Gather round, boys, girls, and inbetweeners. I'm here to spill the secrets of my success.

Last year I was in a bad place. My self-confidence was down and I was the most insecure I've ever been in my life. Also painfully shy, I couldn't talk to people without feeling incredibly awkward and being around others for more than an hour completely drained me emotionally. I hated it. HATED it. College is supposed to be the best four years of your life, right? Or at least a time when you made lasting friendships and set the track for your future. How was I going to do that if I hid in my room all of the time?

Well, the brain is a powerful thing, my friends. So I decided to retrain mine until it did what I wanted it to again.

Yes, that's right. I retrained my brain. I started faking my self-confidence and self-love until it became genuine. It was like my happiness was a muscle that I just needed to work out until I got it strong enough to function again, and after a couple of months, it did just that.

So what did I do? Well, for one thing, I started giving myself compliments all of the time. I pretty much acted like a self-obsessed jerk to myself all the time. You know that person who thinks they are hot stuff? Probably the same person who took gym class too seriously and bluntly asks for nudes on Tinder? If you could transcript my inner mantra, that's probably what it would have sounded like. It was mostly a lot of, "You can do it" and "Wow I'm sexy" and "Bow down, peasants," which sounds awful, I know, but it worked!

I also retrained myself physically. I found that I was usually in a hunched over position, trying to make myself as small as possible in the hopes that no one would see me. To counter this, I started walking with my shoulders back and my head held high, trying to incorporate some swagger into my gait. This physical connection affected my brain as well, convincing myself that I was more confident that I actually was.

Have you ever heard that quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that goes, "Do one thing every day that scares you?" Well, that's pretty easy to do when everything scares you. If something scared me, I recognized that I was afraid and forced myself to do it anyway. In time, I became the master of my fear and learned to not let it control me. I think it also helped that I got sorted into Gryffindor on Pottermore. I would tell myself "well you're a Gryffindor so you gotta have some bravery in there somewhere, Hon." It was as if the more I believed that I was brave, the braver I became.

I'm still not perfect. Sometimes the demons win, but I'm putting up much more of a fight that I used to. They don't consume me anymore, and I'm happier than I've been in a long, long time.

So believe in yourself. At the end of the day, the only person guaranteed to love you is yourself.