Brain training does not focus on trying to change the conscious mind. Brain training changes the underlying patterns best without the “thinking” mind. What we really need is a “mirror”.
Aerobic exercise, yoga and weight training don’t require you to think about what you are doing or learn any tricks. They produce changes in how the body responds automatically by stretching it regularly over a period of time. But doing aerobic exercise is probably better if you use a pulse-meter. The feedback tells you when you are working too hard—or not hard enough—and when you are in the most efficient training range. Yoga or Pilates are often done with a mirror to allow you to see if you are maintaining the proper position to maximize the effect.
Brain training also uses feedback to mirror to the brain itself how effectively it is working. Games or music or graphs or video files are among the “mirrors” that are part of training. You don’t have to “figure out” or “understand” feedback with the thinking mind. In fact, thinking too much can actually block it. The feedback responds to what the brain is doing—often with as little as ¼ second delay. It is too fast and too mobile for the mind to make sense of. It works at the speed of the brain.
One of the brain’s main jobs is to notice and learn from environmental responses to specific actions it performs. Each motor activity is tracked to see how what actually was done compared with what the brain thought it was doing. Mirrors in the environment aren’t very consistent. One time a child says something jokingly to a parent or teacher, the result is a laugh. Another time the response may be angry. But the feedback mirror of brain training software is consistent and immediate. The mind doesn’t necessarily know what the brain is doing, so it can’t “understand” the feedback, but the brain can.
Consistently training without “thinking about” it or trying to “make it happen” with your conscious mind, you can guide your brain to letting go of an old habit and forming a new one that can produce lasting changes in many of the “automatic” things that seem to happen in your life—and change them in ways you like better.