the.com/virtuous cycle

means A self-reinforcing sequence in which one favorable event or decision triggers another, making each subsequent round of success easier to achieve than the last.

from Built from 'virtuous' (behaving well, from Latin virtus, meaning strength or moral worth) plus 'cycle' (a recurring loop, from Greek kyklos, a wheel or circle). The phrase emerged as the deliberate positive counterpart to 'vicious cycle' — economists and social scientists in the 20th century needed a term for loops that spiral upward rather than downward, so they simply flipped the moral charge of the adjective while keeping the same circular machinery.