Rushing Through Prayer: How to Stop This Bad Habit?

[Melodeonist]

When I pray, I pray so fast, I slur my prayers. I whisper my prayers (can you think your prayers instead?), but when I pray, I pray really fast. I don’t know why either. It’s a very bad habit. However, if I were to pray slower, I would forget the words to the prayer.

How do you learn to enjoy praying, and how do you slow down prayers?

 

[OurLadysServant]

When I pray, I pray so fast, I slur my prayers. I whisper my prayers (can you think your prayers instead?), but when I pray, I pray really fast. I don’t know why either. It’s a very bad habit. However, if I were to pray slower, I would forget the words to the prayer.

How do you learn to enjoy praying, and how do you slow down prayers?

Everyone has this problem!

Forget about whether you are saying the prayers fast or slow,
Prayers can be said in your thoughts or out loud.
What matters is that you mean the words or sentence that you say.
If you mean the words you say it will slow you down a tiny bit.

 

[Jennifoo]

Hi there. I was instructed by a priest to always mouth my prayers, whether whispering or aloud. This includes spontaneous prayers. As for speed, I wouldn’t go so fast as to be slurring the words. How could anyone really grasp the words and meaning that way? On the other hand, it isn’t necessary to drag them out. I talk to God at about the same conversational speed as when I talk to a friend.

Hope this helps. May God bless your desire for a deeper prayer life.

 

[Melodeonist]

One of my problems is, I have trouble focusing on the prayers. I often focus on what I will do after I pray. I find this happening more when I am praying from my prayer book (I always pray the same prayers in the same order every day. Should I variate them to prevent them from getting boring?)

 

[St_Francis]

One of my problems is, I have trouble focusing on the prayers. I often focus on what I will do after I pray. I find this happening more when I am praying from my prayer book (I always pray the same prayers in the same order every day. Should I variate them to prevent them from getting boring?)

Whatever you do, it is important to persevere in doing the right thing.

Do you want to slow down your prayers? Do it. Each time you find yourself rushing, slow down. Forget the words when you slow down? Pick them back up if you can’t use a copy to read from.

Get distracted when you pray? This is very normal, and each time you find yourself doing it, you must gently (not angrily!) turn your attention back. In fact, you can ask the Holy Spirit to help you focus, and put yourself in the presence of God–recall to your mind that God is there with you and that you are about to speak with Him. (I actually imagine myself before a throne…)

Whenever you do something new, you will not do it well, and it will feel strange. This is uncomfortable and embarrassing – humbling in fact. Keep working on it, and you will get better at it and it will start to feel more comfortable.

 

[Nigel7]

Sometimes I won’t even complete the recitation of a prayer due to contemplation of a single phrase or word, like Jesus stops me right there to show me something. That’s how I stay focused in prayer, by really thinking about the words and entering into them, where you meet Jesus, where the Holy Spirit speaks and shows you stuff. There you’re not going through the motions but rather participating, listening, hearing.
We all get distracted though. It’s a noisy world, and we’re ltitle busy bodies with lots of lights and shiny things all around us most of the time.

 

[truetofaith]

I know I say my prayers too late at night and they take about 15 - 20 min. So I tend to rush them because I’m tired and need to get to bed.

I’ll try to start them earlier.

 

[LoveMercyGrace]

I’ve been listening to podcast of a reading of St Teresa of Avila’s book The Way of Perfection.
Very helpful talking about prayer.
You can find podcast at Discerning Hearts,
Audio Reflections
Way of Perfection audio.

St Teresa talks about the very concern you have and how to remedy it.

Blessings!

 

[zgraf]

*To make room in one’s life for the Eucharistic Savior, so that He may transform our life into His. Is that perhaps asking too much?

Indeed one has time to collect all kinds of useless things, as books, magazines, newspapers, to go around and sit in cafes, wasting fifteen minutes or half hours chattering in the streets. All these are wasted efforts in which little by little time and energy are squandered.

Would it not be possible to reserve to oneself even one hour in the morning in which one would not be distracted but recollected, in which strength would not be wasted but acquired to cope with the entire day? *

• Teresa Benedicta of the Cross