Most people genuinely want a better life. They want to buy a house, earn a comfortable income, give their kids opportunities, and have some fun along the way. Some people are more aspirational than that. They dream of writing books, launching companies, or building generational wealth.

But there is a real difference between wanting a better life and doing what it actually takes to build one. It's the difference between a wish — something you'd like to have — and a goal — something you pursue, figure out, and chase down.

Here's the problem. Even people who work hard and put in every ounce of effort they can muster still hit a ceiling. Your current mindset, your connections, your skill set, your knowledge base — all of it can only carry you so far. At some point, effort alone stops being the variable.

To unlock the next level, you have to adopt a bigger mindset and get genuinely aspirational. Part of being aspirational is thinking and acting beyond your current circumstances and your current limitations.

And here's the part most people miss: your knowledge base, your skill set, and the way you go after goals or handle challenges is largely the result of watching and learning from other people.

You absorbed it. You didn't choose most of it.

People take enormous pride in figuring life out on their own. At the same time, we're social creatures who need validation and acceptance. Those two tendencies seem contradictory, but looked at together they make sense. Plenty of people revel in being independent thinkers, self-made, and — in the words of blue-eyed Frank Sinatra — doing it their way.

Meanwhile, most of us are operating on an old narrative handed to us by the people we interact with the most. It might be the first couple of managers you ever had. It might be a high school friend group you still have a text chain with. It might be a group of parents you get together with every few months.

These people may genuinely think they're supporting you. You may genuinely believe they're the only ones who understand you and the only ones who have your back. But here's the uncomfortable truth: they're dealing with the same issues you are. They don't have the knowledge or the experience to help you reach a level they haven't reached. They can't upgrade your mindset, because they're running the same software.

If you want new levels of success, you have to learn from people who have already achieved what you want — or who are actively in the process of achieving it. Hacking into their mindset simply means learning how they think about their goals. How they approach them. What they obsess over. What their habits are. What their process looks like. What kind of team or support they've built around them.

Those questions are powerful, and they're the whole game. If you want to change your life, you have to change your approach to life. The simplest way to do that is to hack into a mindset that's already working.

Start by admitting you can still grow

Before you can hack anyone's mindset, you have to accept one thing: you can still grow. A lot of people quietly stop growing at some point. They settle into familiar habits, or they wait for something to change instead of accepting that they have to be the catalyst for change.

From there, you need concrete goals that motivate and inspire you. Not vague ambitions. Tangible targets you are actively working toward. Mindset hacking without a goal is just entertainment.

Pick the right people to learn from

Once you've defined a specific goal, find people who have accomplished it — and people who are on their way. Ideally both.

You want people who have already done exactly what you want to do, because they know where the road leads. But you also want people who aren't there yet, because they're still in the game, still dealing with the same challenges you're facing right now. People who already crossed the finish line sometimes downplay how hard each individual step was. The person twenty yards ahead of you remembers.

If you want to write a book, talk to successful authors. Also talk to people in the middle of writing their first one. You'll get two completely different and equally valuable pictures.

Reverse-engineer the process

The most useful part of someone's mindset is mechanical: how they go about their goals, their habits, their relationships, and how they handle challenges.

Every goal has a systematic process behind it — full of actions, decisions, and habits. Your job is to reverse it. Ask questions. Observe how they make decisions. Look at their morning routine. Look at how they actually spend their time. What actions do they take consistently? What are they working on, and in what proportion?

Every goal also requires a team. It might be as simple as asking your spouse to watch the kids or walk the dog while you go to the gym, write, or attend a meeting. For bigger goals, building an actual team isn't optional. No entrepreneur builds anything alone.

And virtually every goal comes with challenges. A huge part of success is limiting how much those challenges slow your progress. So part of mindset hacking is studying how successful people deal with obstacles — not whether they have them, but what process they run when they show up.

Watch what they obsess over

This is my favorite part.

Successful people obsess over the right things. Everybody obsesses over something — sports, fantasy football, family drama, the news. The difference is where the obsession points. A lot of high performers are locked onto just two or three factors. They simplify success by being hyper-focused. As humans, we tend to over-complicate the simple.

A few examples I come back to often.

Tom Brady was obsessed with two things that had nothing to do with throwing a football: relationships and pliability. Every time he met a new teammate, he'd walk up and say, "Hi, my name is Tom." Of course he was also obsessed with winning, watching film, and communicating with his coaches. But he was hyper-focused on building relationships when most people around him weren't.

When thought-leader Brendon Burchard wanted to write a bestseller, he discovered that going to writing conferences wasn't producing bestselling books. So he interviewed bestselling authors and found a pattern: write a good book, then get people with big email lists to promote it. It worked.

When I was researching how to grow on YouTube, everyone was obsessed with the same three things — thumbnails, titles, and hooks. They literally call it the YouTube trifecta.

My friend Chris Stevenson, an entrepreneur, is obsessed with the customer service experience and with training his staff to deliver it. I'm obsessed with improving my writing, and I take real pride in that.

Or take health. Most people who want to lose weight focus on eating right and exercising. The experts go further. They're obsessed with gut health and preventing inflammation. Beyond eating a salad and tracking steps on a smartwatch, the people who really know are obsessed with specific metrics.

The problem is that most people approach their goals the same way for decades. They parent the way they were parented, or the way their friends parent. The approach never gets audited.

Three ways to actually get access

There are practical ways to tap into other mindsets, and they stack.

The first is consumption. There are experts in almost everything — from raising kids to tying a tie, from starting a company to finishing a Lego set, from writing a book to making great mac and cheese. Books, articles, YouTube videos. Just be sure the information is current and that it actually makes sense for your situation.

The second is observation. How do people go about their goals? This might mean shadowing a manager who inspires you, watching a friend raise their kids, or paying attention to how a business handles customer service. Much of how Chris developed his customer service principles came from dissecting how other companies treated him — walking into an Apple store, flying on Delta, dealing with rental car counters.

The third and most powerful is interaction. Actually engaging with the people you want to learn from. A mentor, a coaching program, a mastermind group, an industry conference. The goal is to learn from others and exchange ideas — to be in conversations that put you on a better path.

Why you can't do this alone

Here's a compelling reason to take this seriously: achieving anything meaningful takes a multitude of disciplines, and it's impossible to be an expert in all of them.

I'm a writer. But I also need to understand social media, getting booked as a speaker, marketing strategy, and half a dozen other complementary disciplines. There's no version of me that becomes an expert in all of that. It would be like a chef trying to cook five dishes at once, at full attention, forever. Instead, I hack into other people's mindsets to borrow the knowledge base that complements what I'm already doing.

When we were born, we didn't know much of anything. We learned to drive a car, get a job, move up in a career. Tapping into other people's mindsets simply requires being willing to admit there's more to learn.

Throughout your life, you'll need to keep improving your skill set, your mindset, and your approach. Mindset hacking should be a permanent part of that process — not a phase you go through once.

Your move

Pick one goal you're serious about. Then find two people: one who has already done it, and one who is a year or two ahead of you. Ask them what they obsess over. Ask them what their process looks like. Ask them who's on their team.

Then go do it. Drop a comment and tell me whose mindset you're going to hack this month — I read every one.