What I've learned trying to do this:

* Thinking and argumentation are not closed on propositional- or predicate-logic. They are closed on natural language. So confusing good arguments with their logical form will filter away a lot of philosophy that seems logically wild while still containing insightful content. Likewise presuming that no purely rhetorical devices can be employed to make a truthful point will restrict your ability to engage with texts.

Nietszche comes to mind as a case where a philosopher was highly influential, but did not use strictly logic to make points. Yet the contents of his ideas are insightful if not sound.

* Identifying the relative strength of arguments is a taste that one picks up by reading, closely and attentively, prior arguments widely considered to be good or insightful; particularly the primary sources, for they are direct examples of how philosophy is done. You'll soon pick up that nuances of language, and opening up what actually counts as evidence for an argument, are what matter in assessing an argument's points.

* It is easy to fool yourself into not holding your understanding up to a high standard. Philosophy is an ur-discipline, it ponders ideas which lack prior codification, and does so with a strong commitment to both veracity and self-honesty. This lack of codification means that philosophers struggle with the meaning and significance of terms in a way which must be holistic and involved, since original philosophical ideas by definition lack prior context. Particularly if you're aiming for a "personal philosophy", you will be put in a position where you will create your own context for certain ideas, and, for good or bad, you will only have your own reference points to characterize their truth, requiring care.

* The three banes of those sympathetic to the Enlightenment tradition (and its spinoffs), are: Pancriticalism, Postmodernism and Pragmatism. Know these three positions. They are the among the primary problems modern analytic philosophy struggles with, as they on the surface appear to eliminate the possibility of being objective and doing philosophy at all. This quite frankly isn't true, but they make intellectual honesty in the analytic tradition that much harder. Macintyre is the go-to for how one may claw one's way out of these three problems, but they are worth struggling with on your own.

* Over the last year or so I've had the "luck" of engaging with people highly critical of my thinking and ideas. It was to the point where the discussions were frankly impolite and belligerent. But they were arguments that I was losing because their criticisms did not seem prima facie wrong, or because my own counter-arguments were obviously weak. So I took it as a trial by fire to learn how to properly argue (and I did get better and it did help). You might benefit from doing the same, and if you ever get in the shit arguing with people I would stick with them in case you still have something to learn.

* In the long-run I've begun to care a lot less about philosophy because I've begun to understand its costs. Philosophy is an easy thing to do poorly; worse, when you do it poorly it's basically indistinguishable from being a pseudointellectual, a clever silly, or an idiot. Think about what "having a personal philosophy" actually means to you. Think about what it takes, what the work really is, to become an informed and thoughtful individual. And then if you must, do that work.