Jon Gordon
Successful people do ordinary things with extraordinary consistency, commitment and focus.Collection: Commitment
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.Collection: Believe
The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday.Collection: Yesterday
Being positive won’t guarantee you’ll succeed. But being negative will guarantee you won’t.Collection: Being Positive
Great leaders don't succeed because they are great. They succeed because they bring out the greatness in others.Collection: Greatness
Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.Collection: Motivational
A man goes to the village to visit the wise man and he says to the wise man, “I feel like there are two dogs inside me. One dog is this positive, loving, kind, and gentle dog and then I have this angry, mean-spirited, and negative dog and they fight all the time. I don't know which is going to win.” The wise man thinks for a moment and he says, “I know which is going to win. The one you feed the most, so feed the positive dog.Collection: Wise
Leadership is not just about what you do but what you can inspire, encourage and empower others to do.Collection: Empowering
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.Collection: Names
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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Tired
So often the difference between success and failure is belief. Belief leads to action and execution.Collection: Differences
You need to work as hard to be a great teammate as you do to be a great playerCollection: Basketball
Thoughts are magnetic. What we think about we attract.Collection: Thinking
Every morning you have a choice. Are you going to be a positive thinker or a negative thinker? Positive thinking will energize you.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Stay Strong
Optimism is a competitive advantage.Collection: Optimism
Adversity is not a dead end but a detour to a better outcome than you can imagine!Collection: Adversity
Challenges ONLY make you STRONGER!!!Collection: Stay Positive
Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow.Collection: Optimism
The only person who can limit your possibilities is you.Collection: Motivation
Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.Collection: Optimistic
There's a story about when President Lyndon Johnson visited NASA and as he was walking the halls he came across a janitor who was cleaning up a storm, like the Energizer bunny with a mop in his hand. The president walked over to the janitor and told him he was the best janitor he has ever seen and the janitor replied, "Sir, I'm not just a janitor, I helped put a man on the moon." See, even though he was cleaning floors he had a bigger purpose and vision for his life. This is what kept him going and helped him excel in his job.Collection: Jobs
If you think your best days are behind you, they are. If you think your best days are ahead of you, they are.Collection: Motivation
Don't waste your energy on those who don't get on your bus.Collection: Energy
By the latter part of high school, by the middle of junior year in high school, Jay Rodriguez played me some Irakere records that that Paquito [D'Rivera] was on. And he also played me and our friend, Curtis Haywood, some Phil Woods records. And when I heard Phil, I just about lost my mind. I was playing the Charlie Parker Omnibook as part of my lessons. This was the '80s. There was no YouTube and all that. And we had three or four jazz records at that point.Collection: School
One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else.Collection: Office
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.Collection: Team
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."Collection: Men
Letting people share their gifts and strengths is real love.Collection: Real
Enthusiasm attracts more passengers and energizes them during the ride.Collection: Enthusiasm
Dust on gold doesn't change the nature of gold.Collection: Dust
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.Collection: Mean
Barry Harris had a club called Jazz Cultural Theater and there were sessions there on a regular basis. I remember being there and sitting in with [Charles] McPherson and Barry being there, and just smiling at me. He didn't talk to me much at the time, he just came up and gave me a smile, which meant a lot. I've since gotten to know him and been around him a little bit.Collection: Littles
I was really falling in love with jazz and dedicating myself in that direction.Collection: Falling In Love
I just lucked into a lot of good people man. In my life and through friends, and in the music, that really embraced me and took care of me. I'm a lucky guy.Collection: Men
A tenor player named Bud Revels there at the time. A lot of really nice associations amongst the students. Garry Dial was a returning student. He actually got me on Red Rodney's band subbing a little bit. I gigged some with Red when I was 21 in 1988. So I had a lot of nice associations that came from [ Laguardia School of Arts]. But a lot of my education was going on in the clubs. Hearing music and sitting in.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Senior
You fuel your life with trust and love instead of fear and doubt.Collection: Doubt
Joe Henderson with Ron Carter and Al Foster at the Vanguard was just wow. And the energy of the three of them.Collection: Energy
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.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Broadway
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.Collection: People
I'm reaching a certain level [at school] that I had been aspiring to with all these incredibly advanced classical peers around me that I had been trying to be able to hang with them a little bit.Collection: School
I was finishing up at High School of Performing Arts and finally, by the end of junior year and start of senior year, made some progress as a 16 year-old classical saxophone player. But not really... not like how the legit cats do. But I love the [Jacques] Ibert, love [Alexander] Glazunov, love the [Paul] Creston.Collection: Senior
I definitely had some moments, where, "Wow, these were some hard chords" on some gig.Collection: Gigs
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.Collection: Mom
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.Collection: Frustrated
I went in [Sweet Basil band] and played with them, maybe half the gig for almost eight years or more.Collection: Sweet
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.Collection: School