The development stages of learning chess?....to become a GM!

In order to become close to the heights of a GM what are kind of stages in your development you've gone through to get there?....and your tips to get through them and onto the next stage, whatever that may be?

I've recently just broken out of the 'Neglecting to protect your king' and the "Oh b#@*~ks, I've just gone a pawn down, it's all over.  I'll either go too erratic (might get lucky) or hope they make a mistake (unlikely)..... can't wait until this game is over!"

I was in it for a good 4 stubborn months and it took me 20 games, a tournament and getting back to the fun of experimentation to overcome it!

Others stages I'm assuming that are out there are:-

1. I've got no chance, I'm playing as black, a draw is the best I'm gonna get.
2. Oh no, not that opening again.
3. I can't stop making stupid basic mistakes.
4. I always find myself reacting to their play rather than dictating the game.
5. I always get to a point where I run out of ideas.
6. Unless I read x,y&z books I'm not gonna get there!

Etc... I'm sure there are a lot more on the road to becoming a GM....

You need a personal tutor.  All math wizards start somewhere, like mastering the arithmetic, then algebra, then calculus, etc.  It is the same in chess.  Like you, my objective is to become a GM and I've been training very hard for the past three months.  I'm trying to put everything I've learned so far here in chess.com recently.  I found that I still have some weaknesses, I took note of them in blogs so that they won't happen again in my future games.