There's something that happens when someone asks you to describe yourself and you freeze. Not because you don't know who you are. Because the truest parts of you don't have words yet. And every time you reach for familiar ones, you can feel something shrinking.
That's not a confidence problem. That's not imposter syndrome. That's what happens when we try to translate something electric into something safe.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially now that I'm in a season of rebuilding my identity in real time. New mom. Business still going. Husband's company just got acquired. There's a version of me I've been carrying for years that doesn't quite fit anymore, and every time I try to describe what's shifting, I end up with words that feel like someone else's. I sit down to write something or say something and it comes out flatter than what I actually feel. Like trying to explain a dream the second you wake up.
That's exactly where this conversation with Anita Stubenrauch started.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
Anita is a former Apple speechwriter who authored Apple's Credo and now helps founders, executives, and changemakers find language for what they do. But what makes her approach different from every other voice coach or brand strategist is that she doesn't start with words at all. She starts with energy. She's chasing the thing that exists before language, what she calls the electric charge, and that reframe alone will change how you think about expressing yourself.
We got into why the truest things about you are always the hardest to describe, and what it means that this is actually a feature, not a failure. We talked about the difference between naming something and describing it, and why most of us are so used to reaching for borrowed frameworks that we've stopped noticing we're doing it. Your bio, your pitch, how you introduce yourself at a party… all of it is probably a version of Mad Libs you filled in without realizing someone else wrote the template.
We also went deep on how language shapes what you're even capable of thinking. There are languages where a tree isn't a noun. It's a verb. Treeing. And the people who speak that language can't commodify a tree the same way we can, because their language won't let them see it as an object. That's not a small thing. The words we have determine what we can perceive, and that goes for how we see ourselves too.
Why This Matters Beyond Branding
I want to be clear that this conversation isn't really about your LinkedIn bio. It's about something much older and more personal than that.
Most of us learned how to describe ourselves by looking over someone else's shoulder. We borrowed their structure, swapped in our own credentials, and called it done. And it works well enough to get by. But it keeps you in a nine-volt battery situation, to use Anita's framework. You're producing just enough charge to be legible. Not enough to stop someone cold.
The problem is that the real charge, the thing that's genuinely original about you, exists before you have words for it. Anita described it as a static accumulation, a storm cloud building. Hair standing up on your arm, but not lightning yet. Most people grab the closest familiar label and slap it on before they've let the charge build. And that's how you end up sounding like everyone else without ever meaning to.
I've done this. I spent years describing myself in ways that were accurate but small. Not wrong, exactly. Just not the whole thing. There's a version of me that fits neatly into a category and a version that doesn't, and for a long time I kept choosing the one that was easier to explain.
About Anita Stubenrauch
Anita Stubenrauch is a visionary creative and former Apple speechwriter who authored Apple's Credo. She works with founders, executives, authors, and changemakers to uncover ideas with the greatest potential and give them language that carries actual charge. She has co-written multiple TED Talks and helped some of the world's top performers find words for what they do before convention had a chance to flatten it.
Key Insights from This Conversation
You Can't Read the Label from Inside the Bottle
This is something I've said on the show before, but Anita gave it new dimension. The reason it's hard to articulate who you are isn't weakness or lack of self-awareness. It's that you're always standing at an angle from yourself. You can see parts but not the whole. Language helps you anchor into categories others can understand, but the description, the living texture of what you actually are, that's always going to exceed what you can name.
The Charge Exists Before the Words
Anita doesn't start with language when she works with someone. She starts by chasing goosebumps. She's looking for where the energy accumulates, what makes something feel alive even if it's unconventional or doesn't fit an established category. The potential difference between where someone is now and where an idea could take them, that gap is where the real power lives. The bigger the gap, the stronger the charge.
Your Body Knows Before Your Brain Does
One of the practices Anita uses is deceptively simple. She'll write two possible directions on sticky notes, put them on the floor across the room from each other, and ask you which one your feet want to walk toward. It sounds almost too simple. But it's harder to override a somatic response than a thought. Your feet moving toward something unconventional, something that scares you a little, is information. Not a directive. Information.
Borrowed Frameworks Keep You Invisible
Most people write their bio by looking at what other people wrote and doing a word swap. Same structure, different name. And it works well enough to seem professional. But Anita's point is that when you default to borrowed language, you drain the curiosity out of who you are. She worked with a finance expert who kept citing Tony Robbins and other big names because she was so used to deferring to authority. Once they cleared all of that out and chased what was actually alive in her… that's where “joyful finance” came from. Joy on credit versus compounding joy. Concepts that didn't exist before that conversation, built from what was already in her.
Labels Help Temporarily and Hurt Long-Term
This is something I've wrestled with. ADHD. Podcast host. Mom. Every label I've carried helped me at some point to find resources, community, language. But if I stay inside it too long, it keeps me there. Anita made the distinction between naming something (which creates shared categorical understanding) and describing it (which adds your specific color and meaning). Both matter. But most of us stop at the name and skip the description entirely.
The Uncomfortable Truth About How You Describe Yourself
Most of us are playing Mad Libs with our own lives and don't realize it. We're filling in blanks on a form that someone else designed, using words that gesture in the right direction but don't actually land. And we feel the gap. We feel it every time we introduce ourselves and something falls flat. Every time we send a pitch and hear nothing back. Every time someone asks what we do and we watch their eyes glaze over.
The instinct is to think we need better words. More polished words. A tighter elevator pitch.
Anita's argument, and one I find genuinely hard to argue with, is that the real problem is going to words too soon. Before the charge has built. Before you've let yourself feel what's actually alive in you versus what's just familiar.
There's a story she told about a client who mentioned, almost as an aside, that she was a world champion jump roper. Totally unrelated to her professional work. But that one detail made Anita want to keep talking. Made her curious. The official bio with all the right credentials? Didn't do that.
That's the gap. That's what we're all working with.
How to Start Finding the Real Charge
Anita's weekly challenge from this episode: notice where the energy is inside you. The thing that keeps returning. The thing creating tension. The thing that refuses to disappear. The thing that feels alive, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it doesn't fit neatly into anything.
Circle that. Sit with it before you name it. Let it be a cloud for a little while before you try to make it lightning.
And if you're trying to find language for something, try the taboo game she and I both mentioned. Describe the thing without using any words you've heard other people use to describe it. It will feel impossible. Your brain will want to default. But in that friction, something true usually shows up.
Resources and Links
- Anita Stubenrauch's website: causeeffectcreative.com
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (mentioned in episode)
- Related episode: mindlove.com/435
- mindlove.com/461 for all links from this episode
Take This Work Deeper
If this conversation made you want to sit with your own charge before you slap a label on it, that's exactly the kind of work we do inside the Mind Love Collective. Just one themed call a month, no overwhelming programs, real support throughout the year. mindlove.com/collective
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