Unni Turrettini’s New Book 'Soulware' Exposes the Hidden Cost of Survival Mode

As AI becomes more capable, Soulware argues that our next advantage is expanding the capacities that make us human.

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, August 18, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In Soulware: The High Achiever’s Guide to Divine Connection in the Age of AI, bestselling author and leadership advisor Unni Turrettini challenges a central assumption of modern success: that more effort, more information, and more discipline will lead to better results.

For many high achievers, the same behaviors that built their success — pushing through, taking responsibility, moving fast, handling more than most — can eventually become the behaviors that start costing them.

Turrettini calls this survival mode.
Survival mode does not always look like burnout. It can look like success: the founder who cannot stop working because slowing down feels financially dangerous; the executive making important decisions while exhausted; the leader who keeps doing work others should be doing because delegating feels slower than doing it themselves.

Under sustained pressure, thinking narrows and it becomes harder to step back, see alternatives, or distinguish what is urgent from what actually matters. For leaders and founders, that can translate into bad decisions, poor hires, missed opportunities, exhausted teams, and money left on the table. Personally, the cost can show up in health, relationships, and disconnection from oneself.

“Survival mode can help you succeed. But when pressure becomes your operating system, the same drive that built your success can start costing you clarity, health, relationships and money,” says Turrettini.

She knows that cost personally. Earlier in her career, Turrettini passed out at a business dinner while speaking with a prospective client. She told herself it was a one-off and went straight back to work.
For years, she mistook her ability to keep pushing for strength.
That experience became part of a larger inquiry into what happens when people become disconnected from themselves, and why that matters even more in the age of artificial intelligence.

“AI can give us a thousand answers,” Turrettini says. “But an abundance of answers does not create clarity. Wisdom is the ability to discern what truly matters and to know what to pay attention to.”

As AI becomes better at generating information, solving problems, and producing at speed, Turrettini argues that humans will not stay relevant by trying to become more machine-like. Our advantage lies in developing distinctly human capacities: discernment, intuition, creativity, connection, wisdom, and access to a deeper intelligence within ourselves.

Drawing on neuroscience, spiritual traditions, personal experience, and years of studying human behavior and disconnection, Soulware offers practical tools to help high achievers recognize survival mode, reconnect with themselves, and access greater clarity under pressure.

At its heart, the book asks:
As machines become more capable, how do we become more human?

“Unni Turrettini hits a bullseye. In today’s fast-moving world, even the most successful thinkers, leaders, and entrepreneurs are at risk of losing themselves. Soulware will help you find the time to reflect, integrate, and reaffirm yourself so you can lead others forward.”
—Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers50 #1 Executive Coach and New York Times bestselling author

Kirkus Reviews calls Soulware “thoughtful, practical guidance for maintaining one’s humanity in the age of AI.”

ABOUT UNNI TURRETTINI

Unni Turrettini is a bestselling author, international speaker, and leadership advisor who helps leaders and organizations handle uncertainty, workload, and pressure without defaulting into survival mode.
Her background spans corporate law, finance, writing, and research. A member of the New York Bar, she holds law degrees from Norway, France, and the United States.

She has worked with and spoken to leaders and audiences at organizations including Miltenyi Biomedicine, U.S. Bank, Handelsbanken, MHWirth, and has spoken at Nordic Business Forum, The Harvard Club of Boston, and The Yale Club of New York City. Her work and ideas have been featured by BBC, ABC, and the New York Post.

Turrettini is also the author of The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer, winner of the 2016 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction, and Betraying the Nobel: The Secrets and Corruption Behind the Nobel Peace Prize.

Soulware: The High Achiever’s Guide to Divine Connection in the Age of AI is published August 18, 2026, by Amplify Publishing and is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
Turrettini narrates the audiobook edition.

Hardcover: $28.00
ISBN: 9798891389885
Website: unniturrettini.com

Unni Turrettini
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Unni Turrettini | Author, Speaker and Leadership Advisor