I had to surrender in Costa Rica.

January 06, 2026•2 min read

I’ve been really blessed in the last year to experience extraordinary personal growth, but I started to feel like the next level would require something different and that more effort wasn’t the answer. Can you relate to that? You know you need SOMETHING but you’re not sure what?

Now usually, I analyze, I run the numbers, I strategize with my team, but I knew, deep down, that what I needed to feel wasn’t going to come from another zoom meeting.

So I booked a trip to Costa Rica to take part in an ayahuasca ceremony.

Now let me be clear. Ayahuasca is not an experience you do. It’s something you submit to.

You don’t manage it. You can’t overachieve your way through it in a shorter time. Your credentials, titles, and intellect cannot help you.

You take the medicine…and you surrender. Ayahuasca strips away the strategies we use to stay intact: logic, composure, control. It dissolves the internal manager and what remains is raw truth.

You’re not asked to fix anything, you surrender to its work.For someone used to command and composure, the physical experience is humbling. You may vomit. You may shake, yawn or have horrible diarrhea. I left Costa Rica knowing something was different but not quite sure what. And when I returned to Miami, the ceremony of surrender wasn’t over.

My apartment was still in total renovation hell.

But the lesson had taken root.

The physical chaos mirrored something internal: I was between versions. No longer who I had been. Not yet who I was becoming.

And surrender asked me to live there without rushing.

To sleep in uncertainty. To wait in imperfection.

We are taught to tolerate discomfort only if it comes with a guaranteed timeline.

Surrender removes the guarantee.

This is why surrender terrifies high performers. We’ve been rewarded our entire lives for control. For decisiveness. For mastery. For perfection.

Surrender is not weakness. It is courage without force. You don’t need to fear losing control, because control is not the source of your power. It never was…

I let go of all expectations, all manipulations, all control, and I never felt more empowered.

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Dr. Stacey Kevin Frick

Get my new book! The Empowerment Revolution on Amazon!

I help other high achievers shed the shackles of their past, even the ones they aren’t aware of, so that they can reach the highest level of personal fulfillment. As a strategist of personal and organizational empowerment, I help individuals and businesses break free from limiting beliefs and design realities aligned with their greatest potential. I created the Empowerment Revolution because I have lived it.

My own life is proof of concept. I have taken every tool, every practice that I deployed on my own behalf and packaged it into a system that is PROVEN to work.

Much like a clock runs on an intricate system of gears and cogs that work seamlessly to keep time, your body, mind and soul can become an intricate system that rewires your mind, powers your personal identity, and rewrites the script of your life.

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