by Steve496
Past a certain point in one's TM development, an awful lot of improvement needs to come from within. There simply is no set of rubrics and guidelines that you can follow to be a 1400 player - at some point, you need to develop your own understanding of the game to the point where you can assess the tradeoffs of each new situation and come up with a reasonable approach.This is not to say that there isn't value in reading strategy posts and getting your games reviewed by better players and so forth - there absolutely is - but such discussions tend to be more valuable if you focus on the "why" rather than the "what". That is: instead of trying to identify specific patterns to follow, try to understand the thought process that led to those decisions and use the understanding gained to help refine your own sense of what to do.
But what also helps a lot is thinking about the games you play, or games you watch others play, and think about/try to understand what's happening. Look at games you lost, and try to figure out what went wrong. Look at games you won, and think about what decisions your opponents could have made to stop you. Look at your opponent's moves - or at moves of top players in top games - and find moves that are different than the moves you would have made in their position. Do you understand why they made the decision they did? Did it work? Why or why not?