110+ Jon Gordon Quotes On Positivity, Teamwork And Gratitude

Jon Gordon is an American consultant, speaker and best-selling author. He is known for his work in the area of leadership, culture, teamwork and sales. He has written several books, including The Energy Bus, The No Complaining Rule and The Carpenter, and has worked with organizations such as The Atlanta Falcons, The PGA Tour and The Cleveland Clinic. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jon Gordon on leadership, positivity, teamwork.

Top 10 Jon Gordon Quotes

1. Successful people do ordinary things with extraordinary consistency, commitment and focus.
2. 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.
3. Adversity is not a dead end but a detour to a better outcome than you can imagine!
4. 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.
5. My life is a gift not an obligation and I Get To make the most of it.
6. Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow.
7. If you think your best days are behind you, they are. If you think your best days are ahead of you, they are.
8. Challenges ONLY make you STRONGER!!!
9. Don't let negative people drain your energy. Focus on your positive energy and kill them with kindness. Energy vampires are no match for your positive energy.
10. Remember, you have only one ride through life so give it all you got and enjoy the ride.

Jon Gordon Short Quotes

• Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.
• Don't waste your energy on those who don't get on your bus.
• Optimism is a competitive advantage.
• Thoughts are magnetic. What we think about we attract.
• You fuel your life with trust and love instead of fear and doubt.
• A true leader doesn't lead to gain power. They lead to empower and give power away.
• The Monk competition did open some doors. And I was thankful for that.
• I remember Art Blakey saying to me, "Just remember, we're blessed to do what we do."
• I never really had a classical saxophone set-up. I just had a middle of the road set up.
• All we can do is go about our work. But we can have a goal. We can have a dream.

Jon Gordon Quotes About Positivity

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. — Jon Gordon

Every morning you have a choice. Are you going to be a positive thinker or a negative thinker? Positive thinking will energize you. — Jon Gordon

When you experience resistance, you find the lessons that you are meant to learn — Jon Gordon

It's not easy to deal with the negativity in the world but it's something that's got to be done. Your success and life are so important that you must surround yourself with a positive support team. — Jon Gordon

Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people. — Jon Gordon

Being positive won’t guarantee you’ll succeed. But being negative will guarantee you won’t. — Jon Gordon

Jon Gordon Quotes About Change

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." — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

Dust on gold doesn't change the nature of gold. — Jon Gordon

Jon Gordon Quotes About Motivational

Only through service and sacrifice can you become great. — Jon Gordon

Life and success are about what you choose to believe. — Jon Gordon

You can’t be a great leader if all you are serving is yourself. — Jon Gordon

Anyone who attempts to build great things will face challenges. — Jon Gordon

Negative thoughts are the nails that build a prison of failure. — Jon Gordon

The only person who can limit your possibilities is you. — Jon Gordon

Jon Gordon Quotes About Inspiring

Everyone wants to do what the great ones do; but very few are willing to do what they did to become great — Jon Gordon

Failure is not meant to be final and fatal.... It is meant to refine you to be all that you are meant to be. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

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." — Jon Gordon

Leadership is not just about what you do but what you can inspire, encourage and empower others to do. — Jon Gordon

Enthusiasm comes from the Greek word entheos, which means, "inspired" or "filled with the divine." — Jon Gordon

Jon Gordon Quotes About Successful

You are not a true success unless you are helping others be successful. — Jon Gordon

The secret to life and the greatest success strategy of all is to love all of it and fear none of it. — Jon Gordon

So often the difference between success and failure is belief. Belief leads to action and execution. — Jon Gordon

Don't chase success. Decide to make a difference and success will find you. — Jon Gordon

Love is the answer for the team's success. — Jon Gordon

Jon Gordon Famous Quotes And Sayings

When you believe, the impossible becomes possible. What you believe will become what is true. Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow. Don’t look at your challenges; look up and look out into the future. Don’t focus on your circumstances. Focus on the right beliefs that will help you build your success. — Jon Gordon

Every person and every team will be tested on their journey. It is part of the curriculum of life. It's just like riding a bicycle. In the beginning you're going to fall off and get knocked down but the important thing is to get back on, stay strong, and after a while once you master it you'll ride with the confidence of a champion. — Jon Gordon

The first CD I had, that I think had had any redeeming qualities to it, I did when I was 25 with a relatively small label called Chiarascuro. — Jon Gordon

Everybody wants the quick fix, but it doesn't happen overnight. You have to be willing to put it out there. I call it 'the secret to being an overnight success,' which means there really isn't a such thing as an overnight success. ! The secret is you work really hard for 10 years, and then you become an overnight success. — Jon Gordon

I was commuting three to four hours a day, I had jobs for much of it. But I was always involved in going to some ensemble someplace. Taking my lessons at the local Jewish community center on Staten Island. — Jon Gordon

We still talk about [school band]. Almost 40 years later. It's like people are talking about, "Man we need to have a morning band reunion". — Jon Gordon

Another classical music teacher from Performing Arts that I've stayed in contact with is Jonathan Strasser. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

Joe Henderson with Ron Carter and Al Foster at the Vanguard was just wow. And the energy of the three of them. — Jon Gordon

If I could have picked two guys on the planet, to have some exposure to at that age, those were the two right guys [Phil Woods and Charles McPherson]. — Jon Gordon

I would sit in at a jazz brunch [at sweet Basil] with Eddie Chamblee, who was a great tenor player. Really a kind man. The whole band was great. — Jon Gordon

I'm very gratified that I had my little 15 minutes,or whatever [at the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition]. It certainly didn't make me rich and famous. But it helped a little bit for a while. — Jon Gordon

There's a lot of good people out here that want to help you grow and to help the music to continue to grow and evolve and go find those folks and be around them and carry it on... carrying the tradition on in the way with what it is that you have to offer. Find some good people in the music that will believe in you and they'll help you do that. — Jon Gordon

I have to say, music was always my self preservation survival technique. This sort of sacred space in my life and in my mind. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

The streets weren't paved with gold and Rose petals [when I was young]. "Do I have a horn to sell this month to pay my rent, or what am I going to do?" It was what it was. — Jon Gordon

Walk down Forest Ave to Joey's Pizza like we used to do after performances, which doesn't exist anymore. We had a sense of community [in the school band]. — Jon Gordon

I saw that [music] reflected in my mother when we listened to these records [of Bob Gordon]. And I felt it too. — Jon Gordon

If you go with that spirit, good things will come for you. If you go into it with an assumption that you're a genius and that you're entitled to something, it's a little tougher. — Jon Gordon

There is a very small chance that you might be really brilliant and really talented. — Jon Gordon

[Phil wood] put on some [Igor] Stravinsky and say to follow the score, tell me to play me the opening to the Rite of Spring. Or, "I'm going to play you some 20th century obscure classical composer you don't know". Or, "Let's listen to some Charles Ives, let's sight read some Bartok violin duets", etc. — Jon Gordon

The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday. — Jon Gordon

I think we had a Ben Webster/Gerry Mulligan record... that might have been it. We only had a few records in the house. — Jon Gordon

[Charles McPherson] was kind enough to go to a record gig of mine where we recorded a song of his. — Jon Gordon

Bob [Gordon] died young tragically. — Jon Gordon

[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. — Jon Gordon

I did, I was in Europe a lot. I would say, mid 20s to late 30s. Less so in the last ten or twelve years. Based on some political stuff and other things, I think I'm not the only musician, the only American jazz musician that's not going to Europe quite as much. I think we're seen a little differently in the world, unfortunately, than we were pre-Iraq invasion and things like that. — Jon Gordon

I never got to play with Art [ Blakey], but he was kind and spoke to me a number of times. He said, "You know, the people who are working 40 hours a week. Those are the ones who are really paying dues. Sitting at a desk doing the same thing every day. We're really blessed to do what we do." — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

I was [ on Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition] with Ralph Bowen, and Joel Frahm, Jimmy Greene, John Ellis. You can't play the saxophone better than any of those guys play. So many of those things that those guys could do I wish I could do now, let alone then. — Jon Gordon

If you are complaining you can't be thinking about or creating what you do want. — Jon Gordon

[Manhattan School Of Music] were kind of just getting the jazz program up and going when I first started there. I was 17 in September of 1984 when I started there. — Jon Gordon

Families that I lived with a little bit in junior high and quite a bit in high school and college. Just to have a safe, sane space with food and things like that. That's what I needed. And people were really kind and really generous. So I think the world kind of opened up my first years of performing arts, studying classical saxophone with Caesar DiMauro. — Jon Gordon

There were some things I was going and doing in Europe a little bit. Some festivals that brought me over. That was good. Some touring I did over there. But there was nothing major [from 22 to 29]. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

[My mother told me] stories about Nat King Cole, and Miles Davis, and seeing pictures in later years with band leaders like Alvino Ray. — Jon Gordon

I wasn't expecting [the Monk competition] would necessarily do that. So I just did what I did and some good things continued to happen and some doors continued to open and that kind of led me into the different associations that I developed in my 30s and some records that I've made on ArtistShare over the last 10 years or so. — Jon Gordon

[We need] someone like Don Sickler, who is an amazing trumpet player and who is also a publisher and amazing producer and composer and arranger. There's a lot of ways you can make a contribution. — Jon Gordon

Great leaders don't succeed because they are great. They succeed because they bring out the greatness in others. — Jon Gordon

I went in [Sweet Basil band] and played with them, maybe half the gig for almost eight years or more. — Jon Gordon

Connection to the music and the history was very powerful to me. I think that's what I feel the most blessed about. — Jon Gordon

I got to perform the [Jaques] Ibert Concertino Da Camera with a brilliant pianist at school named Chunga. I got to perform the [Alexander] Glazunov Concerto in senior year with our school orchestra and the Jewish Grossman orchestra. I won a scholarship from the Goldman band to perform the [Paul] Creston Concerto. Which I never played with them, but they still gave me the money. — Jon Gordon

I don't want my children to be what I want them to be. I want them to become everything God created them to be. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

A lot of musicians have said things to me like, "Music saved my life". And "I'm standing on the shoulders of dozens of people that you've never heard of that were like angels for me that came out of the woodwork." And that's really the case for me. I had so many people that did those kinds of things for me. — Jon Gordon

Particularly, in my situation, I needed a way out of where I was. So music was that. — Jon Gordon

Hearing Phil [wood] a lot, those few years especially when I was going to hear music and Tom Harrell was in the band. Man that was incredible. Hearing Tom at that period, and hearing Phil in that period, and also [Charles] McPherson. Those three guys were very impactful. Very inspiring to me at the time. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

I left school December of 1988. I was 21 at the time. And I hadn't quite finished my degree because I had done eight semesters, not understanding that I was going to have to finish the degree without the TAPP and Pell grant money that I had been using towards paying for much of my college tuition. And I didn't have any money. So I said, "Alright." And circumstances there were such that I thought it was maybe time to move on anyway. — Jon Gordon

Hearing Sonny Rollins live... that was really amazing. There were so many things that really blew me away at that time [of schooling]. — Jon Gordon

The more energy you spend worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus, the less you will have for the people who are on your bus. And if you are worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus you won't have the energy to keep on asking new people to get on. — Jon Gordon

If you want to make [your own way in music] it as a player, which is very difficult, as Art Blakey said to me, "We're blessed to have the opportunity to do this." So just keep that in mind. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

A guy like Scott [Robinson] plays the whole history of music on every instrument you've ever heard of. He's just kind of an unparalleled genius. — Jon Gordon

Love takes time. It's a process not a goal. Love is something that needs to be nurtured. But if there is one thing I urge you to start immediately it's focus on bringing out the best in each person on your team. When you love someone you want the best for him. You want him to shine. And the best way to do this is to help him discover the value inside him. — Jon Gordon

When you fuel up with purpose you find the excitement in the mundane, the passion in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary. — Jon Gordon

I was studying with Joe Allard, which was great, as a saxophone student. Being able to study with Joe Allard was an incredible experience. — Jon Gordon

When I got to Performing Arts, within the first week, a few days, Bill Charlap walked in and couldn't read music but he's playing all these solos from Keith Emerson of ELP, and Rick Wakeman from Yes. Real impressive rock piano and keyboard things. And we had really, truly amazing young 13-14 year old classical players in our year who had been practicing six, eight hours a day for eight years. So it was like "Whoa." — Jon Gordon

[Winning the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition]definitely opened some doors. — Jon Gordon

Alan [Ferber] is a great trombonist and composer. I'm thankful that I got some associations like that through peers and former students. That's kind of what it is. — Jon Gordon

Bill Charlap and I recorded a tune that Jack [Montrose] wrote and had brought to a date with Bob that was untitled. Bob [Gordon] really loved it and asked if he would mind if they dedicated it to Sue and call it "For Sue." — Jon Gordon

I love to see people recognized [me on scene]. — Jon Gordon

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. — Jon Gordon

I've been thankful to work with some wonderful people and sort of combine forces with some folks that... like in recent years, working with Alan Ferber or his brother Mark who's a wonderful drummer. — Jon Gordon

Definitely I had a lot of times where I was really hard on myself. Really frustrated. But I never felt like I had someplace else to go. Just had to stay here and deal with this. — Jon Gordon

Larry [ Laurenzano] said to me one day near the end of junior high, "Jon, are you Jewish?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well neither am I. I'm not sure of Caesar DiMauro, but he teaches at the JCC and I got you a scholarship there." — Jon Gordon

We [with my mother] listened to music when I was a kid. We listened to a little bit of Bob's [Gordon] music, but just a little, I think it was too painful for her. — Jon Gordon

I feel very similarly. I didn't have necessarily the same exact kind of dynamic, but that means a lot when people are like that with you. Especially people like that. And I think [Phil Wood] felt a certain responsibility . — Jon Gordon

Life Lessons by Jon Gordon

1. Jon Gordon's work emphasizes the importance of positivity and optimism in the workplace, teaching that a positive attitude can be a powerful tool for success.
2. He also encourages collaboration and teamwork, demonstrating how working together can help to create a successful and productive environment.
3. Lastly, Gordon emphasizes the importance of effective communication, showing how it can help to build strong relationships and foster a healthy workplace.