The Yerkes-Dodson Law, first described in 1908, suggests that our performance improves with physiological or mental arousal-but only up to a point. Picture a bell curve: Too little arousal ( boredom, fatigue), and we underperform. Too much arousal ( anxiety, panic), and performance drops. Somewhere in the middle is our "zone of optimal arousal," where we're alert, focused, and effective (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908).
Every January, millions of us set goals that promise control: eat better, exercise more, stress less. Yet the most transformative resolution may not be about controlling life-it's about expanding our capacity to engage with it. Stress isn't something to eliminate-it's something to train for. Just as we lift weights to strengthen our bodies, we can stretch our emotional tolerance to strengthen our minds.
One morning, playwright Vivienne Franzmann was queueing for a coffee when an argument broke out. A customer absolutely lost it, says Franzmann. She was demanding her drink, shouting and swearing, and the rest of us stood there not knowing what to do. When Franzmann got to the rehearsal studio, she shared the story with Frauke Requardt, a choreographer she had just started working with.
