NJ professor's uplifting messages have inspired many for 30 years, including Sen. Booker

Rob Gilbert, a Montclair State University professor who has been leaving inspirational messages on his answering machine daily for the past 30 years, has legions of fans.

The sports psychology professor, who started recording the three-minute motivational missives for his students in 1992, logs thousands of incoming calls every week from all over the world, including from celebrities who have asked him to keep mum about their habit.

But one famous fan is an exception: Cory Booker, U.S. senator from New Jersey. Booker recently gave the professor's mission a shoutout on social media, and afterward, Gilbert said, he got so many calls that he was afraid the response would crash his answering system.

In an interview with NorthJersey.com, Booker recounted how Gilbert came to Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan in 1987 to speak to his senior class and how his messages have made a difference in his life at crucial moments over the past 30 years.

Five years after Gilbert spoke at his high school, Booker was at Stanford University, having graduated with undergraduate andmaster's degrees."I was in a challenging period of my life," said Booker, who played tight end in college. "My football career had ended, and I was competing for an international scholarship.

"A high school friend asked me if I remembered 'that sports psychology professor from MSU' and told me that he'd started something called Success Hotline, where people could call in to his machine to get motivational messages," Booker said.

He dialed the number: 973-743-4690. The messages "really empowered me and motivated me, and I won the scholarship," he said.

Booker was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, graduated from Yale Law School, and was elected mayor of Newark and then U.S. senator from New Jersey.

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During those 30 years, "I forgot about the hotline. I didn't call when I was in law school or in my Newark council and mayor days — but I wish I had," he said with a laugh.

Then, in January, as Booker embarked on a personal workout challenge in which he pledged to run every day and then post a motivational message on social media, some of Gilbert's stories starting popping into his mind. "Something made me search to find the number," he said. "I was blown away to find he was still there 30 years later and has been posting messages every day since."

Positive messages can go viral, too

Though Gilbert, a 75-year-old Bloomfield resident, isn't on social media, he quickly discovered that the senator had featured him on Instagram and TikTok when "hundred and hundreds" of calls poured in on a Sunday, a generally quiet day. Many of the callers left messages saying they had heard about him from Booker's posts.

Booker said the posts were among the highest-performing he's ever had, with hundreds of thousands of views. He's "tickled" that Gilbert went viral despite being strictly analog. "He has a freakin' AOL account," he said with a laugh. "That is so charming to me. Before Twitter and Facebook, it was a guy and an answering machine, and it still is."

(In one concession to digital natives, all of Gilbert's 11,500+ messages are now available on Apple and other podcast apps as "Success Hotline.")

'Everyone should be teaching motivation'

Gilbert doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. "Everyone should be teaching motivation," he said. "A teacher's No. 1 job is not information — students can get all the information they want on the internet — it's inspiration."

He is also a big advocate of teaching stress-reduction techniques, and offers a free relaxation seminar to hotline callers a couple of times a month. "Kids have so much anxiety today," Gilbert said. "Nothing against medication — sometimes you need it — but I like to say, 'Are you going to learn skills or take pills? Do medication or meditation?'

Photos:Move-In Day at Montclair State University

"My No. 1 principle is that everything you need is inside of you," he said. "If you are anxious, it's just because you haven't been taught how to relax; if you think you have a terrible memory, you just don't have a trained memory."

Coming up with ideas to fill a three-minute message each morning — 11,500 messages and counting − isn't difficult, he said: "Nature abhors a vacuum. If I know that I have to fill that vacuum every day at 7:30 so, consciously or unconsciously, my mind is always working on it, noticing things and thinking about how to fill that void."

At the beginning of his answering machine recording, Gilbert invites people to leave a message, and some callers have told him there that they called when they were suicidal and listening to his messages saved their lives.

His proudest accomplishment, though, is that teachers from all over the country play his message every day in their classrooms.

"Now more than ever there needs to be good solid information out there, because there's a lot of not-good, not-solid information out there," he said. "Your core beliefs come from who you listen to."

He's often asked how he makes money off Success Hotline. "The answer is: I don't. I don't even want to make money off it; it's my gift to the world," he said. "I'm lucky enough to be a college professor who has been supported the last 43 years by Montclair State. They have given me the opportunity to teach these great kids. The least I could do is spend three minutes a day giving back."

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Not surprisingly, Gilbert was himself mentored, while getting a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. On a whim, he'd taken a course as an undergraduate with the father of sports psychology, Walter Kroll, and was hooked. Kroll continued to check in on him until his death three years ago.

Gilbert's uplifting, supportive approach is something Booker is trying to emulate.

"Divisive rhetoric is one of the great threats to our country," Booker said. "We denigrate people who don't vote like us. As Lincoln said, 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'

"But our division is not as strong as what ties us together," he continued. "I'm very determined to be a champion for infrastructure, the child care tax credit, commonsense gun safety and more. But I also want to change politics. My platform, my message, is about kindness and common virtues; it's not about tearing people down but about lifting them up."

Gilbert's lifework shows that positive messages can go viral, too, Booker said. "The more good he does, the more empowered he is to do good. For 30 years he's touched people with his incredible stories, and in return others have shared their stories," he said. "It's this wonderful virtuous loop, a contagion of goodness.

"People plant seeds in your life, and, consciously or unconsciously, you harvest them, and Rob Gilbert is a great example. Now I find myself doing something this man has been doing more than half my life, planting stories and putting them forward.

"Rob Gilbert is a little gem in the craziness and negativity and divisiveness of the world," Booker said. "But a culture of contemplation is growing. His is a voice that speaks to virtue, that speaks to the unifying themes of humanity and speaks with love. I want more people to hear voices like that. I want to be a voice like that."

A technique guaranteed to motivate you

Here is a recent inspirational message from Rob Gilbert:

You've reached Success Hotline, message 11,502. I'm Dr. Rob Gilbert.

Have you ever been attacked by the I-don't-feel-like-its? I don't feel like going to work. I don't feel like studying. I don't feel like working out.

Well I learned this secret many, many years ago when the great Tom Fleming, one of the world's great marathon runners, came to my class. And he told my students that he trained by running 135 to 150 miles a week. I don't even drive that much and he's running that much! Then one of my students said, "Coach Fleming, do you always feel like running?" And he said something very revelatory.

He said, "Most days I don't feel like running until I start running." This is the key. See, your thoughts are not going to motivate you and your feelings are not going to motivate you. Your actions are going to motivate you. Your actions will change your attitudes, your motions will change your emotions and your movements will change your moods.

You can't trust your thoughts. Are you in control of your thoughts? For example, if you say, "Don't think of a pink elephant," what do you think of? A pink elephant!

It's much easier to act yourself into a certain way of feeling than to feel yourself into a certain way of acting.

So if you don't feel like working out, go to the gym. If you don't feel like studying, go to the library. Just do it and the feelings will show up.

Act the way you want to become and then you'll become the way you act.

This will not let you down.

Absolutely positively guaranteed. Message over.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Cory Booker huge fan of Montclair State professor's inspiring messages