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Yep, that’s the word all right. I did not misspell it. "Musterbation" is a word that Dr. Albert Ellis( a renowned American psychologist) described a kind of frame of mind that we whip ourselves with a lot of "shoulds" or "oughts." When we "musterbate" we flagellate ourselves with a set of rules and standards, lots of "musts", "oughts" and "shoulds" that we feel intense pressure to perform. It’s as if you are forcing yourself to do the tasks. We defeat ourselves by the way we force ourselves to get moving. We feel like an ex-convict under a tyrannical probation officer. Every tasks seem unpleasant and dull we can’t stand to face it. For example, have you experience desperately wanting to lose weight but ironically you ended up lazing around not exercising and stuffing yourself with greasy hamburgers and sinfully rich chocolates? How about telling yourself that you ought to write and finish that report tonight, so

Happiness and inner fulfillment are independent of the external conditions in life. The myth of " I’ll be happy when I get the house in Hollywood Hills, the beamer, the job, the model wife….is very much propagated in our society. We should realize that we had it backwards. Inner fulfillment should come first to be truly and unconditionally happy. And how do we go about this? There’s this simple step that can be done on a daily basis in minimum time. Here it is. If you want to be wildly successful in the future, start pretending and acting like one today. Dress better, have bounce on your steps, wear that 1000 kilowatt smile, have a happy disposition and if the weather is bad, bring your own sunshine. Act as if you already own a Fortune 500 company. Whatever you want to be, be that now. Practice being happy now. Pretend until pretense becomes real. Our brain likes pattern and familiarity. If we always think we are lacking and unhappy, the brain filters the incoming data to support