For me, the most liberating thing was "not wasting film", I didn't have to worry about taking a bad shot and could take more risks or take pictures of just about anything without worrying about using up a finite amount of rather expensive film. If a picture was bad or shot from the hip and came out as something other then intended, I simply could now delete it and the space could be used by another photo. With film once that negative is exposed, that's it, you now wonder what picture you won't be taking now because you're going to run out of film sooner, so you wouldn't take as many pictures unless you spent a lot of time setting up the shot or posing, you lose a lot of in the moment opportunities.
When I got my first digital camera, I went nuts with it on my trip that I bought it for, looking back at the photos I took years after, it was kind of obnoxious now that I think about it how often I pulled it out. Many times to the point of missing just experiencing the place/situation I was in rather then wanting to get a picture of the experience. Thankfully, the novelty wore off, but now I have to remind myself, "Hey, you have a camera, you should get a picture of this." or find myself realizing it a little too late.