Whatever method you use going forward, make sure you have some way of visually tracking your progress. From my end, best advice I can give you is,
1) Watch a lot of hands on YouTube and some other direct sources. You'll be surprised how much you'll find yourself analyzing why they did what they did at different stages in the hand.
2) Play as often as you can without it having an effect on your lifestyle and most importantly, your wallet. Mix it up as well between home games and casinos. I say that for a couple reasons. I've seen guys play extremely well at home games and get crushed almost all the time in a casino. They tend to be softer when facing random people and have a higher tendency of laying down hands that have great showdown value when they shouldn't be. Something about the casino/cardroom scene completely changes the way they play. The other reason is because of a simple rule that applies to getting better at anything; you're not going to get better until you fall on your face, fail multiple times, AKA get slapped around. Creates a drive to become better as well as resilience while playing the game. One day you'll find yourself folding to a river bet while holding mid pair, and suddenly you'll have analyzed that your hand may in fact be the best hand in that specific situation and call your opponent off.
3) Try not to stick to a specific strategy from any source, be it a book or YouTube tutorials. I find that once you narrow your playing down to a few things you just read about, it tends to get in the way of properly assessing everything else and in turn you've put on blinders to some things that you should be aware of while playing a hand.
4) Once you've seen your hand prior to the flop, try to look at it as little as you can. Why? You already know what hole cards you have and the more you look at them or think about them, the more focused you will be on how it relates to the board. What you hit, what you're chasing, the chances of you hitting your draw, etc... You're better off giving more thought into trying to figure out what your opponent might have. It doesn't have to be precise, but try to gauge what your opponent might be holding by how much he's betting and/or calling, betting patterns, how loose or tight the player is, etc... You'll be surprised what you can learn about players by being really attentive in hands you're not involved in. A lot of players like to boast about how unpredictable they are, or how they don't have tells when they don't realize that it doesn't have to be body language or a specific tick. Sometimes they give it away simply with the amount they bet, especially how to correlates with the pot and how much they've invested already.
5) Assuming the stakes you're playing aren't massive, like
@RiverKingCali said, it's totally ok to get caught in a bluff. Too many times I see players building up a pot then check it down on the river only to get beat by the lowest pair or a high card that isn't even 10 or above. Use both the board and position to your advantage. Position is VERY crucial to the game and outsmarting your opponents. Use it. Say you're holding
, and the flop comes
. Let's assume the turn and the river are
and
. You've more than likely bet this hand until the river in the hopes that you hit your open-ended straight. Doesn't really matter that you've missed your straight at this point. What matters now are the two cards your opponent has across from you. We'll assume that your opponent is first to act and checks to you on the river. You then have to assemble all the information you've collected about that hand to help you determine what you're up against. Don't let the Q on the board scare you into checking back. Your opponent might have been looking to hit a flush but another spade never came. If you sense weakness and you've somehow surmised that your opponent didn't get what he wanted, would make sense to make a bet that isn't necessarily easy for your opponent to call nor would it set off alarms of you trying to steal the pot. If you give your opponent incredible pot odds, like betting $20 into a $120 pot, there's a good chance he might call you off with a mediocre pair. However for the sake of this example, you look down at your stack and gauge how much you're willing to lose, key words, willing to lose. You have about $300 in your stack and you decide to fire off a bet of $65, just slightly above half and not great pot odds for your opponent. Just so its a happy ending example, your opponent flips over one card exposing his
says "nice A or Q you got there, my seven no good." You've just duped your opponent into forfeiting a $185 pot while representing one of the cards on the board and portraying strength by use of your position and your own analysis of what he might have. At this point, you're asking me, "ya this sounds awesome but what if he called that bet?" My best answer to that is, that's poker and it's going to happen. You're going to get caught bluffing from time to time but imagine if you had just checked back to your opponent who had already made his mind on being beat. He's probably going to use that information against you in later hands and try to bully you out of some pots. In summary, you can't be afraid to lose bets that you make. It hinders you from trying to outplay your opponent, representing what's on the board, and other things that help give you an advantage.
Have fun. You're not going to get better if you're not having fun along the way. You're going to win hands and lose hands but if you're not enjoying the process and the game, slim chance you'll accomplish any of the above.
Hope the stuff I mentioned helps a bit. Go get 'em!