Given that I wrote about the evolving brain yesterday, I wanted to share some new brain science with you that’s summed up in this recent article.
There is something deeply liberating — and biologically real — about reaching the moment when you simply stop pretending, stop worrying about impressing, stop playing small. The “Great Un-F**kening,” as some call it, isn’t just emotional or spiritual. It’s neurological.
As we age, our brains begin to change — not just in wrinkles or memories, but in how they react to stress, noise, and social pressure. Studies show that older adults report fewer daily stressors and are less emotionally reactive to those stressors when they do occur.
In simple terms: a 25-year-old might get rattled and reactive after a rude email or a tense meeting. But by your 50s or 60s, your brain has often done enough pattern-recognition to decide: this isn’t worth the energy.
That shift doesn’t mean your brain is slowing down — quite the opposite. A growing body of research links psychological resilience and emotional regulation to a younger “brain-age” than chronological years would suggest.
The brain’s support systems — the networks, the emotional-regulation circuits, the prefrontal cortex wiring — are reorganizing. The brain becomes better at triaging what matters and discarding the rest.
In that sense, saying “no more fucks” isn’t cynicism. It’s maturity. It’s wisdom. It’s a recalibration of priorities rooted in neurological evolution.
Maybe the capacity to care less about what doesn’t serve is not abdication — but ascension. Maybe the real blessing of aging is that the brain slowly rewires itself so you don’t have to waste precious time and energy on things that don’t matter.
That’s the neuroscience of clarity. The brain evolving. The mind quieting. And yes — finally being free to give its attention only to what’s worthy.
-Chip