Quick answer
Right living clears the road ahead. Wrong living becomes the thing you trip over, and the verse is careful about whose foot is involved.
Read both lines
The NKJV footnotes the first verb as make smooth or straight, and the picture is roadwork: character does something to the terrain a person has to cross. The second line is where the verse earns its place, because of the possessive. The wicked falls by his own wickedness. Nobody pushes him. This is the book's steady account of how consequence operates, growing out of the conduct itself under God's government rather than being handed down as a sentence, and it is the same thing the next chapter will say and the same thing 5:22 said about a man held by the cords of his own sin.
Related: Proverbs 5:22 · Proverbs 11:3 · Proverbs 26:27
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.