Concentrating on God in prayer

I have never used the memory palace technique but a similar thing I have tried to use in fixing the mind on a single continuous activity .Like for instance ,while praying .I have never properly understood how to focus my mind on God during the five or ten minutes of prayer because the mind does not remain thoughtless in the duration .In the Hindu religion idol worship is practiced primarily to enable your mind to be fixed on God during prayer. But then the mind has to be fixed on a static object for a full five or ten minutes ,which is a difficult thing to do. I have therefore evolved my own method of fixing the mind on the mental activity of doing "the walk around" in the temple .Visual imagination can perhaps be used to do such a walk around .I am not sure if my thoughts do not stray during the walk around in the process of making the journey as pleasant as possible. The obvious inconvenient question that should arise out of this is: "is this prayer?" I am not sure of the answer.