The Regal Rules for Girls (45 page)
TAXES:
Most UK employers automatically deduct all UK tax from your salary; this is called “Pay As You Earn” (or PAYE) and is great because it means no paperwork and no saving for a big tax bill at the end of the year.
You only need to file a separate UK tax return if you are self-employed.
The good news is that the UK tax return is a bazillion times easier to fill out than the US version, so hiring an expensive London accountant is usually not necessary.
Don’t forget that US citizens are still obligated to file a US tax return once a year during the time they are overseas (which means you might have to file two tax returns per year).
In most cases you’ll pay so much tax in the UK that you are not required to pay any tax in the US (but you still have to fill out the form explaining this to the US government).
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—O
SCAR
W
ILDE
Growing up in the heartland of America, everyone around me scoffed at my big London dreams. But I ignored them. I truly believed that if I continued to define the life that I wanted, continued to focus on it with all of my intention—and was ready to claim it with all of my heart—eventually the universe would provide it for me.
Even back then, I somehow sensed that I needed to visualize my intentions if I wanted them to materialize. So I plastered my bedroom walls with dozens of glossy posters: black-and-white photographs of London’s famous landmarks; pictures of London’s sparkling night skylines; beautiful prints of Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, and the Crown Jewels.
Late at night, when I became infuriated with my high school chemistry equations, my tired eyes would always wander away from my desk and settle onto my wonderful English posters. Sometimes it seemed that if I stared at those posters hard enough, I could somehow transport myself into them.
And in a way, I have done just that! Gone are the days of small town America! (I now
live
in
London
!) Gone are the days of life on a shoestring! (I now get
paid
to write about
England
!) Gone are the days of sorrowful singlehood! (I recently married a handsome
Englishman
at Hampton Court Palace!) My enchanted life is of course a mixture of luck and dogged determination—but I owe a lot of it to the law of attraction. You are the designer of your own destiny, and I truly believe that what you think about, you bring about. And for this reason, I implore you to create
a vision board
.
A vision board is nothing more than a visual collage of your dreams that helps you to manifest them into reality. The law of attraction states that we attract the things that we give the most attention to. For example, if you repeat the words “yellow, yellow, yellow” and you start looking around you, all the yellow things will automatically stand out. In exactly the same way, if you repeat your dreams to yourself over and over, you will be shocked to discover the ways in which they start coming true.
How to create a vision board:
Define the life you want. Ask yourself exactly where you want to be, exactly what you want to do, exactly where you want to live and with whom.
Find pictures of these dreams in old magazines or search for them on Google images. Don’t be embarrassed if your chosen photos contain nothing but castles, jewels, polo ponies, and
princes. All that matters is that each picture you choose evokes an emotional response within you and represents something that you genuinely desire.
Find inspiring quotes to help feed messages of purpose and conviction into your subconscious and add these to the mix.
Paste your photos and inspirational words onto a piece of paper and put it up someplace where you will see it every single day. The mere sight of your vision board should make you happy. Every time you look at it, let it fuel your passion to go after your dreams.
Continue to focus your thoughts on the life that you know you are destined for—and don’t be surprised when you wake up one day and find yourself living it.
You have cause for nothing but gratitude and joy.
—B
UDDHA
If you’re anything like me, finance is not your forte and adding extra currencies to the mix hardly helps matters. This is precisely why girls like us must rigorously keep track of and count our money. But it’s equally important that we keep track of and count our
blessings
. It’s impossible to bring abundance into your London life if you are not grateful for the fact that you are already in London!
If you are actively thankful for the blessings you already possess, and remind yourself daily of all you are grateful for, you are actually summoning even more abundance to you. This is why I keep a gratitude journal, and so should you.
- Grab a notebook—or invest in something prettier with a soft leather cover.
- Every morning, jot down five things that you are thankful for—your family, your friends, your health, the boy in your life, the city that you live in, the day-to-day joys that occur just because you’re in England…
- Don’t worry about your handwriting—just get them down on the page, and as you do so feel the gratitude in your heart. The gratitude should be so intense and so genuine that you can feel tears coming to your eyes because for those few moments, you remember precisely how much these things mean to you.
- Next, be grateful for the things that
are coming your way
: a UK work permit, your dream job, your dream man…Be specific and be detailed. List the things you are thankful for
in the present tense
. Whether you have them yet or not is irrelevant—the gratitude you feel for the fact that you
will have them
should be just as real as it is for the things you already have. - Notice how your mood changes almost immediately. If you start your day by reminding yourself of your blessings, you are naturally empowered to deal with any obstacles (financial or otherwise) that you might encounter before bedtime.
