Emotional thought method

The Emotional thought method (Spanish: Pensamiento emocional) develops a group of activities that can be used in a personal or group-oriented way. This method concerns developing Emotional intelligence in a similar way that Daniel Goleman (1995) proposed in his book Emotional intelligence, a bestseller book written in 1995. The emotional thought method was created by Carlos Hué, a Spanish psychologist who is a teacher in the University of Zaragoza. This method is explained in the book Pensamiento emocional. Un método para el desarrollo de la autoestima y el liderazgo (Hué, 2007). Unfortunately, this book has not yet been translated into English. Carlos Hué gathers a lot of exercises in this method in order to develop emotional skills. Emotional Intelligence is based on several competencies intended to help a person gain success in personal, professional and social life. These kinds of competencies are usually acquired in the earliest education and throughout adult life, but they are not taught in a specific way. The reason is that these competencies are said not to be taught, since they are characteristic of each individual's personal maturation. There are a great number of training actions favoured by companies, public administrations, entities, institutions and social agents that develop some of these competences. However, there are not complete methods to train emotional competencies. The Emotional thought method illustrates that the emotional competencies can be learnt throughout life, so they can be taught, learnt and even evaluated. This method proposes seven emotional competencies, four referred to oneself like self-knowledge, self-evaluation, emotional control, and personal motivation; and three more referred to the others, as: knowledge of others, appreciation of others, and control of them. Self-knowledge is the first competence to develop and will naturally be through the knowledge of a person's own capacities, skills, personality features, interests, goals, etc. This point is usually ignored in the education programs.