Virtuous and Vicious Cycles

In this article I will be talking about what virtuous and vicious cycles are, why it is important to recognize these cycles, how to get you and other people out of a vicious cycle and into a virtuous one, and if being in virtuous cycles is something you can practice and get better at.

Virtuous cycles are basically a chain reaction, where one positive thing leads to the next, and to the next, and so on. For example, if someone says something they learned something about writing, someone else will add to that comment, and more and more people make connections between the things they’re hearing and what they already know, and the entire conversation ends up being a cycle of knowledge and information that might help those people in the future. Doing this also helps build relationships between the people in our example, and can sometimes make a business successful for years. Vicious cycles are the negative version of that, where someone complains or otherwise talks negatively about something, and that triggers another complaint from another person, and so on.

Both these cycles lead to powerful but opposite results. Just as a virtuous cycle can lead to the success of a company, vicious cycles can lead to the downfall of a company. That is why paying attention to these cycles is important, not just to try to keep yourself on a virtuous cycle, but to also avoid vicious cycles and be aware of their danger. Another important thing to recognize is that you can turn a vicious cycle into a virtuous one by mentioning something positive that might be connected to a complaint from earlier, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. For example, I could change the cycle by saying, “I haven’t been making much progress on my writing lately, but my dad has been giving me excellent suggestions lately about it”. This might trigger other, positive responses from other people, and change a former vicious cycle into a virtuous one. This wouldn’t work in all cases, and it might even make the vicious cycle worse if someone made a remark on the negative comment instead of the positive comment. But it is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get out of a vicious cycle.

You might be thinking, “Is being in a virtuous cycle something you can practice and get better at?”. The answer is yes! Usually, it will take a lot of effort, and plenty of practice (which can be hard, since it means you’ll constantly have to make virtuous cycles, at the beginning without a lot of experience), but, yes, you can get better at it!

But the cycles don’t have to include other people. It can be just you! For example, if you had a negative thought about math, there would be negative emotions about math, and then negative outcomes from math, which causes more negative thoughts about it, and the cycle continues. Same for virtuous cycles, except it has positive thoughts, positive emotions, and positive outcomes.

I hope this article was helpful in understanding what the cycles are, how to keep an eye out for vicious cycles and avoid them, and how to get yourself out of a vicious cycle and into a virtuous one.

Resources

What is Virtuous Circle | Explained in 2 min

My Mom 😄