Trade-offs

People who take chances to achieve something they want are always vilified by people who don't have the strength to do so themselves. It isn't something conscious, it is just a gut reaction to something that is different than what they are used to. The thing about this is that alternative lifestyles make people living "conventional" lives (most often, from your own point of view, whatever you yourself do is conventional) jealous.

This jealousy seems to come about through the misconception that these people aren't giving up anything to live the way they do. But there are trade-offs to everything, even if they aren't readily apparent. It is the classic perception bias where you don't ascribe as much value to what you already have as you do to what you could have. People don't think that giving up a 9 to 5 job is something worth value, and personally, I think they're right, but that kind of job gives other fringe benefits that are not to be treated lightly. Whereas, the person who does not have that stability has many more freedoms. It is all in what you value more and what you are willing to sacrifice. The harder part is trying to see what other people are sacrificing to live the way they want to.