My mom likes to tell me a story about the time in my life when I was at my most outgoing. I was three years old and she was dropping my older brother and I off at our respective camps. As she tried to push my brother into the gym so that he could join his basketball camp, I realized that I would be late for my gymnastic camp.

Being the independent toddler that I was, I walked out of the gym, down the hall, and directly into the gymnastics room. I then proceeded to introduce myself and sat down. It was also around this time when I recorded videos of myself singing and dancing to show to my parents' friends and started conversations with strangers while waiting in line. However, this vivaciousness did not last. Around the time when I got braces and cut my wildly curly hair into a triangular bob, I began to shut myself into a box that I was comfortable in. Throughout much of elementary, middle school, and high school, I was only friends with three groups of people. I'm not going to say that I was antisocial. I could hold conversations with new people in class or strangers who approached me, but I would not seek out conversation. As I got older, this shyness became a greater and greater impediment. I would turn down invitations to hang out with people or walk away from conversations if I felt uncomfortable. I soon realized that I was too comfortable and that I was missing out on a lot of stuff.

By the time when I was about to begin my senior year of high school, I realized that something needed to change. I gave myself a goal. By the end of my senior year, I would not allow second thoughts, embarrassment, or shyness stop me from doing what I wanted to do. This is what I call letting go. Now, at the finish line, I decided that I would share a few of the things that I learned along the way.

1. You do you and let others do them.

If you want to dance and sing to music playing in the mall, dance and sing! If you feel like taking a questionable fashion risk, take that questionable fashion risk! If there is a cute boy or girl who you have been wanting to talk to, talk to him or her! Everyone is so caught up in what they're doing, they'll not think twice about what you're doing. Think back to a time when you saw someone doing something that you would be embarrassed to do. Did you think poorly of them or did you mentally encourage them? With that being said, we don't live in a perfect world. You will get some weird looks and some stifled laughs, but no one will care what you're doing. If they do, that's their problem.

2. Start saying yes.

When you say yes, you do more. When you say no, you do less. If you say no every time when you are invited to do something, people will stop inviting you to do things. The opposite is true as well. When you say yes whenever someone invites you to do things, you will be invited out again. Sometimes, you may feel like staying in and watching "Gilmore Girls," or "Friends," or "Parks and Rec" and that's fine, but once every three Netflix nights, say yes to something. Saying yes means more movie nights with friends, nights out dancing, and more concerts. Saying no means that you finish every episode of "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" in a week. It's your choice, but I urge you to say yes.

3. Talk to anyone, at any time, anywhere.

This is an overstatement. You should not talk to the person in the stall next to you in the bathroom at a restaurant or the man screaming in the street who is clearly high on some hard drugs, but try to talk to more people in general. This could be as simple as asking a stranger on the chairlift next to you how their day is going or introducing yourself to the new kid in your class. Talking to new people means that you know more people, who will then ask you to do more things. You never know if you could be meeting your future best friend or a future enemy.

4. Don't be afraid to be embarrassed.

On this crazy road to letting go, you will be embarrassed. I'm not going to hide that. However, being embarrassed does not have to be bad. Being embarrassed could mean that you were just laughed at because you started dancing with your friends when no music was playing. Let me ask you something. Did have fun when you were dancing? I would guess that you did. Embarrassment just means that you made a new memory or had more fun than the person next to you. This year, I was one of two people who wore their Halloween costumes to school all day. I was Claire from the "Breakfast Club," so I just looked like I was wearing some bizarre outfit. I got look after look and was asked numerous times why I had decided to dress like that. It was quite embarrassing, but, in the end, I got this killer picture out of the experience.

5. Finally, and most importantly, you will never fully let go.

There will always be a voice in the back of your head telling you that you look like an idiot, a friend telling you to stop dancing, or a new show that has been added to Netflix that you really want to watch. There will be times when you are too tired to go out or when you assume that you will feel uncomfortable, so you say no. There will be people who you won't want to talk to or times when you feel trapped in a conversation and don't know what to say next. Do not worry. I still avoid sales people in stores because I don't want to say that I don't like the things that they pick out. There are nights when I sit in my room and watch four episodes of a show that I've already seen from start to finish 10 times. There are so many times when I have said no. However, through this process, I have learned to let go. I am now described as an introverted extrovert, an ambivert, or, rarely, as outgoing. I dance how and when I want to dance and I sing as loudly as I want to sing.

I hope that you learn to let go and allow yourself the freedom to have fun.