Do you ever feel like ‘staying on track’ just comes naturally for others, but not you? It turns out their self-control may not be the superpower you might view it as.
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Most people treat self-control like a muscle, as if it’s something to be flexed, strained and eventually exhausted. When the diet slips, the screen time spirals, or the inbox is bursting at the seams, the instinct is to blame willpower. If only you had more of it, things would be different. But what if the problem isn’t your willpower at all? What if certain people aren’t working harder at self-control? What if they’ve simply built a personality that makes discipline feel almost automatic?
That’s precisely what the research suggests. A 2024 study published in PLOS One, drawing on data from 480 military cadets tracked across two time points, found that personality traits are among the most reliable predictors of self-control. In fact, they were more reliable, in many cases, than conscious effort or motivation alone. Conscientiousness and extraversion were found to enhance self-control, while neuroticism was shown to hamper it.
And when you zoom out across the broader literature, two traits in particular stand out. Not because they make people try harder, but because they change the very experience of trying.
Conscientiousness is a fundamental personality trait that reflects the tendency to be responsible, organized, hard-working and goal-directed. A conscientious person is good at self-regulation and impulse control. This trait influences whether you set and keep long-range goals, deliberate over choices, behave cautiously or impulsively, and take obligations to others seriously.
What’s often misunderstood about conscientious people, though, is that their self-control isn’t about pushing through. For instance, they won’t simply ignore an unhealthy snack craving when they know there’s a vending machine nearby. To avoid the temptation, they come prepared with a healthy snack instead.
Conscientious people are careful, disciplined, responsible and thorough, and they tend to plan and think things through before acting. Their discipline is proactive rather than reactive. They design their environments and routines so that temptation appears less often, and the moments requiring genuine willpower are far fewer.
The research backs this up at scale. A meta-analysis of 194 studies found that higher levels of conscientiousness were almost universally associated with more optimal health behaviors, including increased physical activity and better dietary choices. Instead of gritting their teeth through salads, conscientious people structured their lives in ways that made healthy choices the path of least resistance.
Conscientious people tend to keep to-do lists, are usually prepared, attend to tasks without delay and prefer an orderly routine. They are less likely to engage in risky behaviors like smoking and heavy drinking, and they engage in self-care through exercise, proper sleep and a healthy diet. These behaviors compound over time, creating a kind of self-control that feels less like sacrifice and more like identity.
However, an important caveat to note is that people at the higher end of the conscientious scale may be at risk of perfectionism and workaholism, and may fare poorly under conditions of high stress. The same orderliness that makes self-discipline easier can become rigidity under pressure. This means that the goal shouldn’t be maximum conscientiousness, but rather cultivating enough of it to make good habits stickier.
If conscientiousness is the offensive strategy of building systems that reduce the need for willpower, then self-compassion is the defensive one. And it may be the more surprising entry on this list.
Most people assume that self-compassion and self-control are opposites. They assume that going easy on yourself is the enemy of discipline. Yet the research suggests otherwise, and quite emphatically.
Self-compassion refers to being supportive toward oneself when experiencing suffering or pain, whether caused by personal mistakes and inadequacies or external life challenges. Psychologist Kristin Neff of the University of Texas at Austin, whose research on self-compassion spans decades, frames it as comprising three core elements:
Here’s why it matters for self-control specifically. In an 2020 study published in Mindfulness that tracked 1,725 real-world self-control episodes, researchers found that self-compassionate people were better at protecting their sense of self-efficacy when dealing with difficult self-control demands. After a setback, they bounced back into trying, rather than spiraling into shame and abandoning the effort entirely.
This speaks to one of the most underappreciated dynamics in self-control: it isn’t just about resisting temptation in the moment. It’s about what happens after you don’t. The person who eats the cake, then catastrophizes, “I have no discipline, I’ll never change,” is far less likely to make a healthy choice at the next meal than the person who acknowledges the slip, treats it with some basic human understanding, and moves on.
According to 2025 research from Stress & Health, higher self-compassion is associated with fewer psychological symptoms through its reduction of repetitive negative thinking, rumination, and worry. Notably, these are exactly the mental patterns that cause a single bad day to unravel a week of progress.
Neff’s abovementioned work has also attempted to dispel common myths about self-compassion — including the ideas that it’s weak, selfish, self-indulgent or undermines motivation. In controlled studies, self-compassionate people don’t slack off more after failure; they try again sooner. The inner critic, it turns out, isn’t motivating anyone. It’s just adding noise.
Conscientiousness and self-compassion cover different failure points in the self-control process. Conscientiousness reduces how often you face the moment of temptation. Self-compassion determines what you do when you face it anyway and lose. One plays offense; the other plays defense. Together, they produce something that neither can deliver alone: a sustainable relationship with discipline.
The encouraging news is that neither trait is fixed. A 2025 study from the European Journal of Personality shows that being in a stable job or a long-term romantic relationship can result in someone naturally becoming more conscientious over time, with minimal proactive effort.
In other words, environment can shape personality just as personality shapes behavior. And self-compassion, as Neff’s intervention research has consistently shown, can be deliberately cultivated through practice. Simply pausing after a setback to ask, “What would I say to a close friend in this situation?” is a meaningful starting point.
Self-control, it turns out, isn’t a war won through sheer force. It’s a relationship you build with your habits, and with yourself.
We all want to have more self-control, but do we have the patience for it? Take the science-inspired Patience Questionnaire to know if your personality is conducive to willpower.
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