many of us are like the driver I described above when it comes to driving our own lives. Yes, we are so cautious and even though we may be having the latest model of cars (our bodies and brains) we have not the slightest idea of what they can do for us because we are too “careful” driving them. Let me explain what I mean lest I “leave you at the lights” (pun intended).

Imagine for a minute you had the Bugatti Veyron.  At the time of writing this article, this car was known as the fastest car in the world, with a 8.0L engine, 1,200 horse power and a top speed of 267Mph i.e. 430Km/h. Someone comes and hands you the keys to this car and tells you its all yours and you can take it to wherever there’s a good road. What would you do with this car? To my fellow speed freaks, what would you not do with this kind of a car?

This is not a car to drive at 10 Km/h. My goodness, just the thought of being in its cockpit makes my heart accelerate and my feet itch to step on the pedals. In fact, you can't believe it but I can hear its reving engine in my ears! Just looking at it now makes me want to engage in one of my favorite hobbies, long distance driving. Anyone looking for a personal long-distance driver, now you know where to send your CVs.

The reality is that unless you are free of fear and full of adventure you can never know what the above car can do for you. Well, you could if you googled for the information, but chances are that you will never experience the power of this monster of a machine unless you kick off your fear. You may be having such a car but the possibility of you NEVER finding out (for yourself) how many seconds it takes to get from 0 – 100Km/h is very high. Why? Because of fear of causing an accident, aka fear of the unknown.

I’d like to liken our lives to this awesome machine. When God created each one of us He made us with better precision and for better performance than this Bugatti I’m referring to above. Unfortunately so many of us will never really find out what we are made of, what we can do, what our ultimate potential is because like the driver earlier mentioned we go through the highways of life with our feet ready to slum down the emergency brakes. We are afraid of letting go and just experiencing the sheer freedom of trying out new things and living our dreams. Just because at one point in our lives we hit a snag (called failure), now we have this phobia of trying out new things and every time an opportunity presents itself for us to do something new we are reminded of our past failure and right there all the fear comes gushing in like a flood. Emergency brakes are applied.

This fear causes most people not to experience the enormous power put in them by God. Just like the Bugatti above, unless you push that car you will never know its capabilities and its abilities. Unless you push yourself, you will never know what you can do! Because of fear (of the unknown) most of us have decided to not to use what we have and just like a car, if you do not use it for long, the battery dies and hence the car cannot start. You will have to invest in a new battery, something that could have been avoided if only the car had been kept running even if it is just for a few minutes daily.

Friends, if you don’t use the gifts, the talents, the power and the abilities that God gave you, you will eventually lose them. For instance, if you have the ability to sing but you stop singing for a while for whatever reason, chances are likely that you will lose that gift to sing and for you to regain it you will have to work extra hard. I say this because I personally lost this gift after not using it for several years. If you are a writer and for some reason you decide to stop writing, chances are likely that when you go back to writing it will not be as good as it used to when you used to do it consistently. Whatever skill you have, if you are not using it, you are causing it to diminish every second you don’t use it.

Question to you this week is, what are you doing with your Bugatti? Are you using its power as it should be or are you wasting that powerful machine you were given freely? You will never know what you can do unless you break away from your fears and focus on your dreams. Fear will only consume you if your dream is not big enough and your desire to win not strong enough. Like my favorite motivational speaker Les Brown says, “you have a choice to live in this world as a winner or as a whiner”. The choice is yours. You have the keys to your own Bugatti, and the road ahead of you is clear.

This week I challenge you to push yourself beyond your normal limits, unleash the power inside of you and see what you can achieve. Find out what it takes for you to reach 100km/h from zero.

Wishing you all power this week and always.

PS: This article was originally published in Tanzania's Guardian On Sunday on the 26th October, 2014, under my weekly column "Thoughts in Words".