Okay, so it's the fourth day of the show for me and I am feeling wiped out. I am also feeling that familiar malaise that comes from covering a fitness convention and not being able to participate in the sessions. You might as well stick me in the middle of a room lined with the finest dark chocolate and tell me not to lick the walls. I am getting a lot of great ideas not only for the magazine, but also for my own personal workouts. If I can only remember them all....

As I sit here I struggle to write this entry. My brain is foggy from all the information and I am feeling overloaded. Sure, I have plenty of things to write about, but I don't know where to start. And I'm on deadline. Just when I begin my slow descent into panic, presenter Eve Fleck, who has just finished teaching her class "Definitions," walks in and inspires me.

Eve is glowing. She walks up to the table and sighs. "This is such a wonderful feeling," she says. "I love how I feel after I've taught a class." Eve talks about how she clicks into teaching mode when she needs to and then takes time afterward to decompress. I watched part of her class this morning. She does indeed go to another place. Thanks to her energy, I am able to click into writing mode. Eve not only Inspires the World to Fitness®, she inspires this editor to blog.

Our interaction is pretty typical here at IDEA World Fitness Convention™. Everywhere I look attendees engage each other and you can see brainwaves spark and new connections grow. This may be the under-appreciated benefit of attending World: networking. In fact, while I've been sitting here two presenters have approached me with excellent article ideas. I'm feeling a lot better about this blog entry as I go along.

The moral to this story is instead of contracting when you feel confronted and challenged, expand. If you are called on to sub for another instructor and you have no clue what you're going to teach, you're exhausted, and the class is upset because their favorite instructor is out, don't go into panic mode. Instead, transmute the energy with jokes and playful interaction. Let the participants guide the class. Click into a different mode.

Now that I am in a different mode, I am off to view more sessions and cull more excellent, practical ideas for IDEA's publications. Please look for these in upcoming issues, and let me know what you think!