You’re a Renewable Resource Living Like an Unlimited One

Episode Two

Runtime: 5 minutes 49 seconds

Your sales quota doesn’t know your son has a piano recital tonight. Your son doesn’t know your mom needs her prescription picked up before the pharmacy closes. Your mom doesn’t know your fridge is empty and there’s nothing for tomorrow’s lunches.

You are torn among systems that operate independently. Each has its own reasoning. None operates as if the others exist. They don’t negotiate. They just extract.

And you’re the only one living inside all of them at once.

I see these systems operating like parallel galaxies. From inside any one of them, the demands make sense. You know what it takes to fulfill the sales quota. Your son has worked hard and deserves to be celebrated. Your mom’s prescription needs to start tonight, doctor’s orders.

You’re dealing with the aggregate of several systems. These parallel galaxies, all turning at the same time. And this is invisible to everyone but you.

There is an important difference between an unlimited resource and a renewable one. Gravity is always there. The sun rises no matter what. They require nothing. They are unlimited. The extractive systems in your life treat you the same way. Like you’re always there. Always ready.

But you are not gravity. You are a renewable resource. Renewable resources have conditions. They have needs. Your needs include your vitality reserves. And your systems draw from those, creating an aggregate impact that only you can know.

If you think this sounds like a pity party, let me stop you. Extraction doesn’t mean you’re suffering. It means something is taking more than it’s returning. That’s a fact you can work with. The reason to call out extraction is so you don’t end up suffering. When you let extraction accumulate without addressing it, that’s when The Vitality Gap widens to the point where you feel it in your patience, your presence and your health. By then, you’re managing damage. The objective is to never get there.

When women feel the weight of extraction, the instinct is to get better at serving extractive systems. Get better at juggling. Here’s what better juggling actually does. It keeps all the balls in the air. It doesn’t change the number of balls. It doesn’t change the weight of them. And it doesn’t ask which ones actually need to be juggled in the first place.

The systems around you were not designed with your vitality in mind. They were designed around your effort. Around your availability. Around what they need from you. You have been adapting to that design your entire adult life.

Getting better at juggling doesn’t close The Vitality Gap. It closes when you make moves that put you in the design. Not around the design. Not despite it. In it.

That requires a different kind of move than any of these systems will ever offer you.

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