Trading my own account I had every bad habit you can think of. Jumping in early because a move looked too good to miss. Moving my stop loss further away just to avoid taking the loss, telling myself it would come back. Sizing up way too big on trades I felt "certain" about.
Nobody was stopping me so I just kept doing it. And I kept paying for it too.
When I started trading with a prop firm I was honestly annoyed by the rules at first. Drawdown limits, consistency requirements, all of it felt restrictive. But those rules basically forced me to stop doing the things that were quietly wrecking my account.
You can't move your stop loss when there's a hard drawdown limit sitting there. You can't size up recklessly when you know one bad day can end the account. The rules create a structure that your own willpower sometimes just can't.
Are all the rules necessary? Probably not every single one. There are a few I still scratch my head at. But overall I can't sit here and say prop firm rules are bad when they fixed habits I couldn't fix myself after months of trying.
Sometimes the restriction is the point.