VIR-III-0022
“I feel like my past makes me a hypocrite for trying to live with integrity now.”
A hypocrite is someone who claims virtue they don't actually practice. What you're describing is different: you're someone who lived one way and is now choosing another. That's not hypocrisy, that's change. Change requires a before. The past doesn't disqualify you from doing right now.
Your Practice
Write this down: "I am not the person I was. I am the person I'm choosing to be today." Keep it somewhere visible. When the thought of hypocrisy shows up, remind yourself, the only way to be disqualified from doing right is to stop doing it. You haven't stopped.
The Architects
“My own uncompromising principle is to endeavour to love truth and God before fame and glory.”
Ada Lovelace, Letter to Charles Babbage, August 14, 1843