The Truth About Extraction

Episode One

Runtime: 23 minutes

You’ve probably asked yourself at some point: is this really it? Is this all life is?

When you do, you’re pulling back the covers on something profound. The rewards you’re getting from your life aren’t enough.

Without fully realizing it, you agreed step by step to a life that takes more than it gives. You’ve been living according to that agreement for a long time.

The systems in your life, your job, your household, wherever you hold responsibility, are designed to extract. They offer you engagement, identity, a role to play. They also take more than they return and they don’t account for one another. You absorb the aggregate.

Extraction isn’t constant and it isn’t uniform. The same role can build you or drain you depending on the circumstances. A complex project with an inspired team may not be extractive at all. Redoing performance evaluations by end of day is. You hold the same role. But the cost to you is different.

What builds over time is the effect of compromises. Each one is reasonable. Each one is made with love or urgency. You’re making them to get through the phase you’re in. But across years, these incremental adjustments stop being temporary. They build on each other, becoming how your life is designed. At some point you’re no longer compromising with your life. You’ve compromised yourself out of it.

The Vitality Gap is the deficit between what gets extracted from you and what your life gives back. When you let extraction pile up, especially across the systems in your life, The Vitality Gap widens.

Your vitality comes from your vitality reserves. They are unique to you and you know them like your name. They identify how you’re happiest, most fulfilled. What you need to experience the greatest sense of calm and personal agency. How you find inspiration. How you’re engaged, acting and feeling like yourself on your own terms.

In this episode, Grace’s love for soccer reveals what vitality reserves look like in practice. Athleticism, teamwork, competitiveness, being a mentor, spending time outside. When she can’t play, she doesn’t wait. She knows her vitality reserves come with her and she can serve them in different ways.

Lauren’s trade show tells a different story. Learning, social connection and leadership fueled her. Crowds, noise and lack of control over her schedule depleted her. When you can view your experiences through this lens, you stop struggling with extraction and start working with what builds you.

Your vitality reserves send you signals well before The Vitality Gap becomes your reality. The extractive systems are loud with their demands. Your vitality reserves are not. You’re the only one who can hear them. That needs to change.

The Vitality Gap is a concept developed by Anne Mara Potts, Vitality Strategist and creator of The Fun Reset.