Positioning and Pawns

Hey everyone.

I'm a new player and i noticed that the kind of chess i play is mostly 'blunder-chess'. In a game against an equal rated opponent we attack each others obvious weaknesses defend our attacked pieces and when everything seems kinda solid we just push pawns and hope that we create an exploitable weakness. 

Firstly I learned to protect my hanging pieces but now that I feel mostly comfortable at that so I'd like to take it a step further by not only protecting my pieces but moreover squares to prevent something like an infiltrating knight an annoying bishop move or an pawn push. I'd like to change my playing style from being reactive to being positionally sound and preventing the opponents moves. 

One thing I also noticed by reviewing my games is that I don't like to move pawns and only try to attack using pieces to not disrupt my pawn chain. I guess I do so because I don't understand how to use pawns. For me they feel like a tool to protect my king that mostly becomes useful in the endgame. I'd like to learn how to use them to control important squares and how to use my pieces to cover the holes in my position created by my pawn position. I'd also like to learn how to use pawns to create a weakness and how to generally exploit weaknesses in my opponents pawn structure, because right now when I play the middlegame I feel lost.

I want to thank everyone who took his time reading this and would appreciate anyone with similiar experiences in his past to write how he dealt with them. I'd also appreciate book titles or other ideas on how to work on the problems I pointed out. Have a nice day

We were all beginners at some point, even Grand Masters (GMs). GM Yasser Seirawan has several great books for beginner and intermediate players. Here a few of these:

Play Winning Chess

Winning Chess Openings

Winning Chess Tactics

Winning Chess Ending

All are written in a very easy to understand way, with many great examples and puzzles to test your knowledge. They helped me re-learn the game and improve. Good luck!

Thank you for your answer. For the beginning I will try looking at the first book.

Edit: I just skimmed through the first book and honestly it felt a bit too basic. It feels like a good book to learn the game and the rules but there is few information beyond that point. But Winning Chess Strategies by Yasser looks like it has information on what I am looking for so thank you for your help