Review of The Unfakeable Code®
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David O Okoth
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Review of The Unfakeable Code®
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Unfakeable Code®" by Tony Jeton Selimi.]
Some of the worst leaders I’ve worked under were brilliant—on paper. They had the degrees, the titles, the polished presence. But they couldn’t read a room. They couldn’t read themselves either, which is probably why their teams always ran on eggshells. I didn’t know what to call that imbalance until I read The Unfakeable Code®. Tony Jeton Selimi doesn’t just write about leadership—he deconstructs the emotional scaffolding behind it. And for anyone in a leadership role today (or even just trying to lead their own life), his message is loud and clear: emotional intelligence is no longer optional. It’s foundational. Without it, we don’t lead. We control. Or we manipulate. Or we hide behind systems and strategy and hope no one notices how anxious we really are.
What I found myself drawn to most wasn’t just Tony’s framing of emotional intelligence as a leadership essential. It was how he guided readers toward cultivating it with real tools, not vague encouragements. One of those tools—the Life Reflection Audit—was more disarming than I expected. He doesn’t ask you to look at your goals or productivity hacks. He asks where you lie to yourself. Where you’re still stuck in old narratives. Where you’ve been pretending for so long that you don’t even know what’s real anymore. Some of the reflection questions made me uncomfortable in a good way. They forced me to slow down and actually consider where I’ve been choosing comfort over growth, or validation over integrity. I think what I appreciated most is that the audit isn’t presented like a worksheet. It feels more like a mirror you keep returning to when you’re ready to stop bullshitting yourself.
And Tony doesn’t stop at emotional concepts—he roots them in both brain science and spiritual insight. I liked that Tony blended science (like neuroscience and emotional regulation) with spirituality without forcing the reader to belong to any particular belief system. I can say that’s a rare balance. He talks about rewiring the brain, calming the amygdala, and changing neural patterns with the same clarity that he uses to explore ideas like soul alignment or energy fields. At no point did I feel like I had to subscribe to anything to benefit from it. If anything, I felt like I had options—entry points from wherever I happened to be emotionally or intellectually.
That said, I did bump up against one thing a few times. I disliked that occasionally, the transitions between science and spirituality sections could feel slightly abrupt, almost like switching between two different genres mid-paragraph. There were moments where I’d be deep into a passage about neural wiring, only to suddenly land in a more cosmic, intuitive reflection. And while I personally didn’t mind the mix, I think the book could’ve been even more fluid if those shifts had been bridged a little more gently. I found myself thinking, maybe just a sentence or two of context would smooth this out. Not to dilute the material, but to help the reader track the journey better without flipping emotional gears too fast.
Still, I kept going because the core of the book stayed consistent: leadership is an inside job. Not just the kind where you check in with your team and build trust with your employees, but the kind where you stop outsourcing your self-worth to titles, outcomes, or performance. Tony brings this home through stories—his own, and those of his coaching clients. He shares moments where people stripped off their masks, sometimes painfully, and chose a more vulnerable but honest way forward. And it’s not romanticized. It’s difficult work. But necessary.
By the end, I found myself looking at certain leadership traits I used to admire—stoicism, decisiveness, authority—and questioning whether those things actually came from emotional clarity or from fear dressed up as control. That reframe alone made the read worthwhile. I think The Unfakeable Code® is one of those books you don’t just absorb once—you revisit it. Not because it’s light reading, but because it keeps asking different questions as you change. I’m giving it 5 out of 5 stars, not because it was perfectly seamless, but because it gave me something more valuable than polish. It gave me pause. And I think that’s where the real work starts.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Some of the worst leaders I’ve worked under were brilliant—on paper. They had the degrees, the titles, the polished presence. But they couldn’t read a room. They couldn’t read themselves either, which is probably why their teams always ran on eggshells. I didn’t know what to call that imbalance until I read The Unfakeable Code®. Tony Jeton Selimi doesn’t just write about leadership—he deconstructs the emotional scaffolding behind it. And for anyone in a leadership role today (or even just trying to lead their own life), his message is loud and clear: emotional intelligence is no longer optional. It’s foundational. Without it, we don’t lead. We control. Or we manipulate. Or we hide behind systems and strategy and hope no one notices how anxious we really are.
What I found myself drawn to most wasn’t just Tony’s framing of emotional intelligence as a leadership essential. It was how he guided readers toward cultivating it with real tools, not vague encouragements. One of those tools—the Life Reflection Audit—was more disarming than I expected. He doesn’t ask you to look at your goals or productivity hacks. He asks where you lie to yourself. Where you’re still stuck in old narratives. Where you’ve been pretending for so long that you don’t even know what’s real anymore. Some of the reflection questions made me uncomfortable in a good way. They forced me to slow down and actually consider where I’ve been choosing comfort over growth, or validation over integrity. I think what I appreciated most is that the audit isn’t presented like a worksheet. It feels more like a mirror you keep returning to when you’re ready to stop bullshitting yourself.
And Tony doesn’t stop at emotional concepts—he roots them in both brain science and spiritual insight. I liked that Tony blended science (like neuroscience and emotional regulation) with spirituality without forcing the reader to belong to any particular belief system. I can say that’s a rare balance. He talks about rewiring the brain, calming the amygdala, and changing neural patterns with the same clarity that he uses to explore ideas like soul alignment or energy fields. At no point did I feel like I had to subscribe to anything to benefit from it. If anything, I felt like I had options—entry points from wherever I happened to be emotionally or intellectually.
That said, I did bump up against one thing a few times. I disliked that occasionally, the transitions between science and spirituality sections could feel slightly abrupt, almost like switching between two different genres mid-paragraph. There were moments where I’d be deep into a passage about neural wiring, only to suddenly land in a more cosmic, intuitive reflection. And while I personally didn’t mind the mix, I think the book could’ve been even more fluid if those shifts had been bridged a little more gently. I found myself thinking, maybe just a sentence or two of context would smooth this out. Not to dilute the material, but to help the reader track the journey better without flipping emotional gears too fast.
Still, I kept going because the core of the book stayed consistent: leadership is an inside job. Not just the kind where you check in with your team and build trust with your employees, but the kind where you stop outsourcing your self-worth to titles, outcomes, or performance. Tony brings this home through stories—his own, and those of his coaching clients. He shares moments where people stripped off their masks, sometimes painfully, and chose a more vulnerable but honest way forward. And it’s not romanticized. It’s difficult work. But necessary.
By the end, I found myself looking at certain leadership traits I used to admire—stoicism, decisiveness, authority—and questioning whether those things actually came from emotional clarity or from fear dressed up as control. That reframe alone made the read worthwhile. I think The Unfakeable Code® is one of those books you don’t just absorb once—you revisit it. Not because it’s light reading, but because it keeps asking different questions as you change. I’m giving it 5 out of 5 stars, not because it was perfectly seamless, but because it gave me something more valuable than polish. It gave me pause. And I think that’s where the real work starts.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
