Hector Garcia and Francc MirallesWe all want to be happy, but so few of us actually know what to do. Should we make more money? Should we drink more beer? Should we watch more netflix? Should we pursue our passions? Everybody has a different view on it. Today I want to share with you guys a formula for happiness that has been around for hundreds of years.The Japanese have a term called Ikigai (Ick-ee-guy), meaning the reason of being. It is basically saying that you need to find a reason to be here on earth, so you need a purpose. Sounds simple right? But to truly achieve this, we have to look at the 4 components of Ikigai as the illustration shows below:You will need all four of them to truly achieve the level of happiness you desire.What you loveWe all have things that can make us work for hours after hours without realizing that so much time has gone by.By doing something you love, you can reach a flow state, or you can say it is just love. This kind of activity takes you to a state of bliss and joy.For example: singing, drawing, coding, or even taking showers. We focus almost 100% at the task in hand and it makes us forget all of the bad things that are happening.What the world needsBack in the ancient days it is quite easy, everybody has their own parts in the tribe, someone hunts, and someone cooks. The cook and the hunter are actually equally important to the society so that everybody gets to eat. Whenever they put in work, they can see almost immediate results.But in today’s society, as the population grows and there are so many needs in the society, plus with the power of the internet showing how fancy other people are living, it is hard for us to find the true value of ourselves. We work our butts off, and it is still going to be hard to see actual or any significant result. For example, one of my friends Kevin just quit his job last week and nobody even seemed to care for his absence.We need to find something that the world needs, and bring our value to it, this is to find our purpose and value that we can contribute to the society which also increases our self-esteem, which leads us to the next part: profession.What You Can Be Paid Well ForSome of you are probably going to say that money isn’t everything and you don’t need money to be happy.Well, let’s be honest here, although money isn’t everything, but everything is money. It puts food in your mouth, it gives you clothes to wear, and it puts a roof above your head. Without money, you will find yourself stressed out frequently in today’s society.In order to live comfortably, you will also need to make enough money to keep yourself financially free or even abundant.It really depends on where you live. If you live in India, it might be quite fancy to live on a couple thousand dollars a month, but if you live in a city like New York City, a couple thousand dollars is your bare minimum amount to survive there.What You Are Good AtThis doesn’t mean that you need to be born with talent. In fact, this has everything to do with how you practice your craft and how hard you work to improve.If you want to become a programmer, you will need to code daily and learn daily, you will need to make something and practice your algorithms more often than ever if you want to get better at it.You need to frequently overcome obstacles and learn from failures in order to achieve a certain result to actually be good at something. By overcoming obstacles you will also feel a sense of satisfaction and confidence for finally getting over it.And if you look at the illustration again:If you find yourself between something you love and something you are good at, you need to start marketing yourself so you can get paid for or get some attention for your work. For example: singers, rappers, artists, or painters.But if you find yourself stuck between something the world needs and something you love, you will have a mission. This is like a blogger who is trying to bring value to his/her readers, and