If someone were to offer you everything you’ve ever wanted, would you be ready for it today?

That’s a common question spiritual medium Erika Gabriel asks her clients, and despite the fact that they are all eagerly seeking something—whether it’s true love, a more fulfilling career, or a meaningful and purpose-driven life—the answer is almost always no.

“Someone says they want to meet their soulmate, but if the perfect person showed up tomorrow, they wouldn’t be ready,” says Gabriel. “They don’t feel good about themselves, they don’t know how they’d recognize the person, and they don’t believe they deserve it. Same with a dream job. They’d say, ‘whoa, I have so much to do to get ready for that.’”

Why are so many folks at once so keen for change yet so unprepared (and sometimes unwilling) to accept it? “You have to be able to meet yourself where you want to go, and a lot of people aren’t ready to do that,” says Gabriel. “There are blocks in their path, and they don’t know what they are, what to call them, or how to get through them. So, they’re essentially stuck.”

Throughout her work with as a spiritualist, Gabriel—who just launched The Way, an online course that outlines each of these lessons with accompanying video instruction—has found many ways to help set clients on a clearer path to purpose. But she’s also found that there are three essential lessons or steps that you simply cannot bypass on that route. Each is a spiritual practice grounded in concrete solutions.

“The point is to…shift the vibration in your life so you live with greater meaning and purpose.” —Erika Gabriel, spiritual medium

“The idea with these lessons is that the spiritual concepts bring awareness to your mind, body, and spirit about the things that are blocking you, and then there are practical tools you can use to circumvent these blocks.”

The order in which you tackle the three steps to help you find your purpose doesn’t matter, and the goal isn’t to solve your life as if it’s a riddle with an answer. “The point isn’t for your life to be perfect or for everything to look crystal clear the next day,” she says. “The point is to…shift the vibration in your life so you live with greater meaning and purpose.” Below, Gabriel outlines the three steps to find your purpose and how to implement them into your life.

3 steps to help you find your purpose, according to a spiritual medium

1. Plug into a positive power source

“There is one amazing, vibrating source of power, and it connects us all and runs through us all, and that is universal, positive energy,” says Gabriel. “We are loaded and coated with that ability to plug into that power source. We can use it any way we want.”

Imagine a wall of electricity in your house and a lamp. The electricity is happening the whole time, but when you plug the lamp into the wall, only then does it light up. You can plug into that energy whenever and however you want. The problem, however, is the inclination to plug into negativity. Gabriel pinpoints three negative power sources that often leave folks feeling stuck:

1. 1.
   Fear: “This is where anxiety comes in, when you’re emotionally rehearsing the very things you don’t want to have happen or when you’re living in the past or the future and your present body starts to react,” Gabriel says. It can be as simple as planning to go to the grocery store after work, and then telling yourself how it will be over-crowded at that time, you’ll inevitably run late, you’ll have to rush to make dinner, and your family’s evening will be ruined.
2. 2.
   Victimhood: “This is when you believe you are where you are because of someone else,” like a boss, parent, or partner, says Gabriel. “A common example I’ve seen is, ‘My ex-husband was mean to me and showed me that I was unlovable,’ and they hold onto that, and now they really want love but they think, ‘Well, I’m unloveable,’” she says.
3. 3.
   Trauma response: This describes “when you have something traumatic happen in your life and you’re constantly living in the defensive, waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Gabriel says. “It’s the belief that ‘I’m safer here’ or ‘I don’t want to move my life forward because something terrible is going to happen.’”

While bad things do happen, it’s possible to work on recognizing when such negative power sources might be controlling you. “Once you are able to acknowledge them, you’ll realize they are just a different form of energy. If you want to plug into doom and gloom, it’s there. But hopefully, you’ll start to gain the power to unplug from those things and plug into something more positive.”

When you feel you are being drawn into one of those negative power sources, “find a way to ground yourself back down in your body,” Gabriel advises. “Get yourself back in the present moment, doing whatever helps you to achieve that.”

2. Create a sacred vision

“When we’re feeling low…we can create a visual that makes us lift our energy and our vibrations ever so slightly,” says Gabriel. “We can create a vision of feeling good and from there, we can soar to a better-feeling place and ultimately a higher vision.”

As with power sources, roadblocks might stand in the way of creating these visions, namely time, money, and guilt. we bump into a series of roadblocks. To access a vision of a better-feeling place, Gabriel suggests taking one of two paths:

1. 1.
   Visualize a happy memory: “It can be a walk you had on a beach,” Gabriel says. “You can just close your eyes, move through the lower-vibration feeling you’re having, and create this incredible visual. You feel the sand and hear the breeze. You say to yourself, ‘Yes, I remember her there. She feels great!’”
2. 2.
   Visualize your initial intention: “What did you daydream about before the world—the agreements or guilt—took it away from you?” Gabriel says. “Let’s say you loved being with animals, but for whatever reason, you aren’t doing that. Just sit down and feel the feeling of being with animals.”

In time, these visualizations and intentions can become a higher vision.

“Say you are an accountant, but you wanted to work with animals. Myriad reasons—not having the time or money for vet school, for instance—kept you from that. You feel stuck in your life and are seeking your purpose and you realize you’d wanted to work with animals,” Gabriel says. “Your better-feeling place isn’t worrying about making money off animals, it’s just being with animals. It just feels good. From there, you can start to create a vision. You can keep your job as an accountant, but you can also start volunteering at a shelter, and then you can run the volunteer group.”

This greater vision, Gabriel maintains, doesn’t have to be some monumental shift of switching careers: “Do you know what kills joy and creativity and freedom? Not being able to pay your rent,” she says. “Do not blow up your life. All you need to learn in this lesson is how to get your body safe and grounded, how to go to a better-feeling place, and how to start preparing for what you want.”

3. Light the match

“The meaning behind this lesson is in both ‘matching’ up with the things we’re visualizing and in lighting the proverbial match underneath us,” says Gabriel. “Only by lighting this flame can we harness the forward momentum to move ahead without fear every single day.” To do this, Gabriel tasks her clients with writing a long list of practical tasks necessary to match their visions, and then tackle something from the list each day.

The goal of this final lesson is that the answer to Gabriel’s initial question—if you were offered what you’ve always wanted, would you be ready to accept it?—is yes. “Being ready and available for the things we want means we have to prepare,” she says.