Welcome to our collection of quotes by Jon Gordon. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Jon Gordon
Jon O. Gordon (born January 20, 1971) is an American author and speaker on the topics of leadership, culture, sales, and teamwork.
Gordon has worked with numerous athletic organizations, academic institutions, and corporations, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, the University of Georgia's Bulldogs, Clemson University Tigers, University of Nebraska Athletic Department, Jacksonville Jaguars, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, the Atlanta Falcons, Campell Soup, Wells Fargo, Northwestern Mutual, Publix, Southwest Airlines, Bayer, West Point Academy, and more. He works frequently with K-12 educators and administrators in school associations and districts across North America.
Gordon's training program called “The Energy Bus Animated Training Program” was released in 2015 and is an interactive course based on Gordon's bestselling book, The Energy Bus. In 2016, Gordon launched Positive University, an ongoing online program that provides access to content focused on overcoming everyday challenges, bringing together a community of like-minded people.
Gordon's work has been featured in The Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, among others.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in human ecology from Cornell University and a Master of Arts in teaching from Emory University.
When you experience resistance, you find the lessons that you are meant to learn.
Sometimes you have to have the difficult conversations. Trust, love, and respect are the key. If you have trust, love, and respect, positive conflict will lead to growth.
Don't be negative about negativity. Don't sit in the dark with them. Turn on the light.
Love the struggle because it makes you appreciate your accomplishments.
When you're in a high-pressure situation and the game is on the line, and everyone is watching you, remember to smile, have fun, and enjoy it. Life is short; you only live once. You have nothing to lost. Seize the moment.
You have a desire to be great because you were meant to be average. Don't let fear keep you from becoming all you're meant to be.
Positivity is more that a state of mind that makes you feel better. It's a state of action that makes your team and the world better.
Be thankful for what you have. Focus on your strengths. Celebrate the strengths of others.
Don't go through life focusing on your problems with your head down. Instead keep your eyes open and your head up.
Don't get stuck thinking that your life can't and won't change for the better.
The story you tell yourself defines the life you live and the actions you take. It's important to tell yourself a positive story.
You are more powerful than your circumstances. They don't define you. You do.
Weed and feed. Our minds are like a garden; each day you need to weed out the negativity and feed it positivity.
Encourage others today! So often the difference between success and failure is belief.
You don't have to wait to feel positive enough for a smile to happen. You can generate a positive feeling by smiling. Your smile can be the source of your positivity, not the result of it. Smile more today.
While fear and worry can weaken or harden you, love transforms you and the people and situations around you.
Knocked down but not beaten. Tired but not giving up. I saw the sun peek through the clouds. Sometimes all we need is a glimmer of hope.
No matter how tired you feel, no matter how much you want to quit, no matter what obstacles is in your way, keep moving toward the vision you have for your future.
I had a lot of bad habits in how I was playing the horn. And I slowly, in high school and college, started to recognize them and get them a little better. But it was not an overnight process, I'll say that.
When I heard Charlie Parker the first time on a record, it had seemed like an old, scratchy kind of record and I didn't get it.
Phil Wood knew about wine. He knew about food. He knew about art. He knew about classical music. He was interested in things.
I definitely had some moments, where, Wow, these were some hard chords on some gig.
Teaching has definitely become a big part of my life in the past ten plus years. As it often does for many dedicated players. Because you can have some great gigs.
I saw a nice interview with Dave Binney recently. He was saying, Man it was never easy. It's not like 'Oh wow, the good old days.' What, when certain people couldn't vote? There was more work for musicians in the '40s, '50s, '60s. But I don't think it was ever easy.
I think we're in a time and place, the last 20 plus years, and certainly now, it's only more so, where it's just about us creating a body of work. Creating hopefully our own scene.
The Monk competition did open some doors. And I was thankful for that.
There are a lot of people that impacted me. I remember hearing Oscar Peterson live at the Blue Note, which was very expensive, but... $50 in the '80s... hard to come up with. But it was amazing.
You're not going to have any pension or health care from those $60 nights at you name the club. But I think you do this because you have to do it. You pursue any art form because you need it. Because you love it.
Enthusiasm attracts more passengers and energizes them during the ride.
Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.
Another classical music teacher from Performing Arts that I've stayed in contact with is Jonathan Strasser.
I learned some classical music history, which I had done quite a bit at of Performing Arts. But I got some more with a great teacher named David Noon, who I've been in contact with quite a bit in recent years.
Eddie Locke had a huge impact in my life. He was a great jazz drummer. He was mentored by Papa Joe Jones and he played for many years with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and actually got me on a gig with Roy Eldridge when I was 20 that I'll never forget.
I also met Charles McPherson around that time, end of high school. I was 17 and I had followed Phil around for a year and pestered him enough to finally give me saxophone lessons. So all of a sudden I've got Phil Woods and Charles McPherson around me.
I was studying with Joe Allard, which was great, as a saxophone student. Being able to study with Joe Allard was an incredible experience.
We spent all day together with Phil Wood at that one particular lesson, which was maybe the third or fourth lesson, in from 11:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night. We often did a lot of varied things. It wasn't just about jazz language and the saxophone.
Winning the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competitiondefinitely opened some doors.
When we hear music that we love that changes the world for us, we might as well at least aspire to something like that and aim high. You're probably not going to get beyond your dreams. So you might as well make them big.
Many of the people I'm gratified to see have gotten acclaim like Mark Turner or Bill Charlap. Ed Simon or Maria Schneider or Jim McNeely or Scott Robinson. Ken Peplowski, who is a friend and somebody I admire a lot.
The first jazz cruise that I was on was '91. I played with Maria Schneider and John Fedchock's band. Got to meet some amazing people that week.
Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.
I was occasionally getting calls for some things. But I would say, 22 to 29 was a lot of scuffling. Hoping to get called for bad wedding gigs and I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months.
Sense of community was really fostered by Larry Laurenzano, who was a great educator.
Now we also need people who just love to listen to the music. And we need people that want to work to facilitate it. That want to do work, have somebody like Bret Primack, the jazz video guy.
I was also sitting in from the middle of senior year of high school at Sweet Basil, it was a great club in New York.
Ernie Hayes, Jimmy Lewis, and either Belton Evans or Khalil Mahdi on drums were in Sweet Basil. All those guys really took care of me.
If you think your best days are behind you, they are. If you think your best days are ahead of you, they are.
When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.
Everyone wants to do what the great ones do; but very few are willing to do what they did to become great.
We had been thrown out of a couple of places that we had lived in when I was a kid and all the family photos and records and toys were long since gone. But I think somebody had given us a couple of records.
I think what frustrated me more than anything else in my formative years was that I just had to work. I had to have a job. Like twenty to thirty hours a week, a lot of times in high school and college. And that was hard.
Remember, you have only one ride through life so give it all you got and enjoy the ride.
The secret to life and the greatest success strategy of all is to love all of it and fear none of it.
I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.
It's a complicated story hoe I got into music. I actually wrote a book about it, titled For Sue.
Sometimes I say to my students, We get to come and listen to our favorite recordings and try to learn from them and emulate that and hopefully we can inspire other people the way we've been inspired.
Purpose is the ultimate fuel for our journey through life. When we drive with purpose we don't get tired or bored and our engines don't burn out.
It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.
Every morning you have a choice. Are you going to be a positive thinker or a negative thinker? Positive thinking will energize you.
I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months. '91 and '92. It was nice to have a steady paycheck for a while. It was Oliver Jackson and Earl May, Art Barron and myself were the house band. I was 24 and 25 at the time.
I finally got to junior high and I got to start saxophone. There were a few of us that were in the beginner band in sixth grade that made it to the advanced band, which was called the morning band at our junior high school in Staten Island.
I asked all through third, fourth and fifth grade, when they were asking kids to be in the band, to be in the school band. But they wouldn't let me do it.
We had a great educator in the school band, a man named Larry Laurenzano. He was tough, but we knew that he loved us. And that was the beginning of playing music with people and really being inspired and having fun and being in a community.
Adversity is not a dead end but a detour to a better outcome than you can imagine!
When you experience resistance, you find the lessons that you are meant to learn.
The goal in life is to live young, have fun, and arrive at your final destination as late as possible, with a smile on your face.
I made some nice associations. Ben Perowsky and Kevin Hays... Bill Mobley and Pete McGuinness. A lot of talented people.
Phil Wood was very passionate. Very committed. He felt very blessed that the people that cared about him and took him aside... if he was out of line or drinking too much, being too surly.
I got to talk to Mel Lewis a lot as a teenager. I think that's what really impacted me the most around that time.
Phil Wood said to me in the car going back, he said, Look man, you better know why you're playing this music. Because I've known too many who lived and died for it. And if you're not trying to change the world, I'm not interested.
A true leader doesn't lead to gain power. They lead to empower and give power away.
Pretty fortunate that with the exception of two months when I was 23, that I worked in a law office pushing paper around. I was always able to eke out a living somehow. So I'm blessed.
I don't know that there was a moment, like one specific moment where I was like Ugh. Now what do I do? I was just always like, I'm just in here and if I have to fight with myself or ask for help or just be lost for a little while, but I'm just going to keep looking. Because music was all I had.
The light went on when I heard Phil woods play, and I went like, That is why I'm playing the instrument. So I got very inspired, I started going to clubs through a friend's mom in the city, again, another person who just completely opened all these doors for me and it was amazing how kind she was.
Connection to the music and the history was very powerful to me. I think that's what I feel the most blessed about.
Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.
The best legacy you could leave is not some building that is names after you or a piece of jewelry but rather a world that has been impacted and touched by your presence, your joy, and your positive actions.
No challenge can stop you if you have the courage to keep moving forward in the face of your greatest fears and biggest challenges. Be courageous.