College Grad: Become an Explorer Of The World And Yourself

Preface:

The following blog post was drafted almost two weeks ago and finalized over the weekend. This is the same weekend that, here in the United States of America, we are experiencing great unrest, and I find myself questioning how the fabric of the Constitution can be torn so slowly yet so quickly. According to the Senate, “the United States Constitution is the world’s longest surviving written charter of government.” That says something to me. It says the Founding Fathers were thoughtful, they had foresight, and they were observant of their own experiences—and did not want those experiences to repeat. The Constitution, in my estimate, is not perfect, but it is an artifact and guiding instrument of self-management: three separate but equal branches of government. The Judicial Branch, noted under Article III, Section II, states, “The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury.” Casting proclamations of protesters’ guilt in the public square is the opposite of being tried in a court of law by a jury of one’s own peers.

I strive for this site to be apolitical and focus instead on strategies and tactics that help individuals and, in return, help society. In the post below, I talk about exploring core values as a guide to help a new college graduate begin life on their own terms. And yet, my core values are being challenged.

My personal values of integrity, honesty, fairness, decency, excellence, at times toughness, and how we handle things when no one is looking have been evident to those I worked with and worked for. I’m not sure where I learned this, but I do remember, as a 26-year-old manager, stating to my team: Do the right thing even when no one is looking. I used this phrase when coaching my team, especially those who did not do great work, thinking it would just pass. As I shared with them, we should always be doing the right thing even when no one is looking. And the truth of the matter is, someone is always looking. Now that was almost 30 years ago. Today, with the innovation of the internet and the seamless connectivity of cameras on phones and street corners, those words are even more true.

Regardless of the innovations that have emerged, what has not changed is my belief in the Constitution. We should all ask ourselves if we are practicing the Constitution. If we cannot quote the Constitution, perhaps that is the next step. It is for me.

Dear College Grad,

In Part One, we focused on business experience—systems understanding, pattern recognition, and how to create real economic value early. That is the professional foundation.

Part Two widens the view, because your career will not be shaped only by what you do at work. It will be shaped by who you become as you live your life.

Your 20s move quickly. They can become your defining decade of adulthood because this is when you are building the first version of your adult operating system—how you live, how you decide, how you relate to others, what you value, and what kind of work keeps you curious and energized over time.

That is why I call this pillar:

Become an Explorer.

Exploration is purposeful and experimental. It is how you gather real feedback about yourself and the world you are living in, so you can make decisions based on clarity rather than momentum, habit, or external pressure.

Your generation intuitively understands this. I recently heard a college senior’s speech on the UT Austin campus where she talked about side quests—projects, moves, skills, and experiences taken alongside a main path. The language may sound casual, but the instinct behind it is serious: people are searching for purpose, mission, and drive so they can do work that brings them joy, brings joy to others, and helps solve meaningful problems in the world.

Exploration is how that discovery happens.

If you do only one explorer activity early on, start here: write down your values.

Not the values you think you should say. The values you actually live by.

Ask yourself:

• What do I consistently prioritize?

• What do I protect?

• What do I admire in other people?

• What makes me lose respect for a person or an institution?

• What makes me feel proud of myself?

These answers matter more than any job title.

Your values become a baseline. Over time, they become a filter—especially when work gets loud, life speeds up, and decisions start stacking on top of one another. When people, companies, or opportunities challenge you, your values help you decide what fits for you and what does not.

Values also help you choose the people and institutions you build with. That matters more than most people realize. If you learn this early on, it will help you continuously move toward higher goals, higher callings, and a higher state of being.

One of the most valuable forms of exploration early in adulthood is learning how to live on your own.

Living independently teaches you how you actually operate in the world. You learn how you manage money, time, responsibilities, and uncertainty when you are the one making decisions and living with the outcomes. You begin to see what matters to you in practice, not just in theory.

Many people live with friends early on, and that can be a good experience. You learn how to share space, navigate differences, compromise, and manage group dynamics. Those are real skills, and they matter—especially in work environments where collaboration is constant.

At the same time, when you live with others—particularly in groups of three or four—your daily rhythms are shaped by other people’s habits, schedules, preferences, and tolerance levels. Over time, that limits the feedback you get about yourself. If you have a good roommate, you may delay your exploration of your own preferences. If you live with a roommate who has emotional or other challenges, this can be a real stress on your system and can also delay your exploration.

Living alone gives you space to answer questions like:

• How much structure do I actually need?

• How do I want my home to feel?

• How do I recharge?

• What routines keep me grounded?

• How do I handle the quiet?

• How do I manage stress when no one else is steering the ship?

Living alone accelerates that learning.

It also builds flexibility. When you live independently, you are far more prepared if an opportunity asks you to move—to Seattle, Houston, Alaska, Colorado, or somewhere else entirely. You already understand the systems of moving, setting up your life, building routines, and operating without being tied to other people’s circumstances.

Living alone builds a tremendous number of experiences and skills that matters more than you think.

Living independently is one part of exploration. Financial independence from your family is another.

This includes taking responsibility for the practical systems in your life: your phone plan, car insurance, health insurance decisions, subscriptions, banking, and day-to-day expenses.

These are not just administrative tasks. They are real-world systems that teach you how decisions connect to tradeoffs.

When you are financially independent from your family, decisions become cleaner. You weigh options differently when you own the outcome. You learn faster because the feedback loop is real.

Financial independence also changes your relationship with your parents in a meaningful and healthy way.

When financial ties are reduced, the relationship naturally shifts from one of support and oversight to one of perspective and wisdom. You can still ask questions. You can still seek advice. But you do so as an adult making your own decisions—not as someone shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by financial dependency.

That shift matters.

It allows you to take the values your parents gave you and interpret them through your own judgment. Conversations become more adult. Advice becomes optional rather than directional. Respect flows both ways.

A practical way to approach these conversations is to frame them as systems questions:

“Here’s how I’m thinking about this. What am I not considering?”

That invites wisdom without handing over the steering wheel.

Over time, communication dynamics change. Their worry softens. What remains is love, pride, admiration, and trust—without the counterweight of financial pressure.

As you explore who you are, you will discover something important:

You are building a life system, and life works better when you build it with a strong team.

Your team is not just the people you love. It includes the professionals, organizations, and institutions you build long-term relationships with—especially in areas where constant change creates friction.

As you grow, life becomes more layered. Responsibilities compound. Decisions stack. Your time becomes more valuable, and you have less of it.

This is where consistency becomes a quiet superpower for you.

When you choose high-quality partners early and grow with them over time, you reduce decision fatigue. You stop solving the same problems again and again. That frees mental space for exploration, creativity, and growth.

This includes choices like:

• your primary bank

• your credit card and financial ecosystem

• your investment platform

• your insurance agent

• your primary care physician and medical team

• travel partners (airlines, hotels, rental systems)

These decisions may seem boring, but they repeat across decades. Choosing well early creates compounding benefits: better service, less friction, fewer resets, and more flexibility when things go wrong and you need their help.

A simple filter helps here:

Choose organizations that value relationships—not just transactions.

Some companies are designed to extract value and make it hard to leave. Others are designed to build trust and retain relationships over time. You will feel the difference.

A practical example is banking.

I recommended to your dad that you consider working with a large, resilient bank for your primary banking relationship—specifically JPMorgan Chase. I’ve been with them for almost 40 years. I began banking with Bank One, well before Jamie Dimon became CEO of Bank One in 2000 and before it later merged with JPMorgan Chase, where he later became CEO.

Did I know what mattered in 1986? No. But over time, I learned what was important to me—risk management and managing range of outcomes are definitely some of them. This relationship turned out to be a good fit. What was important to them on a global scale was important to me personally. If it hadn’t been, I would have changed banks.

During major disruptions—like COVID—resilience matters. Not just systemically, but personally. Having a stable institution, a broad branch network, and a real relationship becomes meaningful.

We were not a super large customer, but we felt we were meaningful to them especially in that moment. That is what you want to become—meaningful to others.

I recently watched an acceptance speech from the 2026 Golden Globes where Sarah Jessica Parker spoke about the people who have been part of her professional life for decades—her agent, publicist, attorney, business partners, and colleagues.

What stood out was her intentionality in building strong relationships and her pride in sharing those accomplishments—especially in an industry where there is a lot of change.

Relationships spanning 25, 30, 35, even 45 years do not happen by accident. They come from selecting good people early, treating relationships with respect, and growing together.

That is the model.

For me, this lesson firmly took root over twenty years ago. Build teams of smart, capable, trustworthy, and kind people. Kindness matters. It makes their lives easier. It makes your life easier. And when things break—as they inevitably do—you have people you can count on.

One reason to build strong teams and consistent systems is simple:

You gain mental space.

Exploration requires room to think, reflect, experiment, and learn. Reduce friction where you can so your attention stays focused on growth.

And when systems need to change, your team and network becomes your advantage. Trusted people refer trusted people. That is how a values-aligned life system evolves without chaos.

Finally, we are here.

Now that you have done some inner exploring through your values, observed how you live when you live independently, and built a support team to help you through your daily activities, you have, in essence, created a plan. This plan is not meant to have explicit or deterministic outcomes. Instead, it gives you space to hear—in quiet moments—what is calling you, and to observe with your own eyes the activities, actions, skills, and interests you are inherently curious about.

This is where many generations, mine included, did not give ourselves time to breathe and explore—time to learn, experiment, and answer hard questions without a predefined goal, plan, or purpose.

Yes, exploration works best when it has structure. But the structure is in place so that you can experience the fluidity of the outcomes you will experience.

Here are areas worth exploring in your 20s—exploration that produces clarity, purpose, and options:

Explore places with different rhythms:

• big cities

• mid-size cities

• cities tied to different industries

• places with different cultural energy and pace

Notice what environments energize you and which ones drain you. Where do you feel called? Do you love the mountains, the oceans, big open skies, hot or cool weather, city lights? The more you travel—even if just for a weekend or a drive—the more clearly you will hear what is calling you.

Explore skills that transfer across roles and industries:

• writing and clear communication

• negotiation

• teaching complex ideas simply

• systems thinking

• technology literacy

• financial literacy

• relationship-building and conflict navigation

Skills, when combined with deep understanding of businesses and systems, compound exponentially.

Join things outside your employer:

• professional associations

• volunteer and service organizations

• industry groups

• faith-based communities (if aligned)

• hobby and creative groups

This is how you meet people beyond your immediate circle. As your circle expands through these loosely connected networks, your opportunities expand as well—new experiences, new relationships, and more.

Be intentional about who you meet:

• people with similar values

• people with shared interests

• people on different paths

• people slightly ahead of you

Over time, this becomes one of your most durable assets. I have personally learned a great deal from friends on different paths and at different stages of life.

Use experiences to answer curious questions and generate clarity:

• travel with intention

• projects that require commitment

• environments that stretch you so you can see how far you can go

• work that challenges your comfort zone

Try things. Eliminate what does not fit. Keep what brings real joy.

I recently watched a few episodes of a National Geographic exploration series. In that series, I was introduced to a Professor of Toxicology and leading venom expert who explores new species of snakes and scorpions and studies their venom. I learned that venom plays an important role in developing medical cures. Did you know that venom is an ingredient in treatments for hypertension, cardiovascular disease, renal disease in diabetes patients, and post–myocardial infarction heart failure? I did not. How fascinating!

There are scientists who apply for grants, travel to far-reaching parts of the world, and search for new species—then carefully extract venom to see if it can help treat human medical conditions. This is extremely specialized work, driven by mission and purpose. How did this person become a scientist studying venom? Well, as it turns out, snakes were his passion.

Or consider researchers studying phytoplankton beneath Arctic ice to understand their increased CO₂ capture compared to phytoplankton in warmer climates. This work matters. With increased energy demand driven by AI and industrial growth, we will need more scientific solutions to offset environmental impact. This microbial oceanographer and polar ecologist pursued science for years because the passion was there early on.

Or consider the Swedish man living in northern Sweden with his family, creating extraordinary crochet-patterned blankets, wraps, and hats—pieces that look like museum-quality art. He sells his patterns at affordable prices so others can try as well, and supports his work through affiliate partnerships for wool yarn. He is creating art for personal fulfillment, while tens of thousands of people benefit from his creativity.

Many people fall into careers by accident. Someone becomes an insurance agent because it was their first job, then later becomes an owner. Careers often form around the first company you work for. So do your first job extremely well. Learn it deeply. Find what fascinates you.

Then explore on your own time.

At this stage of society, we should all go on explorations and side quests to discover what excites us about the work we will contribute to the world. AI will take over repetitive and deterministic tasks. But solving unsolved mysteries, addressing complex challenges, and creating beauty remain deeply human.

In an AI world, we will need people who are curious, persistent, creative, and willing to solve human problems or bring human creativity and innovation into the world. Exploration fuels that.

Here is your chance to explore and learn more about what is hidden deep inside you. There is only one of you. Only one.

This message is not only for recent college graduates but for so many of us. At this Sunday’s sermon, the preacher shared the full poem of Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day which speaks to this very topic. The famous line that got me was:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Her work struck me and lead me to her Yes! No! poem:

“…Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

Enjoy your exploration and pay attention to what you find. This is your endless and proper work, indeed.

• Exploration gathers real information about who you are and how you operate.

• Living independently accelerates clarity and flexibility.

• Financial independence from family strengthens judgment and adult relationships.

• Strong teams and consistent systems create stability for exploration.

• A strong life system creates bandwidth for growth and meaning.

• Exploring cities, skills, organizations, people, and experiences expands your highly human options.

• Exploration helps us solve greater mysteries and problems in the world.

• Exploration helps us create, innovate, and bring beauty into the world.

• Plan your exploration, but remain flexible and open to what it brings.

Part One focused on building economic value through systems understanding at work.

Part Two focused on building the personal foundation—how you live, decide, explore, and build a team around your life. This is an exciting time to explore what interests you and what you cannot stop thinking about. That is where you could go and build solutions the world needs—and they will pay you to build.

In Part Three, we will connect all of this to financial flexibility—not as an end, but as a tool that supports choice, calm, and confidence in an uncertain world.

Next: Part 3 — Build Financial Flexibility.

Until next time,
Rachel

Note: If readers are interested in a complete values-exploration exercise, I built a timeless short program a few years back. It was written from a financial perspective, since values help clarify where you might want to spend your dollars. However, you can use this program to clarify your values and apply it to all kinds of decisions beyond finances. You can pick up the program for a nominal fee here.

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