Review of The Unfakeable Code®
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Ondara John
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Review of The Unfakeable Code®
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Unfakeable Code®" by Tony Jeton Selimi.]
In The Unfakeable Code®, Tony Jeton Selimi writes about a client, Sue, who spent years living inside the identity expected of her—professional, composed, always achieving—but who felt entirely disconnected from herself. She wasn’t unhappy, exactly. Just hollow. It hit me hard, not because I’m a carbon copy of Sue, but because I know what it’s like to wake up one morning and wonder whose life I’ve been performing. This book doesn’t just speak to those questions—it dares you to stop performing altogether.
What I found myself coming back to again and again was the idea that identity isn’t a costume you wear; it’s something far deeper and quieter. Tony doesn’t waste time trying to prove this point through theories—he shows it through stories and experiences that feel lived-in. He talks about being born in the former Yugoslavia, surviving war, fleeing as a refugee, navigating the complex intersections of nationality, gender, and career status. But instead of clinging to any of those identities, he dismantles them. He shows you how the stories we build around ourselves—what country we’re from, how much we earn, even how we parent—are often just scaffolding we mistake for structure. It made me think a lot about how we raise kids, actually. So much of what we teach them is performance-based: be polite, be successful, don’t rock the boat. And yet Tony’s approach to parenting—though not traditional—feels quietly revolutionary. He doesn’t hand out rigid blueprints. Instead, he invites us to raise children who don’t have to unlearn masks in adulthood, because they were never forced to wear them in the first place.
There’s something else I appreciated here, and I think it’s often missed in books about transformation: Tony’s idea of success isn’t narrow. It doesn’t hinge on titles or luxury, though yes, some of his clients are CEOs and high-performers. I liked, really liked, that he framed authentic success as something multidimensional—love, contribution, spiritual alignment, personal growth. You don’t walk away from this book feeling like your value is measured in LinkedIn stats. You walk away thinking, maybe being more myself is the bravest, most productive thing I can do. But—I’ll be honest—there were moments where I felt a bit of a gap between that ideal and some of the examples used. Many of the transformational stories he tells involve clients who are very successful by traditional standards: entrepreneurs, wealthy executives, global travelers. I understand that those are the people who may seek his coaching, but I do wonder if some readers might find it harder to see themselves in those stories. I suppose I just wanted more glimpses of the “everyday” person—someone navigating authenticity without an executive budget or international platform.
Still, I never doubted his sincerity. If anything, his compassion was one of the most consistent threads throughout the book. You can feel that he’s walked this path himself, scraped his knees on it, rebuilt his sense of self from rubble more than once. His writing doesn’t gloss over pain—it leans into it. But it never fetishizes it either. And when he talks about meditation, about the way it rewires not just your thoughts but your entire relationship with self and reality, it doesn’t feel like fluff. It feels earned. I found myself rereading the guided meditation passages, not because they were poetic (although some of them are), but because they felt like permission. Permission to slow down. To feel. To not have an answer yet. Maybe to just be, quietly, for a while.
So yesing this a full 5 out of 5 because it did something books in this space rarely manage to do: it made me less interested in becoming someone new, and more committed to finally being who I already am.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
In The Unfakeable Code®, Tony Jeton Selimi writes about a client, Sue, who spent years living inside the identity expected of her—professional, composed, always achieving—but who felt entirely disconnected from herself. She wasn’t unhappy, exactly. Just hollow. It hit me hard, not because I’m a carbon copy of Sue, but because I know what it’s like to wake up one morning and wonder whose life I’ve been performing. This book doesn’t just speak to those questions—it dares you to stop performing altogether.
What I found myself coming back to again and again was the idea that identity isn’t a costume you wear; it’s something far deeper and quieter. Tony doesn’t waste time trying to prove this point through theories—he shows it through stories and experiences that feel lived-in. He talks about being born in the former Yugoslavia, surviving war, fleeing as a refugee, navigating the complex intersections of nationality, gender, and career status. But instead of clinging to any of those identities, he dismantles them. He shows you how the stories we build around ourselves—what country we’re from, how much we earn, even how we parent—are often just scaffolding we mistake for structure. It made me think a lot about how we raise kids, actually. So much of what we teach them is performance-based: be polite, be successful, don’t rock the boat. And yet Tony’s approach to parenting—though not traditional—feels quietly revolutionary. He doesn’t hand out rigid blueprints. Instead, he invites us to raise children who don’t have to unlearn masks in adulthood, because they were never forced to wear them in the first place.
There’s something else I appreciated here, and I think it’s often missed in books about transformation: Tony’s idea of success isn’t narrow. It doesn’t hinge on titles or luxury, though yes, some of his clients are CEOs and high-performers. I liked, really liked, that he framed authentic success as something multidimensional—love, contribution, spiritual alignment, personal growth. You don’t walk away from this book feeling like your value is measured in LinkedIn stats. You walk away thinking, maybe being more myself is the bravest, most productive thing I can do. But—I’ll be honest—there were moments where I felt a bit of a gap between that ideal and some of the examples used. Many of the transformational stories he tells involve clients who are very successful by traditional standards: entrepreneurs, wealthy executives, global travelers. I understand that those are the people who may seek his coaching, but I do wonder if some readers might find it harder to see themselves in those stories. I suppose I just wanted more glimpses of the “everyday” person—someone navigating authenticity without an executive budget or international platform.
Still, I never doubted his sincerity. If anything, his compassion was one of the most consistent threads throughout the book. You can feel that he’s walked this path himself, scraped his knees on it, rebuilt his sense of self from rubble more than once. His writing doesn’t gloss over pain—it leans into it. But it never fetishizes it either. And when he talks about meditation, about the way it rewires not just your thoughts but your entire relationship with self and reality, it doesn’t feel like fluff. It feels earned. I found myself rereading the guided meditation passages, not because they were poetic (although some of them are), but because they felt like permission. Permission to slow down. To feel. To not have an answer yet. Maybe to just be, quietly, for a while.
So yesing this a full 5 out of 5 because it did something books in this space rarely manage to do: it made me less interested in becoming someone new, and more committed to finally being who I already am.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
