The Surrender Project: Introduction
Let us start this off with a full introduction for those who are new to my blog. Hi, my name is Henry Hofstad, I am a 25 year old who grew up in frigid Minnesota and who has always had a love for travel. A big shoutout to my parents for taking my three brothers and I on some pretty crazy backpacking trips as kids. In reality, they can blame themselves for the fact that I am jobless and over four months into a world backpacking trip that I do not have a set end date for. The last four months have been spent with a good friend of mine, Trey, backpacking throughout Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. He recently went home so now my full on solo adventure begins, something I have been looking forward to, specifically the challenges and parts that will push me. When I decided to sell my things and move out of my mountain home in Summit County, Colorado to travel the world, I did it with a purpose to push myself and see how far I could push my boundaries. I was met with some of the best memories I will ever make, meeting new people and going on adventures around Southeast Asia. Now, before I get into my next point I want to emphasize that I absolutely loved my time there, and wouldn’t trade any of the memories or times for anything. Southeast Asia didn’t challenge me the way I had originally sought out. It really isn’t too difficult to travel there; there are lots of young adults going on this loop throughout the countries, so it is easy to hop on HostelWorld or booking.com and find accommodation for the night. Seemingly most people go to the same handful of cities in each country and go see the same sites. It is fun, it is rewarding, and it is enjoyable meeting people from all over and traveling in groups to new places. Again, I really do not want to come across in a way that makes this type of travel seem bad, because it isn’t, it is the type of travel that I fell into for the previous four months and absolutely adored my time. Personally, it took me about three months to realize that it wasn’t fulfilling my original goal of travel; to push myself and my own boundaries and see how far I can go. Another goal for my travels was storytelling. I went into it with the intention of writing blogs and sharing loads of pictures. Yes, I have taken thousands and thousands of pictures that I will cherish forever, but I haven’t really wrote much. I have no excuses for as to why I haven’t, maybe I just got lazy? Maybe I wasn’t even supposed to? Through a lot of thought, I realized I didn’t feel the desire to write because it didn’t feel like I was telling an original story. I wanted to share a story that people haven’t heard before, something different. Call it ego if you want (it probably is honestly), but I wanted to experience something that challenged me to tell a story in a unique way. I didn’t want my blog posts to echo what other travel bloggers were talking about, in fact I didn’t even want to share things to do or accommodations to stay in, I literally just wanted to write a story. Something people can read if they want to and feel like they picked up a novel for a few thousand words, something that sucks them in and makes them feel the same feelings of “aliveness” that I am feeling in these moments. Ever since I was a tiny kid I have loved to share things that happen in my life. As a kid I came across as arrogant, just a kid sharing how many goals he scored in hockey or how cool his adventure was to Mexico or how much money he made shoveling neighbors’ walks that day. In my little mind I was just sharing an excitement that I had for these moments, I truly didn’t mean to brag. Through a few people telling me I was cocky to growing up a bit I think I have honed that skill a bit. I still have this innate desire to share with people when crazy or fun things happen to me, especially when I get that ball of electricity shooting through me and I can barely believe I am able to experience such a miracle or sight or whatever it is. Those who are close to me can attest that I love to talk, and will share some pretty personal things to anybody who wants to hear them. I think life is best shared. When I am alone and something happens or I feel a certain level of excitement bubbling up in my stomach, my first thought is to either take a picture/film it, or call and share the experience with somebody. This has translated into a desire to share pictures and writing online, but oftentimes fizzles out, because I am one helluva dreamer and one of my biggest flaws is following through with these dreams. So, this might be me actually following through.
Anyway, enough rambling, you are probably reading this waiting for me to mention what “The Surrender project” even is. Alright, well, taking everything I just mentioned about travel and myself and why I am choosing to travel into consideration, I find myself wrapping up a book I hadn’t touched since the first day of traveling. That particular book would be, “The Surrender Experiment: My Journey Into Life’s Perfection” by Michael A. Singer. This book is basically what the title says, a young mid-twenties man, Michael Singer, comes to realize that life is much larger than he is, and that if he just surrenders to it, the right things will fall into place at the right times. Now, I highly recommend this book to everybody, because ever since he starts surrendering to life, miracle after miracle after miracle falls into place for him. The amount of times I just shook my head trying to believe that these things were happening to him was enough to make my neck sore. The idea is that whatever higher power you believe in, as Singer calls it the “Universal Law”, has a plan for you and is trying to guide you. And if you just let go and remove your personal preferences from things that happen and accept them, the right things will fall into place in a grander way than you could ever dream. So often something happens to us and we quickly label it as good or bad, and for why? Something can seem so bad in the moment only for us to realize five months later that it was a gift it happened that way. I feel like during my travels and the past year or so of my life this theory has popped up from time to time. Something happens and I judge it a certain way, to then go back a day later and just accept it for whatever it is and TRUST that it is happening to me for a reason and it is going to guide me on this ‘path’ I am supposed to be on, or grow in some way. This is a really challenging idea at a times, because sometimes bad things happen that are bad, and there really does not seem to be anything good, such as losing a loved one. I cannot look at somebody who has lost a person unexpectedly and tell them, “everything happens for a reason” that is not the message I want to put across either. I look at it in a way that we cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it. The idea is to remain open for what is next, no matter how good or bad.
For the next 30 days I am going to do a project. A project that combines the idea of surrendering to life and allowing whatever happens to happen and trusting it, of pushing my own boundaries by traveling solo through a country that is known to be challenging, and doing it while recording the entire thing with daily blogs and photos… welcome to The Surrender Project.
What is the plan? Good question. The plan is to have no plan. But that is literally impossible so let me lay out what I have so far. First, I knew I wanted to do this project in India. Ever since my travels have started India has been on the back of my mind of places I wanted to explore, and kept popping up in random places, like somebody telling me they think I would absolutely love India. Or a friend back home texting me and telling me I should go to India, completely out of the blue, or Indian Gurus being a large part of Michal Singers book, among other things. This is a great example of listening to what the world is trying to tell you, and the world was telling me I need to go to India. Now, how does one decide where to fly into India when it is such a massive country and I am not supposed to have a plan/do any research? Well, I reached out to a friend I met on my first day of traveling in Abu Dhabi and asked where he was from. He told me the city and without thinking about it I purchased a oneway ticket to Hyderabad, not knowing a thing about the city. I ended up booking one night at a startup house, so I could get settled in and then go from there, with the official day one of the project starting the first full day in India.
A few more important points I want to note. There are a few focus points I want to have to hone in on the growth for me personally. First, not only is this a practice in surrendering, it is one in practicing the ever important skill of intuition. In other words, I am going to have to trust my gut. It is quickly going to become my best friend over the next chunk of time. Another point is where I am going to find guidance day to day. To be honest, it is a little scary signing up to share my thoughts and experiences with a blog for 30 days straight when I have ZERO idea what is going to happen. Of course the fears creep in, will anybody read this? What if I have a day where nothing interesting happens? To combat this and to challenge my photography I set a guideline to follow; during my morning meditation I am going to open up and ask for a theme for the day, and whatever comes in during that meditation will be the focus on capturing photos and maybe even a theme in the writing. I am still unsure of how this will play out, but I thought it was an interesting way to help challenge my photography and see the world through a different lens each day. Another thing to note, I don’t write with a plan. As in I just sat down to write the guidelines and intro of my project and here we are a few thousand words later and I haven’t stopped writing to even reread what I have said. The reason I mention this is because I want this to feel like a journal. I want it to be casual, there will probably be spelling errors, there will 100% be run-on-sentences. I want the writing to embody how my mind thinks, I want the high emotions to come across with power, not perfect grammar and the correct use of punctuation. And last but definitely not least, I want to make sure that I am coming at the angle as a tourist visiting a foreign country. If the way I am describing parts of India feel wrong or judgemental to their lifestyle here, I would love if you sent me a message. I am always learning, and through a recent conversation with a family member, extra aware of the what happens when westerners impose their beliefs on the eastern world. Throughout history we have seen it time and time again. I want these blogs to be from the lens of somebody who is just sharing what they are witnessing, not with judgment or ridicule. I also challenge you as the reader to not impose judgement onto certain ways of life of a country that has been around for a while with a deep history, not to mention a country where one and a half billion people live. Let this be an opportunity for us all to learn through travel.
In conclusion, I am not entirely sure what to tell you to expect, for I don’t really have an idea either. I guess I can promise there will be a lot of insight into how I see the world, with my emotions and thoughts and a few crazy travel stories, as well as my own personal and spiritual growth, and really testing the theory that life will bring you everything you need if you just surrender and allow it to. I want to thank all of you in advance who made it through the intro, and thank you to those who choose to come back and see this project through with me. I appreciate all the support, from constructive criticism to a simple message telling me you read it, all is welcome. With that, lets freaking do this thing, I am SO beyond excited to see where this is going to lead me, I am so excited to be able to share this story with you all.
P.S. If you are coming across this and do not know me, follow me on instagram to see all the pictures that go with it! You can do that by clicking on the Instagram logo in the top right of the screen.
