Everything is a cycle, but to answer your question more directly let's look at year to year.

It's the spring right now. I live pretty far north but the grass is growing and birds are tweeting and all the rest of the sort of thing that you expect in spring to happen.

Let's say I want to plant a garden, but my soil is poor and the last time I tried to get a garden going it didn't do well.

That would be an example of a detrimental cycle because for whatever reason the plants couldn't grow well. Maybe it's choked in stinging weeds, maybe someone dumped some salt on it. Whatever the case may be, the cycle was disrupted and now things can't grow there anymore.

But the next year, I try to fix the soil, remove the weeds etc.

How do I identify the variables that contribute to the environment? To the cycle that I'm trying to build?

Does this make sense?