1. Above all, remember who you are speaking to. Reflect on who Mary is. She is your mother and your queen; she loves you and is attentive to everything about you.
2. Be quick to turn to the rosary. Don’t put it off. When a problem comes up, turn to the rosary.
3. You do not have to be a saint, a “model Catholic,” or in any way “holy” to say the rosary. Quite the opposite: the more you sin, the more you’re going to need that rosary to get you out of the mess you made.
4. One easy way to say the whole rosary every day is to spread it out throughout the day. Pray one decade at a time when you get the chance.
5. Offer the rosary for a specific prayer intention. At the beginning of each decade, ask for the graces associated with that mystery (or any other grace you need). Offer each decade for a specific prayer intention. Offer each vocal prayer for some intention.
6. You’ll never lose count if you form the habit of moving to the next bead after you say “Amen.”
7. Don’t be concerned with praying the Rosary “correctly.”
8. If you don’t have time, or if your laziness is causing you to procrastinate, leave off the optional prayers. Make it easy for yourself to pray the rosary.
9. When praying in a group, you can take turns leading each decade. Each leader can offer his particular prayer intentions at the start of that decade.
10. Physical position is useful in prayer. Kneeling is itself an act of submission we give to others when we recognize that they are superior to us and not equal to us. You don’t always have to pray kneeling, though. You can pray sitting, walking, laying down, driving, etc.
11. Focus on the mysteries as your lips move to form the vocal prayers. Visualize the scene and enter into it. What do you see? Who else is there? What are they doing and feeling?
12. Let your attention move as it will between the words you are saying, the scene of the mystery, and your prayer intentions.
13. If you are distracted by thinking about a person, return your attention by offering up that Hail Mary for that person.
14. If you cannot focus on the meditation, simply bring your cares and present them to the Virgin. Disconnect from everything and place yourself at the feet of the Mother of God.
15. When you pray in Latin, you are connecting in a special way with the soul of Holy Mother Church, whose sacred language is Latin.
16. If you speak other languages, learn the rosary in those as well. You never know with whom you will need to pray.
17. When you buy a rosary, get it blessed immediately by a priest. A blessed rosary is a powerful channel of Grace, and has many indulgences attached to it.
18. Buy inexpensive rosaries and give them away often.
19. Finally, here is a short lesson from Mother Mary Loyola on the rosary as a personal devotion:

“Do you say your beads every day, Biddy?” an old Irishwoman was asked. “An is it a heathen ye’d be takin me for!” was the indignant reply. “Would I be niglictin’ the Mother o God by missin a day? An sure an it’s twice I be sayin it—only the first half o the Hail Mary the second time, an that I give her for herself; it’s mean to be always askin, so it is.”

We see, then, that there are many, very many ways of saying the Rosary. They are as various as our different characters, needs, and circumstances. No way will commend itself to all, or be suitable, perhaps, for the same person at all times. What we devise for ourselves will probably help us more than anything suggested by another. We may have several methods which may be varied, interwoven, set aside, as moods and seasons succeed one another.

What helps to-day may hinder to-morrow. But by a little effort and by practice we can come to be so at home in the scenes of our Lord’s Life, as contemplated in the Rosary, that we turn to them naturally in every necessity, and find in them all we need.