Hello! I am Tristan.

Growing up surrounded by hills and bush in Wellington New Zealand, I got to experience the freedom and adventure of life as a child in a largely safe and friendly corner of the world. Yet as a teenager I longed for adventure, initiation, rawness, something that felt more alive and real to me than choosing a career path. And something that would be regenerative and healing to earth instead of damaging and consuming.

My drive to find answers and possibilities took me on a 2-year journey as an 18 to 20 year old to the cattle stations and iron ore mines of Western Australia, to South East Asia, and eventually to the wildlife reserves and townships / slums of Southern Africa.

I returned to New Zealand feeling like a different person, and it felt like I did not fit in anymore… it took this kind of inner tension of not fitting in to start meeting other people who were also looking for something else not offered in modern culture. I started to meet edge-workers and cultural creatives, and to collaborate and create!

Living on the edge of modern culture meant I became conscious of many layers of conditioning I had learned from school, family, TV, friends and so on. For example I had inadvertently learned to numb and wall-off my feelings. I had learned to wear masks that kept me safe, but hid my real thoughts, feelings and impulses even from me. To create a different culture I needed to unlearn and make space for entirely different perspectives.

Through meeting weekly with my team, attending Possibility Management (PM) trainings, and eventually delivering PM workshops and coaching sessions as my main profession, I found a passion for creating transformation spaces, healing spaces, experimenting, learning and using distinctions, and creating new gameworlds. Now I spend my days doing those things!

I especially care about creating and stewarding the foundations that are needed individually and culturally for change to be solid and grounded in reality. And I love to experience a transformation space ‘take off!’ into new territories, discoveries, connection, the unknown.

I have been training with Possibility Management since 2016, and offering Possibility Coaching and Rage Club since 2020. I hold space for New Zealands Possibilitator team, a team of 13 spaceholders throughout the country who practise and learn together in a weekly online meeting. I hold space for Archiarchy River, a Savings Pool that flows around $150,000 in projects that support the emergence of responsible cultures, e.g. Permaculture and Archiarchy. I am part of the Trainer Path as a self-declared apprentice to becoming an Expand The Box and Possibility Lab Trainer. I am a co-creator of Inward, a 4-day workshop for Men that happens 2-3 times per year to look Inward for each man's own answer to the question what man do I want to be? through experimenting and creating.

I live with my partner and our two children, we are based both in Wellington and Takaka travelling between the two often.

Tristan Girdwood

Possibility Coaching | Rage Club | Men's Work

Tristan Girdwood

Possibility Coaching | Rage Club | Men's Work

Tristan Girdwood

Possibility Coaching | Rage Club | Men's Work

Thoughtware Press books coming to NZ soon!