I Still Care What You Think (And Hate That I Do)

Let's talk about 'freedom tax' and the comparison reflex that never fully go away. 

I've been on this journey for almost a decade and these thoughts still show up. I still care what people think of my life. 

The re-worn outfits, the small mountain town, the Tuesday ski days instead of important meetings — sometimes I wonder what it all looks like from the outside...

Key Takeaways:

- Why traditional success metrics are so sticky
- The "freedom tax" aka the real cost of opting out of status symbols 
- How to find your people who measure life the same way you do
- What to do when you're the unconventional one in your group

For anyone who's ever felt the gap between knowing your values and not caring what anyone thinks. That gap doesn't fully close, but there's something you can do with it.

About the show:

Sam Laliberte -  entrepreneur, digital nomad and freedom seeker, hosts the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast to expose people to the many ways you can design your dream life and unlock your own version of the freedom lifestyle. Her guests have empowered themselves through flexible work as a way to “have it all” - financial, location AND schedule freedom.

Transcript

Welcome Freedom Seekers

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, freedom seekers. Welcome back to another episode of the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast series. This is a show for anybody who is done, living by somebody else's rulebook, and ready to start designing a life that actually feels like their own. I'm your host, Sam, and I am so glad that

Spiraling Over Approval

SPEAKER_00 0:23

you're here. Today we're kicking off with something that I am a little embarrassed to admit, which is that I still find myself having thoughts creep in where I really worry what people think about me and whether they approve of my lifestyle and whether they perceive me as succeeding. And I don't know if it's because I've just had a really bad luteal phase this month or what's going on, but I've been spiraling about it more than usual. And I think the thing that embarrasses me the most is this follow-up thought of shouldn't I be over this by now? Shouldn't a decade of doing the work, lifestyle design, intentional living, telling other people how to do this too? I mean, shouldn't that just give me unwavering confidence in my choices and what I deem as a good and successful life? Well, you guessed it. Womp, womp, womp. Turns out that is not enough.

The Awkward What Do You Do

SPEAKER_00 1:18

So let me paint the scene, one that I know you have found yourself in countless times. You're at a social event, you're meeting new people, and you start doing that thing, that kind of gross but very utterly human thing of sizing each other up, right? Figuring out what everybody else does, placing people in your mind for context, and having to answer the awful question, what do you do? I watched as a few people kind of glazed over my answer when I shared what I did with not really much interest. You could just tell there weren't follow-up questions, and we just all quickly moved on to somebody else in the group who we all decided's job was more interesting. I think they were head of product at a tech company or something like that, which, yeah, obviously that's cool. And I wanted to know about that person more too. But it was planting a seed for something that began to grow and build over the next

Midweek Skiing Doubts

SPEAKER_00 2:16

week. A few days later, Jared and I went skiing, and it was a Tuesday afternoon. The ski season just ended here in BC, and we wanted to get a few final days of spring skiing in. And to me, being able to ski midweek when there are no lines and you can just go capture run after run after run and not have the traffic. I mean, I love that flexibility. For me, that feels like success. But something I noticed is that none of my friends that I invited could come along. All of them seemed to have really important things that they had to do that day. They were in meetings, they had work projects that they had to prioritize, things that they were like excited to be doing, things that I'm guessing made them a lot of really great money, work that they were truly needed for. And it made me wonder: shouldn't I be needed for something? Am I not as successful as my friends who have all of these like important things to do? And these important friends of mine, these traditionally successful friends of mine who are spending their Tuesday afternoon closing deals, giving presentations, schmoozing executives. What do they think of me just kind of being a ski bum in the middle of the week? Do they think I'm successful? Do they think I'm like a failure? I I don't know. But what really got me was why do I even care? I've been on this journey for a decade. I've read the books, I've done the inner work, I've built the business, I've designed the life. I have an entire podcast dedicated to questioning conventional success and living on your own terms. And these thoughts, they still creep in and they still sting. And so that's what I wanted to talk about today, not from a place of I have it figured out, because clearly I haven't, but more because I know that if you're living any version of an unconventional life, you know this feeling. And I want you to know you're not alone in it.

Why Success Metrics Stick

SPEAKER_00 4:13

So let's get into why traditional success metrics are so sticky and are so easy for people to cling on to. I think it's important to start with that because ultimately I think that that is why I feel I should be past this the most, is that I've started to define my own metrics for success. But here's what I've come to understand about how we define that. So the traditional success metrics, we're talking about money, power, fame, status. This is what society is built on, and it's not arbitrary, right? These are metrics that are measurable, they are rankable, they give you a very clear answer to the question of how am I doing relative to everybody else? And that is deeply biologically satisfying to the human brain. We are wired to want to know where we stand, we are wired to want to track our progress, to track our achievement. And traditional success, it hands us a very clean way to do that. Your job title, having an investment property, getting a new car, heck, even brand name ski clothing, which I want to touch on in a second. Check, check, check. Okay. These are all signals to the world, whether you want them to be or not, how successful you are.

Status Symbols Ski Jacket

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Now, going back to the ski clothing, okay. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen, you know, I've had an evolution this year. I finally upgraded my jacket, but I have been skiing in Whistler for five years before doing so. When I first moved to BC, my mom had sent me a care package for ski season of her old ski gear, which I thought was pretty cool to rock my mom's slightly retro ski clothing. The thing is, is a lot of my friends would make fun of my jacket, my mom's old jacket. And sure, it maybe was a little bit ugly and didn't fit me in the most flattering way, but it worked perfectly. I was warm, I could move in it, the color even matched my skis. It was a perfectly functional jacket, but it did become an ongoing discussion with some of my friends who could not believe that I would not just upgrade to something more stylish. The funny part is though, is that this year when I finally caved, I got the $600 Arctaric jacket. It was in perfect conscious kitties, lavender purple. I got so many compliments on it all season. It looked amazing in my Instagram posts. I literally froze my ass off all season in that jacket. I had to learn an entire new ski science of layering and was miserable most days. I was missing my mom's old, perfectly fine jacket. But here's the thing is like wearing your mom's old jacket instead of strutting around in something brand new, you're telling the world a story. Even if you don't want to be making a statement, society is built on these status symbols, whether you opt in or not. And I couldn't just be like skiing around or telling people on the chairlift the truth of like, just so you know, like I could afford to get a new jacket, but I'm choosing not to because this one's really warm and you know it's perfectly functional and I don't mind wearing it. And it's kind of like a nod to my mom who taught me how to ski when I was younger. I can afford a new jacket, but like this one works just well. Obviously, I can't just go around telling people about it. So instead I'm podcasting about it. But I had to rock it and I had to opt out of these status symbols, and the world didn't get to see the choice and the reasoning behind it. When it comes to deciding what your own version of success is and opting out of other traditional metrics, building your own freedom lifestyle, right? Building your own metrics, that can be harder to quantify how you're doing relative to everybody else. Not only just like how you think you're doing, but also how society thinks you're doing and how society tries to place you.

Naming The Freedom Tax

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Making a purchase that's, or not making a purchase sometimes that are tied to my personal values instead of clout, like choosing to ski on a Tuesday afternoon instead of going to a meeting that would have made me money. For me, these are decisions that feel like wins that reflect my values. And that is ultimately what I'm optimizing for. But people around me, most likely, that's not what they're doing. And even really good, really smart, amazing people who are genuinely not happy with their own life and their own version of conventional success, they might still look at my life through the only lens that they have. And through that lens, maybe I look like a loser. Maybe I look like I'm not winning at all. And they're not gonna say it to you directly, but you'll feel it sometimes. When this subtle reaction, when you explain what you do or how you spent your summer and what you're working on these days, you know, the follow-up questions that they have that just have like a little bit of judgment underneath it, that's the tax. That is the freedom tax. And it's important that you name it if you want to keep living life on your own terms and actually feel good about

My Specific Insecurities

SPEAKER_00 9:39

that. So let's get specific for me. Okay. The loud thoughts that still creep into my mind that I haven't been able to fully separate and have disappear. I think getting specific is really helpful. For me, I catch myself wondering: do people just see me as this like struggling content creator who can't hold on to a long-term contract, who moved to a small mountain town because she couldn't afford to buy property in the city, who rewears the same outfits over and over again at festivals because she can't afford to keep up with the trends, who flies economy instead of business class. I wonder what people think about those choices. Do they see somebody who like hasn't quite made it because of those decisions and the choices that I make and the way I spend my money or the way I don't spend my money? And when I actually evaluate those choices from my own value system, like rewearing an outfit, I genuinely don't care about rewearing outfits and being photographed in the same outfit at the same festival two years in a row. Honestly, I really believe it's the smarter, more sustainable choice. Living in Squamish instead of buying in the big city has truly been one of the best decisions I've ever made for the quality of my everyday lifestyle. And don't even get me started with flying economy unless you're gonna do it on point. Business class is literally the one of the most like insane ripoffs I've ever encountered. Like, yeah, it's obviously so bouge, and I've really enjoyed the few times I've been able to fly business class, but for like four or five times the ticket price, that's wild. I would much rather go on like six trips a year and fly economy than do one baller trip, the front of the plane, and that be my memory for the year. So I know that. I know what my values are, but the second I step out of my own value system and into somebody else's gaze, even hypothetically, right? Like even just imagining how I might look from the outside, those doubts can creep in and I have to catch it and try to push it away. But I'm still surprised every single time when it happens because I start to spiral a little bit and I start to question myself and like, you know, have a burst of like, oh my God, maybe I should do this or buy this or make this decision differently. And I'm surprised every time that it still has so much power. But the scary thing is, is if it happens to me, somebody who like really thinks deeply about this stuff, okay? I have truly built a meaningful and intentional freedom lifestyle for myself. If that comparison reflex still shows up for me, how is anybody gonna get through this and stick to having a freedom lifestyle and a life that aligns with their own value system? Over time, the thoughts are quieter. Over time, they're faster to pass for sure, but they are still there. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that because especially if you're newer on this journey and you're just waiting for a day that it stops bothering you completely. I don't want to lie to you, it might never go away. But what you can do is change what you do when those thoughts show up. So

Notice Name Choose Practice

SPEAKER_00 13:15

here's the practice the goal is never to never feel the comparison. The goal is to get faster at noticing it, naming it, and then consciously choosing your values anyway. And you have to do that every single time. Okay. The thought comes in, oh my gosh, did they think I'm successful? Do they think I'm a failure right now? Instead of spiraling, you gotta push it away. You see it, oh, there's that thought again. There's that thing that's holding me back, that's been there my entire life, worrying what people think about you and never actually knowing what they do think about you. Oh, here's that thought again. I know what it is. It's conventional success, that metric creeping up, trying to pull me down and live a life that I already know doesn't make me happy. I already tried that, already thought about it, already tried the cake and returned it. I don't know if that metaphor works, but either way, I'm making it sound simple and easy and it's not. This is deep inner work, friends. I am talking about an ongoing commitment to knowing what you value and why, and not in like a rigid, defensive way, in a grounded, clear, this is mine. I choose this type of way. And the question I come back to, I've talked about this many times on the show, is who am I when nobody's watching me? When it's a Monday morning and there's no social event, I'm not posting on Instagram, there's no one around to impress. Because that type of person, who you are, when you're not being evaluated, the types of choices that you make then, that determines whether you're living in alignment. That gives you an idea of what your true values are, because they're gonna be a reflection of how you wanna spend your time and what's valuable and important to you. When I check in with that person, that version of Sam, I mean, she's really happy. She really actually is. I mean, that should be the metric that that matters more than any other metric I could ever choose in this lifetime.

Build Your People

SPEAKER_00 15:27

So that's the mindset practice, but what can you also do practically? Because sometimes mindset and inner work alone is not the whole answer. There are other things you can do to intentionally design your life in a way that makes it easier for you to feel confident in your choices and sustainably move towards a life that reflects your values and is in alignment with who you are. And one of the most underrated things you can do if you're gonna live any type of unconventional life is to build a community around you of people who are measuring things the same way that you are. You need to be around people who get it, who you do not need to explain yourself to, who look at your Tuesday afternoon and think like, yeah, obviously you're going spring skiing. That is the whole point. And that is one thing that I find a lot easier when I'm living in Squamish or when I'm even spending a lot of time in Costa Rica, kind of like my home away from home. These are places that tend to attract a lot of people who have intentionally made similar trade-offs and are optimizing for similar things. Like they have their own version of the freedom lifestyle. It might not look exactly like mine, but they have intentionally chose to base their life somewhere where the traditional success metrics are not as forward and not as in focus than you would probably find in a city. When I'm around those types of people, I feel so much more calibrated. I feel like my choices are so much more obvious. My values feel really solid. And sometimes I take it for granted. I'm just living a life in alignment and confidently designing my day and telling my friends and people around me what I'm doing and usually meeting up in the middle of the week to do the same things. But as soon as I go somewhere to another community that is built on more traditional success metrics, whether it's an industry event, a certain type of social scene or party, a big city lifestyle, I can feel that shift almost immediately. Not that anything is wrong with those environments, but I do notice a big difference in terms of how I feel about myself in those environments, how I hold myself, how confident I am in social settings.

Living Outside The Bubble

SPEAKER_00 17:54

And something that I also need to be really honest about is that finding intentional community is one part of it. But like for me, and I can only speak for myself here, also being able to spend time with people who are not living with the same values and priorities as me, and being able to maintain some of those relationships or being able to be part of those other types of communities, that's always been important to me. It would be a lot easier for me to just cut people and places out of my life entirely and just choose to exclusively be in spaces where I'm more comfortable. And for a lot of people, that completely works. It's such a hack. They never look back, and it's just in harmony for them. For me, I want to live in harmony with various types of people. I think it's important for my growth. I find it interesting. And there's a lot of people I love that do not have the same value system as me. That's just the truth. And it's something that I've accepted and I've realized you don't have to value the same things as me for me to love you. There's some values that I'm like, I'm gonna probably spend my entire life trying to get you to see my perspective and make some different choices because I feel very like passionate about some things. Veganism. But for the most part, I accept you and I deeply want you to accept me. And if you don't, most of the time I'm gonna be okay with it, but every once in a while I'm gonna panic and be like, oh my gosh, they judge me. And so I've gotta find a solution for this to be able to live in places and be with people who do not see the world the same way I do. And that's ultimately my work to do. It would be so much easier to just stay in my bubble. And for you, maybe that's exactly what you need. But maybe you've always been the different one in your group or in your family. And maybe you really like your group and your family. So then what are you gonna do about that? And friend, we can do that together. That is definitely my ongoing

Let Them Final Takeaway

SPEAKER_00 20:17

work. So I want to leave you sitting with that question too, not providing you an answer, but give you a prompt to just provide awareness around that and know that if you are going to be living a life that is alternative to what the masses are doing, this is your part-time job. It really is if you want to sustainably do it. You don't need everybody to see you as successful. You genuinely don't, because most people are gonna measure life with a ruler that has nothing to do with what you're building. And that's okay. As Mel Robin says, let them. But what you do need to do, and the one thing that only actually matters, is to be able to look at your own life clearly and honestly and see it for what it is, not through somebody else's eyes, not through society's metrics, but from your own. And when that doubt creeps in, because it will, even after years of doing the work, notice it, name it, and choose

Do You Think Im Successful

SPEAKER_00 21:13

your value system anyway. So, do you think I'm successful, Sam, the host of the Freedom Lifestyle podcast series? I wish I could say I don't care, but I do and I'm working on it, okay? Do I think I'm successful? Hell yeah. I am literally living my dream life every single day. And that's what I hope for you too, freedom seekers.

Closing And Where To Find Me

SPEAKER_00 21:35

So follow me on Instagram at Sam La Liberty or catch me on a mountain somewhere pretty much every Tuesday afternoon. Until next time, enjoy your freedom.