Tactic: Steam play deterrent

I used to steam call way more than I should. For example, I hit top set on a K72 flop with two clubs. I pot it and get one caller. Turn is a 5 of diamonds. I'm still clear so I pot it again and villain calls again. River is the ten of clubs completing the possible flush. So I make a half pot sized bet in case he wasn't on a flush draw. Villain raises and then I dump in the remaining portion of my stack even though I'm way more sure that I'm beat than the pot odds I'm getting. Why call? Mostly just to be a donk and "punish" him for paying way too bad of a price to draw out by throwing chips at him. Whatever the suckout, unless I was too deep stacked I'd throw chips away. Paired board? My nut flush is still probably good, right? Nope. Four liner to a straight? But I had top set and the nut flush draw. I should have won that hand and you were playing crap that backed into the winning straight so I'll going to pummel you with my stack after you draw out. Just makes no sense. I know it at the time but for some reason the brain doesn't fully stop the hand from clicking the call button. True you do catch a bluff every so often but not nearly enough to make it an EV+ move. Terrible play.

After dumping enough money away on steam calls I started to do the following in order to help prevent steam calls or ill advised hero calls: I ask myself "how many better hands are there than the hand I have?" And I force myself to deal with real numbers. For example, my broadway straight is the nuts until the board pairs on the river and villain is now leading in to me. Instead of inventing hands that I'm beating like "he could be a donk who thinks trips are good here" I have to start listing all the hands that are beating me. Set of X, set of Y, set of Z, XY, XZ, etc. That helps me put in perspective just how far down the list my hand ends up being and makes it easier to fold. If I do end up making a bad call then after the hand I make myself go through the exercise again to reinforce the fact that this is a game of the nuts and to stop bleeding off chips in those situations. Now there are times where you just have coolers and top boat loses to quads. But the exercise works there too by telling me that that was a rare occurrence and that there was literally only one hand that I was losing to and many that I was beating. Performing the step of placing my hand in the list hands possible acts as a mechanical safety to prevent me from steaming off chips. Basically, before I push the button I need to remove the tag that says "You realize that any combination of an ace and K, Q, J, or T makes a straight here don't you? Do you really think your set is good here?" That extra step has helped me save a bunch of chips and has really helped to put my mind at ease when I fold the former nuts.