What does “success” mean to you?

For me, I think success is about doing what you love and doing it well. Sometimes you can see the evidence that you’re in that zone in the repsonse of others. But, I have learned, that this is not always the case. I think what’s important is to feel within yourself that you’re bringing your best to the table and that you’re seeing seeing the effect.

What does “happiness” mean to you?

Enjoying who you are and what you have. So a blend of  enjoyment and contentment. But to feel fully “on” I think you have to have some appetite too.

If you could give advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Don’t worry. Very little matters quite as much as it seems to in the moment. Worry does nothing more than rob you of energy and sleep. So try to stress less. To be fair to my younger self, though,  I think I did understand that as a youngster. I just haven’t been very good at applying it.  In fact I’m still working on it!!

Another thing would be  – make the most of your grandparents if and/or while you have them. The gift of ancestry beyond – and including – your parents is an amazing gift.

Your first breakout book – a bestseller in its day – was Rough Ways in Prayer.  What did you learn about yourself through that project?

That I am persistent. When I was pitching for my first book deal I kept all my rejection letters and pinned them on the cork board above my desk to keep me motivated. 34 of them! Back in the day publishers sent rejection letters. Which is great because a good rejection letter tells you what you need to work on. Three of my rejection letters were good ones! So once I spotted the repititions I realised I had been offered a bit of free tuition. And it was working off that tuition that really got me going in the right direction. With Rough Ways… I wrote the book that I wished someone had given me five years before. In a way, all my books are a bit like that. They log my learning journey and then my sharing of the journey. And that would be true of my Eden Series today.

What is your answer to self-doubt?

I think you have to a) be your own harshest critic, but then b) be ready defend yourself! As we get older I think it becomes easier to accept what our weaker points are and have a better sense of whether they need to be accepted or worked on, what our contribution is and what it isn’t. Nobody can be all things to all people. I just want to be sure that I am truly making my contribution, and critique myself on that – not on anyone else’s expectations.

 

Regarding clothes and fashion, what’s your style?

Hmmm. I would have to say, “Slowly evolving!!” Ruth and I have been married for 20 years this year and I am gradually letting Ruth add to and subtract from my wardrobe. To be honest Ruth is a great fashion consultant. I think she is still sharpening my image up!

Also, I like the bald plus beard look for a guy with as little top hair as me!Making that switch from combover to bald plus beard was kind of a rite of passage for me, I think. Sans hair, I felt my face was a bit feature-less so I took a leaf out of Stanley Tucci’s book and invested in some more interesting eyewear, which for me that means Kirk & Kirk’s. Its founder Jason Kirk is a friend of mine from school, and I think the designs and colours he and wife produce are really on point. It’s a nice fusion of classic and edgy, and they get me so many lovely comments from people.

Clothes-wise, I feel good when I am in a tailored suit that doesn’t look like a work suit, or when I am in my chinos, a collared shirt, RM Williams boots and my Akubra hat. I guess that’s Aussie hipster-pastoralist!! Or, for an occasion, I might bring out one of my more formal Dashiki outfits – so that’s my Ghanaian heritage coming through! Where I live, now it’s singlet and  square-cut shorts on the beach, Daniel Craig or Tenoch Huerta-style! So, I guess it depends on the day. That’s a longer answer than I expected!

Tell us something people wouldn’t know about you from a quick Google Search.

Ooh that’s hard. Because there is so much even on my own website,  let alone other people’s. OK two things: Some people would know this because there is an extensive section devoted entirely to this person on my website, but I am a huge Tina Turner fan. I am inspired by the way Tina was able to adapt and build her career in a way that kept her relevant from the 1950’s even until today, some time after her passing. I really  admire the longevity of her career – on stage from 1957 to 2010 when she was 70 years old. I love the solid  and loyal team that she built around herself and the positive energy she always fired up in others.

I really respect the way Tina  carried herself in sickness and in health.  Her happiness in retirement – that she didn’t equate herself with her career – I think is an important lesson for a lot of us – especially those of us from the world of ministry. Also, Tina’s courage in sharing her years of grief and ill health, and the loose ends of relationships, in her closing years, that was also inspring. Tina’s autobiographical book, “My Love Story” is a superb swansong of reality, vulnerability and joy. It is a gift “for the people” as Tina would say, every bit as much as her career on stage.

I always love watching Tina’s creation of energy and good vibes even in times when she must have been exhausted. What else? Of course, the continual reinvention of her image – hair that she designed and created herself, and her commitment to the top fashion designers. Obviously, you have to be in awe of Tina’s determination to succeed, to become a rock star, to become an elegant and “classy” iconic figure, Which she really was. Tina was truly a classy lady! Brava! Vale Tina! You are sorely missed. 

Second little-known fact: I have good legs. People generally don’t know this because I tend to be filmed waist-up! I think I’ve done only one documentary in shorts! But there you are. Now you know!

 

What do you hope to spark in your readers and your audiences more than anything?

Curiosity. The impulse and freedom to ask questions. The appetite to explore what’s possible. 

How do you know when you’re ready to bring out a new book?

It’s almost like a bodily feeling. It’s like a head of steam that builds. You get to a point where you feel like a jet aircraft just being held back by its brakes as the jets rev up for take-off. You can kind of feel that humming and shaking. And you know that once you release the brakes it’s going to be three months of head down, locked in, blinkered life, crouched over the desk! Basically, you get to a moment where you can’t hold back that part of the process any longer.

Is there a public figure whose death has affected you?

Prince. To be honest, the news of his passing hit me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I was in the car when I heard the news on the radio and I had to pull over just to absorb the news, and was surprised find myself in tears for him. What an incredible loss to the world of music. I admired Prince as a rebel and as a  champion of new talent. As an artist, I loved how he brought together so many facets of his musical heritage. In a way he made himself into a gateway to quite a range of historic African-American genres and yet at the same time he was emphatically himself.  And I loved how he paraded his uniqueness, peacock-style! There is something inspiring about watching a person excelling at what they were clearly born to do. That was Prince

And Michael Jackson. I was the only non-white kid in a high school of 1,100 boys, if you can just picture that! And I had a big Afro back then which emphasized the point furhter. I can’t say that I faced extreme racism, although there were places in my home town where my brother and I would be stoned if we ventured there on our bikes, and at my school I was certainly the whipping boy for the school’s very small band of hardcore racists. One way or another though, I was constantly made aware of my “half-caste” skin-colour and my side-parted Afro. In those years, four people came to my rescue, who made it acceptable to be non-white in Britain at that time: Floella Banjamin, who presented BBC’s Play School, Trevor McDonald, a Jamaican, who read the News at Ten on ITV, Johnny Matthis, who was big in the UK charts at that time, and very suave. But most of all, it was Michael Jackson.

Nobody could question that MJ was at the very zenith in terms of world talent. MJ made it acceptable to be black or brown. So in my little world in white Buckinghamshire in England MJ felt like a really important comrade.  When he died I really did feel saddened by his passing – for him, his family and his kids, it was tragic. Somehow it seemed inevitable that he would die young – because of powerful enemies, and because of his chronic pain and addiction issues, but also because of the apalling way the media continually harried him ever since the Bad album. On top of which, I wish he had taken better advice and made some better lifestyle choices as a star. But in the moment I felt aggrieved for him. A friend of mine thoughtfully called me on the day MJ died to ask me if I was OK. I was. Yet I was surprised by how  his death brought up all these old memories of isolation through race. My friend was Maltese-Australian and perhaps was more aware of that kind of racial sensitivity because of that. He was the one friend who knew that MJ’s passing would register with me in that way. So I always remember that.

What does the next chapter hold for Paul Wallis?

Excitement. New collaborations, new film-work, and books. New platforms and new locations. ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE ACADEMY is our new online learning community and I am very excited about the community aspect of that and the calibre of people it is attracting. With ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE TOURS I am leading tours in Türkiye and also in partnership with Praveen Mohan with THIRD EYE TOURS in Thailand, which is exciting territory for me, sharing the experience of sitting face to face with the hard copy of our ancestors’ worlds and beliefs. I am working on a documentary film that will take to six locations around the world to bring ancient narratives of contact to even bigger audiences.

So this for me is a very intense period of work and travel. I am happily busy. My family is enjoying the ride with me and I love that about my current pattern of work. Travelling, researching, writing, filming, and chilling on the beach. I think that’s going to my groove for some time to come.