Sam Feeney's Career Factors: Unlock fulfilling work... without leaving your job.

By Sam Feeney

Do you want more from your career than you're getting?

For years Sam Feeney observed the uneasy relationship most people-himself included-had with their jobs. At best, his good days outnumbered the bad; at worst, the bad days prompted an existential crisis. But Sam noticed that not everyone hated their jobs. Wh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emissary Publishing
• Release date: Apr 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798988127994

Sam Feeney

Sam Feeney is a husband and father of five who loves helping others see the world differently so they can get more out of life. While he's been an East Coaster for most of his life, his family moved to Colorado in the fall of 2020 following what they perceived as a call from God. It's the best thing he's ever done...Sam's background is in education as a teacher and school counselor, but he's always been doing something else, whether coaching sports, writing books, or starting businesses. His first glimmer of business interest came when a friend lent him Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics.On a perfect day, Sam starts his morning early with time in the Word and then writing for an hour before making breakfast for his kids. He says, whatever happens after that is gravy. Same loves creating frameworks that challenge traditional ways of thinking and sharing them with others.

Book preview

THE CAREER FACTORS

Unlock fulfilling work… right where you are

Sam Feeney

Foreword by Dr. Bryan Hendley

SAM FEENEY’S CAREER FACTORS

Unlock Fulfilling Work ... Without Leaving Your Job

Second Edition of The Career Factors

© 2024 Samuel M. Feeney

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other – except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 979-8-9881279-9-4



Published in Phoenix, Arizona by Emissary Publishing. Emissary is a business trade name of Ed’s Voices, LLC.

DEDICATION

To anyone who wants more from their career than just a paycheck.

Although those are nice, too.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

While I have been privileged to engage with Sam on this project, collaborating with him on the coaching process associated with The Career Factors and serving as a guinea pig for the different iterations of the assessment, I am especially humbled and honored to write the foreword for this book.

Diving into The Career Factors with Sam has been an eye-opening experience for me, and one that led to great reflection on my own career journey. If you are anything like me (and statistically in the majority), your career journey has not been linear. There have been twists and unexpected turns. There have been jobs you never thought you would have, roles you never thought you’d enjoy, and positions you thought you’d love that turned out to be less than what you’d hoped for. You likely have a degree in one area and are now working in something (seemingly) unrelated, at least directly. My career, and likely yours, has been so intertwined with my life, and in the past, I found myself frustrated with one aspect or another of my job, often unable to put my finger on it, other than to know that something was off.

The Career Factors allowed me to put a name to what had previously been just out of reach for me. The process allowed me a deeper understanding of what I had been looking for in my work, and in some ways, in my life. Perhaps my favorite and most impactful piece of The Career Factors is the belief that career satisfaction is an inside job. Wow! As Sam points out, the natural inclination is to argue back, to start the yeah, buts…, and to place the burden on the organizations with whom we work for our fulfillment in our careers. Instead, Sam challenges us to take this responsibility on for ourselves, and not only that, but he provides us with the tools and encouragement to take that challenge head on.

There is great power for us here in this choice. We have the opportunity to learn what it is we truly want to get out of our careers, determine how we can apply that in our current situation, and then take action on our Career Factors in order to create work that is meaningful, fulfilling, and supportive of our gifts and talents.

One final encouragement from me:

Our careers don’t have to satisfy our every need, and when we look for them to do so, we’ll likely be disappointed. While some folks may find their dream job, others can work in places and positions that they find fulfilling, meaningful, and important, that may not, from the outside, fall into that dream job category. And that’s just fine! In fact, that’s more of the norm. We can create meaningful work, right where we are.

As you continue to seek to create fulfilling work—right where you are (wherever you are)—I’m pulling for you.

Bryan

Bryan Hendley, Ed D.

Creator of The Purpose Project

A NOTE TO THE READER

This book is designed to be somewhat interactive, featuring free assessments drawn from our coaching program. To access your free resources and learn more about using the Career Factors to unlock fulfilling work in your current role, visit thecareerfactors.com.

Each chapter of the book begins with the ongoing story of a fictional character we’ll call Marcus. Stories are the best teachers, and this book presents a fair amount of new information—or at least new ways of looking at something very familiar—so I hope that including a story that weaves the chapters together will help you understand the concepts and how you can apply them to your own career journey.

Part 1 is a review of traditional career development, with some important shifts in the mindset around career satisfaction that will prove useful as you understand how you got to wherever you are in your career.

If you’d prefer to jump to how to apply your Career Factors to your current job without the walk down memory lane and the argument for doing careers differently, feel free to take the free assessment at thecareerfactors.com and learn how to use your results in Part 2.

INTRODUCTION

Why Work Matters



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Do you remember your first day of work?  Maybe like me you had a job in high school working after school or on the weekends so you could buy things you wanted.  Fast forward a bit to your first real job, the one