Pay attention to your stack a little earlier. When you start to get low (under 20 big blinds or an M of 10), you should be looking for hands to push. If you are just slightly above those amounts, you need to be more selective and avoid limping or calling light in order to preserve your stack.

Also, if you get off to good starts and then wind up short stacked, you need to look at how you are playing with a big stack. You probably have some sort of a leak there. My guess is that you either you get too tight to "protect" your big stack and wind up blinding off a lot of chips, or more likely you get too loose and start gambling too much instead of picking spots to play aggressively.

Dave

Yea it sounds like you need to be more aggressive leading up to the bubble so you can build your stack leading up to it and during. From what it seems, you are probably relying too much on your cards and not enough on situations to take advantage of others that are trying to squeeze into the money.

I agree with GameChanger. This is the most common complaint I hear from beginning and intermediate tournament players. You should work on increasing your levels of aggression to take advantage of those that are trying to coast into the money by tightening up too much. For example, if you raise with any 2 cards in late position, and the big blind has a mediocre hand but you're only a few spots out of the money, he's probably not going to get involved if he's trying to guarantee himself a payout. That's an example of an ideal spot for where you should pick on the short stacks and others that are trying to coast into the money.