Review of The Unfakeable Code®
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Makario Makario
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Review of The Unfakeable Code®
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Unfakeable Code®" by Tony Jeton Selimi.]
Some books stretch you with ideas while others shrink the distance between what you know and what you’re actually living--The Unfakeable Code® did both for me. I didn’t expect to keep pausing—not because I was overwhelmed, but because I needed to sit with certain lines. There’s a specific rhythm to this book, a kind of back-and-forth between mirror and manual. One moment you’re tracing your emotional patterns in a relationship, the next you’re questioning whether your life goals were ever truly yours. It’s not heavy-handed. It’s more like a persistent nudge from someone who’s been through the fire and quietly wants you to stop pretending you haven’t.
What hit me early on was Tony’s take on goals. There’s a chapter where he distinguishes between ego-driven ambition and value-aligned intention, and it honestly made me rethink what I’ve been chasing. He talks about goals that inflate identity—titles, money, approval—but that drain the soul. Then he introduces what he calls “authentic goal setting,” and there’s something grounding about it. I remember this exercise he gives for identifying your highest values, not in the abstract but by auditing where your time, money, and attention go. That part stuck with me—I think because I saw the gap between my stated values and lived values. I’m still sitting with that. It’s not always easy to admit when your life has drifted into a performance.
And woven through all this is something bigger. Tony pushes a way of thinking that asks you to aim not for individual wins, but for wins that echo beyond you. He calls it win-win-win-win thinking. I was skeptical at first—I mean, four wins?—but the way he lays it out made sense. Your goals should serve you, of course, but also your relationships, your community, and the larger collective. He gives examples from clients—some of them CEOs, others artists or educators—who shifted their decision-making away from self-preservation toward collective empowerment. In my opinion, it’s the kind of thinking we need more of, especially now.
One thing I really appreciated—and maybe didn’t expect—was how Tony treats relationships. He doesn’t romanticize them or reduce them to partnership goals. Instead, he presents them as sacred laboratories for growth. That phrase kept ringing in my head. I’ve always believed that relationships, more than books or ideas, reveal who we are. But I’ve rarely seen someone write about that so directly. He shares stories where clients realize their relational struggles are often projections of unresolved fears, old scripts, or masked needs. That felt true to me. I can say it made me reevaluate the way I’ve sometimes expected love to complete me rather than challenge me.
Still, I did feel that some of the advice around navigating complex emotional dynamics felt cleaner than reality often allows. There are moments when you can feel the idealism creep in—encouraging deep vulnerability, radical honesty, full presence—without always acknowledging how messy, unequal, or unsafe some relational contexts can be. I wonder if including a few examples of those rougher edges—when love or self-expression doesn’t land, or when boundaries aren’t respected—would have added more nuance. But even then, I never felt the book was pretending life was simple. It just had a clear, firm sense of what’s possible when we stop hiding from ourselves.
I’m giving this five stars not because it offered easy answers—it didn’t—but because it helped me ask better questions. And I think that's harder to do. I finished the book with a mix of clarity and discomfort, which to me feels like a good sign. A part of me is still adjusting, still asking what it might look like to build a life where every win I aim for leaves someone else better off too. I’m not sure I know yet. But thanks to this book, I want to know. That’s a start.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Some books stretch you with ideas while others shrink the distance between what you know and what you’re actually living--The Unfakeable Code® did both for me. I didn’t expect to keep pausing—not because I was overwhelmed, but because I needed to sit with certain lines. There’s a specific rhythm to this book, a kind of back-and-forth between mirror and manual. One moment you’re tracing your emotional patterns in a relationship, the next you’re questioning whether your life goals were ever truly yours. It’s not heavy-handed. It’s more like a persistent nudge from someone who’s been through the fire and quietly wants you to stop pretending you haven’t.
What hit me early on was Tony’s take on goals. There’s a chapter where he distinguishes between ego-driven ambition and value-aligned intention, and it honestly made me rethink what I’ve been chasing. He talks about goals that inflate identity—titles, money, approval—but that drain the soul. Then he introduces what he calls “authentic goal setting,” and there’s something grounding about it. I remember this exercise he gives for identifying your highest values, not in the abstract but by auditing where your time, money, and attention go. That part stuck with me—I think because I saw the gap between my stated values and lived values. I’m still sitting with that. It’s not always easy to admit when your life has drifted into a performance.
And woven through all this is something bigger. Tony pushes a way of thinking that asks you to aim not for individual wins, but for wins that echo beyond you. He calls it win-win-win-win thinking. I was skeptical at first—I mean, four wins?—but the way he lays it out made sense. Your goals should serve you, of course, but also your relationships, your community, and the larger collective. He gives examples from clients—some of them CEOs, others artists or educators—who shifted their decision-making away from self-preservation toward collective empowerment. In my opinion, it’s the kind of thinking we need more of, especially now.
One thing I really appreciated—and maybe didn’t expect—was how Tony treats relationships. He doesn’t romanticize them or reduce them to partnership goals. Instead, he presents them as sacred laboratories for growth. That phrase kept ringing in my head. I’ve always believed that relationships, more than books or ideas, reveal who we are. But I’ve rarely seen someone write about that so directly. He shares stories where clients realize their relational struggles are often projections of unresolved fears, old scripts, or masked needs. That felt true to me. I can say it made me reevaluate the way I’ve sometimes expected love to complete me rather than challenge me.
Still, I did feel that some of the advice around navigating complex emotional dynamics felt cleaner than reality often allows. There are moments when you can feel the idealism creep in—encouraging deep vulnerability, radical honesty, full presence—without always acknowledging how messy, unequal, or unsafe some relational contexts can be. I wonder if including a few examples of those rougher edges—when love or self-expression doesn’t land, or when boundaries aren’t respected—would have added more nuance. But even then, I never felt the book was pretending life was simple. It just had a clear, firm sense of what’s possible when we stop hiding from ourselves.
I’m giving this five stars not because it offered easy answers—it didn’t—but because it helped me ask better questions. And I think that's harder to do. I finished the book with a mix of clarity and discomfort, which to me feels like a good sign. A part of me is still adjusting, still asking what it might look like to build a life where every win I aim for leaves someone else better off too. I’m not sure I know yet. But thanks to this book, I want to know. That’s a start.
******
The Unfakeable Code®
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
