OK two points that spring to mind. If you are putting your chips in ahead, and people are playing badly and calling and then outdrawing you - that"s a good thing. In a cash game you "always" win when you put your money in ahead - irrespective of the result. You want to play with muppets.
Second point, is that if someone calls your 4xBB raise with 74o and cracks your aces, is it a bad call by them pre-flop? They have risked 4BBs to potentially win 100BB+. I think you need to adjust your perspective on what a good hand is, and realise that a good pre-flop hand might be a very poor one once the flop has come down. More important than hand selection (IMO) is stack sizes and position. These are often far more important as to how a hand plays than the two hole cards.
All that said, for me table selection is the single most important thing in poker. Either in selecting the tournament to play (and what level of buy-in suits you), or choosing the cash game to pull up a seat at. Get that right, and you"re already half way there.
