Review of The Unfakeable Code®
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Maggy M
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Review of The Unfakeable Code®
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Unfakeable Code®" by Tony Jeton Selimi.]
The Unfakeable Code® caught me off guard because it felt more like recalibration—like someone reached into the middle of my day, interrupted my routine thought loops, and said, “Wait, whose life are you building again?” Not in a confrontational way, but in the kind of way that makes you close the book mid-page and just... sit with yourself for a moment. It’s a dense read, not in terms of jargon or complexity, but in how deeply it nudges you to look beneath the surface. What drives you? Who do your choices benefit? And perhaps the more uncomfortable question: are the goals you’re chasing actually yours?
Tony Jeton Selimi doesn’t frame life as a straight line toward success. If anything, he pulls it apart, showing how most of our goals are tangled with unspoken insecurities, inherited scripts, and external pressures. I think that’s where the book gets interesting—not because it tells you how to achieve more, but because it forces you to define what “more” even means. His section on authentic goal setting hit me hard. There’s a part where he explains how ego-driven goals—status, recognition, control—tend to feel urgent but hollow. It made me think of all the times I’ve felt exhausted after hitting a milestone, not satisfied. He writes, “Your goals must be aligned with your highest values, otherwise success will always feel like failure wearing a shiny coat.” That line? Still sitting with it.
What I didn’t expect was how much of this book is about relationships. Not in a self-help, “fix your marriage in five steps” kind of way, but more in the sense that relationships become the mirror for everything you’re pretending not to see. Tony calls them “sacred laboratories for growth,” and I’ll admit—I paused there. Because, in my experience, the messiness of human connection doesn’t always feel sacred. It feels frustrating, sometimes hopeless, often complicated beyond logic. I liked this idea, though. The framing allowed me to reflect on the people in my life not as projects to fix or support systems to lean on, but as invitations—constant, imperfect invitations—to practice the emotional maturity he’s talking about. But I did find some of the relationship advice leaned a bit idealistic. There’s a calmness in his voice that doesn’t always match the chaos of what real relationships look like when two people are unraveling years of emotional baggage in real time.
Even so, the broader message around win-win-win-win thinking offered me a kind of hopeful reset. It’s not something I hear often, to be honest. The idea that your goals shouldn’t just serve you, but also others, the wider community, and even humanity at large. That your success can be structured to ripple outward, not inward. I think a lot of leadership books try to sell this as branding or public image, but Tony genuinely roots it in values. There's a story in the book about a high-powered executive who shifted from chasing quarterly targets to mentoring his staff with a long-view strategy of emotional growth and sustainable impact. It’s subtle, but it stays with you—the idea that ambition doesn’t have to shrink your world; it can expand it.
I gave this a full 5 stars, because it reminded me that being authentic isn’t about performing better. It’s about living in a way that doesn’t fracture you. And even though a few parts felt more aspirational than grounded, I can say with full honesty that this book moved me closer to wanting the kind of success that doesn’t just make sense on paper, but feels good in my bones. I’m still figuring out what that looks like. But this felt like a solid place to start.The Unfakeable Code® caught me off guard because it felt more like recalibration—like someone reached into the middle of my day, interrupted my routine thought loops, and said, “Wait, whose life are you building again?” Not in a confrontational way, but in the kind of way that makes you close the book mid-page and just... sit with yourself for a moment. It’s a dense read, not in terms of jargon or complexity, but in how deeply it nudges you to look beneath the surface. What drives you? Who do your choices benefit? And perhaps the more uncomfortable question: are the goals you’re chasing actually yours?
Tony Jeton Selimi doesn’t frame life as a straight line toward success. If anything, he pulls it apart, showing how most of our goals are tangled with unspoken insecurities, inherited scripts, and external pressures. I think that’s where the book gets interesting—not because it tells you how to achieve more, but because it forces you to define what “more” even means. His section on authentic goal setting hit me hard. There’s a part where he explains how ego-driven goals—status, recognition, control—tend to feel urgent but hollow. It made me think of all the times I’ve felt exhausted after hitting a milestone, not satisfied. He writes, “Your goals must be aligned with your highest values, otherwise success will always feel like failure wearing a shiny coat.” That line? Still sitting with it.
What I didn’t expect was how much of this book is about relationships. Not in a self-help, “fix your marriage in five steps” kind of way, but more in the sense that relationships become the mirror for everything you’re pretending not to see. Tony calls them “sacred laboratories for growth,” and I’ll admit—I paused there. Because, in my experience, the messiness of human connection doesn’t always feel sacred. It feels frustrating, sometimes hopeless, often complicated beyond logic. I liked this idea, though. The framing allowed me to reflect on the people in my life not as projects to fix or support systems to lean on, but as invitations—constant, imperfect invitations—to practice the emotional maturity he’s talking about. But I did find some of the relationship advice leaned a bit idealistic. There’s a calmness in his voice that doesn’t always match the chaos of what real relationships look like when two people are unraveling years of emotional baggage in real time.
Even so, the broader message around win-win-win-win thinking offered me a kind of hopeful reset. It’s not something I hear often, to be honest. The idea that your goals shouldn’t just serve you, but also others, the wider community, and even humanity at large. That your success can be structured to ripple outward, not inward. I think a lot of leadership books try to sell this as branding or public image, but Tony genuinely roots it in values. There's a story in the book about a high-powered executive who shifted from chasing quarterly targets to mentoring his staff with a long-view strategy of emotional growth and sustainable impact. It’s subtle, but it stays with you—the idea that ambition doesn’t have to shrink your world; it can expand it.
I gave this a full 5 stars, because it reminded me that being authentic isn’t about performing better. It’s about living in a way that doesn’t fracture you. And even though a few parts felt more aspirational than grounded, I can say with full honesty that this book moved me closer to wanting the kind of success that doesn’t just make sense on paper, but feels good in my bones. I’m still figuring out what that looks like. But this felt like a solid place to start.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
The Unfakeable Code® caught me off guard because it felt more like recalibration—like someone reached into the middle of my day, interrupted my routine thought loops, and said, “Wait, whose life are you building again?” Not in a confrontational way, but in the kind of way that makes you close the book mid-page and just... sit with yourself for a moment. It’s a dense read, not in terms of jargon or complexity, but in how deeply it nudges you to look beneath the surface. What drives you? Who do your choices benefit? And perhaps the more uncomfortable question: are the goals you’re chasing actually yours?
Tony Jeton Selimi doesn’t frame life as a straight line toward success. If anything, he pulls it apart, showing how most of our goals are tangled with unspoken insecurities, inherited scripts, and external pressures. I think that’s where the book gets interesting—not because it tells you how to achieve more, but because it forces you to define what “more” even means. His section on authentic goal setting hit me hard. There’s a part where he explains how ego-driven goals—status, recognition, control—tend to feel urgent but hollow. It made me think of all the times I’ve felt exhausted after hitting a milestone, not satisfied. He writes, “Your goals must be aligned with your highest values, otherwise success will always feel like failure wearing a shiny coat.” That line? Still sitting with it.
What I didn’t expect was how much of this book is about relationships. Not in a self-help, “fix your marriage in five steps” kind of way, but more in the sense that relationships become the mirror for everything you’re pretending not to see. Tony calls them “sacred laboratories for growth,” and I’ll admit—I paused there. Because, in my experience, the messiness of human connection doesn’t always feel sacred. It feels frustrating, sometimes hopeless, often complicated beyond logic. I liked this idea, though. The framing allowed me to reflect on the people in my life not as projects to fix or support systems to lean on, but as invitations—constant, imperfect invitations—to practice the emotional maturity he’s talking about. But I did find some of the relationship advice leaned a bit idealistic. There’s a calmness in his voice that doesn’t always match the chaos of what real relationships look like when two people are unraveling years of emotional baggage in real time.
Even so, the broader message around win-win-win-win thinking offered me a kind of hopeful reset. It’s not something I hear often, to be honest. The idea that your goals shouldn’t just serve you, but also others, the wider community, and even humanity at large. That your success can be structured to ripple outward, not inward. I think a lot of leadership books try to sell this as branding or public image, but Tony genuinely roots it in values. There's a story in the book about a high-powered executive who shifted from chasing quarterly targets to mentoring his staff with a long-view strategy of emotional growth and sustainable impact. It’s subtle, but it stays with you—the idea that ambition doesn’t have to shrink your world; it can expand it.
I gave this a full 5 stars, because it reminded me that being authentic isn’t about performing better. It’s about living in a way that doesn’t fracture you. And even though a few parts felt more aspirational than grounded, I can say with full honesty that this book moved me closer to wanting the kind of success that doesn’t just make sense on paper, but feels good in my bones. I’m still figuring out what that looks like. But this felt like a solid place to start.The Unfakeable Code® caught me off guard because it felt more like recalibration—like someone reached into the middle of my day, interrupted my routine thought loops, and said, “Wait, whose life are you building again?” Not in a confrontational way, but in the kind of way that makes you close the book mid-page and just... sit with yourself for a moment. It’s a dense read, not in terms of jargon or complexity, but in how deeply it nudges you to look beneath the surface. What drives you? Who do your choices benefit? And perhaps the more uncomfortable question: are the goals you’re chasing actually yours?
Tony Jeton Selimi doesn’t frame life as a straight line toward success. If anything, he pulls it apart, showing how most of our goals are tangled with unspoken insecurities, inherited scripts, and external pressures. I think that’s where the book gets interesting—not because it tells you how to achieve more, but because it forces you to define what “more” even means. His section on authentic goal setting hit me hard. There’s a part where he explains how ego-driven goals—status, recognition, control—tend to feel urgent but hollow. It made me think of all the times I’ve felt exhausted after hitting a milestone, not satisfied. He writes, “Your goals must be aligned with your highest values, otherwise success will always feel like failure wearing a shiny coat.” That line? Still sitting with it.
What I didn’t expect was how much of this book is about relationships. Not in a self-help, “fix your marriage in five steps” kind of way, but more in the sense that relationships become the mirror for everything you’re pretending not to see. Tony calls them “sacred laboratories for growth,” and I’ll admit—I paused there. Because, in my experience, the messiness of human connection doesn’t always feel sacred. It feels frustrating, sometimes hopeless, often complicated beyond logic. I liked this idea, though. The framing allowed me to reflect on the people in my life not as projects to fix or support systems to lean on, but as invitations—constant, imperfect invitations—to practice the emotional maturity he’s talking about. But I did find some of the relationship advice leaned a bit idealistic. There’s a calmness in his voice that doesn’t always match the chaos of what real relationships look like when two people are unraveling years of emotional baggage in real time.
Even so, the broader message around win-win-win-win thinking offered me a kind of hopeful reset. It’s not something I hear often, to be honest. The idea that your goals shouldn’t just serve you, but also others, the wider community, and even humanity at large. That your success can be structured to ripple outward, not inward. I think a lot of leadership books try to sell this as branding or public image, but Tony genuinely roots it in values. There's a story in the book about a high-powered executive who shifted from chasing quarterly targets to mentoring his staff with a long-view strategy of emotional growth and sustainable impact. It’s subtle, but it stays with you—the idea that ambition doesn’t have to shrink your world; it can expand it.
I gave this a full 5 stars, because it reminded me that being authentic isn’t about performing better. It’s about living in a way that doesn’t fracture you. And even though a few parts felt more aspirational than grounded, I can say with full honesty that this book moved me closer to wanting the kind of success that doesn’t just make sense on paper, but feels good in my bones. I’m still figuring out what that looks like. But this felt like a solid place to start.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
