When you're in that zone of expansiveness, you become more generous with others and yourself. You give yourself time to figure out what you want. "The longer you're not with someone just to be with someone, the more you get a better sense of what's negotiable for you and what's not," says my friend Sarah, who, through allowing herself a breather, came to understand, "I can't hook up again with someone who doesn't love dogs. Or who wouldn't think of doing some sort of charity work, since that bespeaks a kind of stinginess at a spiritual level. Someone who has a lot of money—I don't care about that. On my own, I've learned these things about myself."

Generosity is a higher form of power, one that no one can give you but that you can freely take. Another friend did just that when she decided to stop telling herself, I want to find someone to love me, and tried saying, I want to find someone to love. Not long after, she did.

When you expand yourself, you expand your world. And that's why you do it, why you shift into a generous realm, not to get a boyfriend, though there's a good chance that will be one result. (You're a lot more attractive with a wide, full life than when you're judging each man by what he can give you.) You do it for the broader vision, for the expansion itself, which will build on itself till your life will have levels and depths you never thought possible. You do it in order to be fully present at each moment of your life. When you are, anything can happen. When you're shut down by fear, not much will. And you do it because when you're in that larger place, you get to see, once and for all, there's really nothing out there.