How do you go from "careful" to social if you live in a small village? (person, introverted)

[*Laurelindo*]

I used to be very social and popular all throughout elementary school and a couple years after that, but then something happened, not sure what exactly, that made me become more and more introverted and I didn't really socialize as much with people as I would want to.
Sure, I still have that "popular" role among my former classmates from my early teens, I noticed this during a reunion party last year, but in general I feel that I have developed some kind of very stiff and shallow personality among lots of other people.
Sure, in theory I could of course "just start acting differently", but in reality it isn't really that easy, because once you feel that people have got used to you acting a certain way you feel like and as a result you are sort of "shoved back" into that role - and I live in a really small village out in the middle of nowhere, so people are more or less familiar with a lot of people in one way or another over here, so this makes it that much harder in my case.
It really seems very hard to change myself from the way I am now into the way I used to be, yet I definitely want to do it because I almost feel suffocated from being like this, like I show too little of my positive sides that apparently lots of people really liked back then.
I feel that I have my old interesting and charming personality somewhere inside me, but it's very tricky to let it out.

Maybe the best solution is to move somewhere else for a couple years and then move back here again once I have developed the way I want?
I don't know, but I have considered that, because I'm not sure it's worth trying to change myself from scratch in my situation.