Hasta La Gadget!

When Verizon finished rolling out its LTE network for calls, it became apparent that it also plans to drop its CDMA phone service altogether. Now, the carrier has begun offering its first LTE-only handset to subscribers, and it’s obviously an attempt…

Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian tries to make it clear her yearly, gender-focused analysis of the video games announced at E3 isn’t founded in malice — it’s simply reality. Even in 2017, video games overwhelmingly feature male protagonis…

There is nothing wrong with making a mistake. It’s what you say to yourself after you mess up that matters. Your self-talk (the thoughts you have about your feelings) can either magnify the negativity or help you turn that misstep into something productive.

Negative self-talk is unrealistic, unnecessary, and self-defeating. It sends you into a downward emotional spiral that is difficult to pull out of.

All self-talk is driven by important beliefs that you hold about yourself. It plays an understated but powerful role in success because it can both spur you forward to achieve your goals and hold you back.

As Henry Ford said, “He who believes he can and he who believes he cannot are both correct.”

TalentSmart has tested the emotional intelligence (EQ) of more than a million people and found that 90% of top performers are high in EQ. These successful, high EQ individuals possess an important skill—the ability to recognize and control negative self-talk so that it doesn’t prevent them from reaching their full potential. This is something many of them learned in emotional intelligence training.

These successful people earn an average of $28,000 more annually than their low EQ peers, get promoted more often, and receive higher marks on performance evaluations. The link between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase in EQ adds $1,300 to an annual salary.

When it comes to self-talk, we’ve discovered six common, yet toxic, beliefs that hold people back more than any others. Be mindful of your tendencies to succumb to these beliefs, so that they don’t derail your career:

Toxic Belief #1: Perfection = Success

Human beings, by our very nature, are fallible. When perfection is your goal, you’re always left with a nagging sense of failure, and end up spending your time lamenting what you failed to accomplish, instead of enjoying what you were able to achieve.

Toxic Belief #2: My Destiny is Predetermined

Far too many people succumb to the highly irrational idea that they are destined to succeed or fail. Make no mistake about it, your destiny is in your own hands, and blaming multiple successes or failures on forces beyond your control is nothing more than a cop out. Sometimes life will deal you difficult cards to play, and others times you’ll be holding aces. Your willingness to give your all in playing any hand you’re holding determines your ultimate success or failure in life.

Toxic Belief #3: I “Always” or “Never” Do That

There isn’t anything in life that you always or never do. You may do something a lot or not do something enough, but framing your behavior in terms of “always” or “never” is a form of self-pity. It makes you believe that you have no control of yourself and will never change. Don’t succumb to it.

Toxic Belief #4: I Succeed When Others Approve of Me

Regardless of what people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain⎯you’re never as good or bad as they say you are. It’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, but you can take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what people think about you, your self-worth comes only from within.

Toxic Belief #5: My Past = My Future

Repeated failures can erode your self-confidence and make it hard to believe you’ll achieve a better outcome in the future. Most of the time, these failures result from taking risks and trying to achieve something that isn’t easy. Just remember that success lies in your ability to rise in the face of failure. Anything worth achieving is going to require you to take some risks, and you can’t allow failure to stop you from believing in your ability to succeed.

Toxic Belief #6: My Emotions = Reality

If you’ve read Emotional Intelligence 2.0, you know how to take an objective look at your feelings and separate fact from fiction. If not, you might want to read it. Otherwise, your emotions will continue to skew your sense of reality, making you vulnerable to the negative self-talk that can hold you back from achieving your full potential.

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Bill Cosby stands accused by 60 women of sexual misconduct in alleged incidents that span decades.

On Saturday morning, he might have been convicted for one: the case of Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee who accuses the embattled comedian of molesting her after giving her drugs at his home in 2004. 

The charges against Cosby, three felony counts, carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. But after 12 jurors became deadlocked in their deliberations, a Pennsylvania judge declared the case a mistrial. Prosecutors reportedly intend to seek retrial of the case, but the result is a blow to Cosby’s many accusers and women like them who too often face uphill battles in their fight for justice after reporting sex crimes.

Soon after, Lena Dunham, Judd Apatow, Ru Paul and others spoke out on social media, seemingly united in their criticisms of the outcome.

Celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom also offered her encouragement for sexual assault survivors: 

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Texans faced long lines in the 2016 election and confusion over their polling place, registration status and the documentation required to vote, a report from a Texas civil rights group finds.

The Texas Civil Rights Project’s analysis released Thursday tracked over 4,000 incidents reported to a voter hotline or to field volunteers. It shows there was a lack of understanding among voters and election officials alike surrounding voting qualifications required by a controversial 2011 voter verification law. In April, a federal judge ruled the law was designed intentionally to discriminate against black and Latino voters, pushing Texas lawmakers to amend the legislation amid concerns that the state could be put under federal preclearance for its elections.

Of the 4,075 incidents logged in the report, about 8 percent involved confusion over the voter ID law. More than half of the incidents involved questions about a polling location, and the report noted most of these questions came from a predominantly black area in Houston. Over 8.5 million Texans voted in the November election.

A separate ruling found the voter verification law discriminatory last year. As a result, Texas reached an agreement with the Department of Justice to allow voters without an accepted form of ID to cast a ballot if they showed a voter registration card and an acceptable document and signed a declaration saying they could not obtain acceptable identification. But the report notes at least seven of the state’s 254 counties still displayed signs during early voting saying a photo ID was necessary to vote. Most of the voter ID-related incidents reported involved election officials telling people they needed a photo ID in order to vote. In Harris County, in which Houston is included, a man was turned away after showing up to vote with his voter registration card and a utility bill, and was only able to cast a ballot after an election worker accompanied him back to the poll.

The confusion over voter ID is significant because officials pushing voter verification laws often argue the measures aren’t discriminatory if voters receive a free card identifying them. Advocates also argue that the laws don’t discriminate if voters don’t possess an acceptable form of ID and can produce other verification. The issues in Texas show that even if those safeguards exist, voters can still face considerable obstacles to voting. Earlier in June, Texas passed a new voter ID law that formalizes the temporary solution reached last year, but lawyers for the plaintiffs suing the state have urged a federal judge to get rid of the new requirements as well as the original voter ID law.

Despite assurances from state officials that Texas would commit considerable resources to educating residents about the 2011 law, several of its largest community voter outreach groups said they did not even receive a voting manual from the state. Texas set aside just $2 million to educate voters about the law, but the campaign the state launched appears to have been ineffective, according to a ProPublica review of the state’s outreach efforts.

The report also shows many voters didn’t know where to vote and had to wait a long time when they got to their polling place. After the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Texas was required to approve changes to elections with the federal government. Since the decision, Texas has closed more polling locations than has any other state in the country, according to a report last year. An estimated 57 percent of the incidents reported involved questions about polling locations and many voters reported having to stand in line for more than an hour to cast a ballot. The lines were particularly long at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black school in Houston, where voters had to stand in line for up to three hours to vote.

To improve elections in the state, the Texas Civil Rights Project called for efforts to modernize the state’s voter registration practices and to comply with voter registration law.

“We will need to think seriously about polling place efficiency, and invest in often over-looked aspects of election administration like voting technology and poll worker training,” the report says. “Lastly, providing robust education efforts to ensure Texas voters understand the current requirements to vote is essential to make the process easier and fairer for individuals across the state.”

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