I no longer think of myself as “a good person” or “a bad person”, which may have something to do with my leaning towards moral anti-realism. I recognize that I did bad things in the past and even now, but refuse to label myself “morally bad” because of them; similarly, I refuse to label myself “morally good” because of my good deeds.
Despite this, sometimes I still feel like I’m a bad person. When this happens, I tell myself: “I may have been a bad person, so what? Nobody should stop me from doing good, even if I’m the worst person in the world. So accept that you have been bad, and move on to do good stuff.” (note that the “so what” here doesn’t mean I’m okay with being bad; just that being bad has no implication on what I should do from now on)
It doesn’t mean it’s okay to do bad things. I ask myself to do good things and not to do bad things, not because this makes me a better person, but because the things themselves are good or bad.
The past doesn’t matter (except in teaching you lessons), because it is already set in stone. The past is a constant term in your (metaphorical) objective function; go optimize for the rest (i.e. the present and the future).
My personal approach:
I no longer think of myself as “a good person” or “a bad person”, which may have something to do with my leaning towards moral anti-realism. I recognize that I did bad things in the past and even now, but refuse to label myself “morally bad” because of them; similarly, I refuse to label myself “morally good” because of my good deeds.
Despite this, sometimes I still feel like I’m a bad person. When this happens, I tell myself: “I may have been a bad person, so what? Nobody should stop me from doing good, even if I’m the worst person in the world. So accept that you have been bad, and move on to do good stuff.” (note that the “so what” here doesn’t mean I’m okay with being bad; just that being bad has no implication on what I should do from now on)
It doesn’t mean it’s okay to do bad things. I ask myself to do good things and not to do bad things, not because this makes me a better person, but because the things themselves are good or bad.
The past doesn’t matter (except in teaching you lessons), because it is already set in stone. The past is a constant term in your (metaphorical) objective function; go optimize for the rest (i.e. the present and the future).