Why high performers still struggle to communicate clearly
You've read the books. You've done the courses. You can hold a room. So why does something still feel off when you speak, or when you listen back to yourself? Celinne Da Costa has been studying this for 15 years, and her answer is direct: the problem isn't your vocabulary. It's what's underneath it.
"I see our words as the bridge between our internal world and the external world," she says. When that internal world is carrying unprocessed fear, insecurity, or the need to be validated, those things don't stay hidden. They show up in your sentences, in the hedge, the passive-aggressive add-on, the over-explained request. The words are a readout. And most people have never been taught to read them.
How to communicate with clarity and confidence
Celinne draws a sharp line between two modes of speaking. The first is ego-sourced: effortful, mental, agenda-driven. Think of the marketing funnel that makes you click "No, I don't want to be amazing" to unsubscribe. That's language engineered to hijack a core human need, significance, and it works precisely because it bypasses your conscious awareness.
The second mode is what she calls soul-sourced communication. "When we are sourcing from a clean place, we can literally speak our world, our desired goals, into being, because it's coming from the purity of our being." It's not about choosing better words. It's about the frequency behind them. "You might be using the same exact word in two different contexts and it's going to feel completely different in your body."
The practical test: does the energy go into your head, or does it land in the room? Soul words are simple, potent, and felt. Ego words are busy, effortful, and leave people slightly unsatisfied, even when they can't say why.
How your language reveals your internal state
One of the most striking moments in this conversation is when Celinne takes a single throwaway sentence, "I guess I want tacos, because last time you didn't want them", and unpacks it live. The "I guess" signals self-doubt. The unnecessary add-on signals passive aggression and unprocessed anger. "That sentence was a code for how my internal state of being right now, where I'm dysregulated, where I might be carrying some unconscious emotion, can all be decoded from that sentence."
This is what Celinne means when she says she can't unsee it anymore. Once you understand that language is the exhaust system of your mental, emotional, and spiritual engine, you hear every conversation differently. The question stops being "what should I say?" and starts being "what is this sentence actually telling me about what's running underneath?"
The identity problem underneath communication struggles
Celinne's work evolved when she noticed a pattern: clients hired her to sharpen their story for a Forbes article or a stage, stayed for a year, and kept renewing. The story wasn't the real problem. Underneath "I want to be more visible" was a deeper question: who am I now?
"The story you tell about yourself, anything that comes after 'I am', is the anchor that's keeping you under," she explains. The person who can't lose weight, the entrepreneur who's hit an income ceiling, the executive who's been writing the same book chapter for 17 years, these aren't tactics problems. They're identity problems. The beliefs, the unprocessed emotions, and the habitual actions are all reinforcing an old version of self. And the words coming out of that person's mouth are confirming it every day.
The shift isn't "say better things." It's: what words would be coming out of your mouth if you were already the version of you who has this handled? Start there and work backwards.
Metabolized vs. un-metabolized stories
There's a difference between sharing a story because you've integrated it and sharing a story because you need someone to validate that it happened. Celinne calls the first metabolized and the second un-metabolized, and the distinction matters enormously for anyone who leads, coaches, or creates content.
"A lot of people are blasting their un-metabolized, unprocessed stories from the ego part of: I want to be seen and validated," she says. You might go viral. You might get the likes. But the transmission is different. The audience feels the need behind it, even if they can't name it. When a story has been metabolized, when the fear has been released, the lesson integrated, the emotion processed, it becomes medicine. It's a completely different energy, and it attracts a completely different response.
Her client, a Fortune 150 executive, had been stuck on one chapter of her book for 17 years. Two sessions with Celinne. The chapter got written. What changed wasn't the words, it was that she finally metabolized the story she was trying to tell. The block was never the writing. It was the unfinished emotional work underneath it.
