अथ चित्तं समाधातुं न शक्नोषि मयि स्थिरम्।अभ्यासयोगेन ततो मामिच्छाप्तुं धनञ्जय॥
atha cittaṃ samādhātuṃ na śaknoṣi mayi sthiramabhyāsa-yogena tato mām icchāptuṃ dhanañjaya
Word by word
The verse says
If you cannot settle your mind on me steadily, then try to reach me by the practice of repetition, Arjuna.
In plain words
Atha — if. The first of three.
He has just given the instruction and now he assumes it did not work.
And the fallback is abhyāsa-yoga — repetition. Not a cleverer method. The same thing, done again.
Where you've felt this · in sport
You cannot swim a length without stopping. Nobody suggests you concentrate harder. You swim as far as you can, four times a week, and in two months the length happens without being attempted.
Going deeper
Being offered a lower rung rather than more encouragement is what makes this passage trustworthy.
The ideal was stated in verse 8. Here, immediately, is the accommodation — and it is not a watered-down version of the goal but a different route to it. Repetition does not require you to manage what you just failed at. It requires you to turn up.
Chapter 6 made the same offer in the same words, when Arjuna said the mind was as hard to hold as the wind and was told practice would still do it.
The quiet claim underneath is that capacity is built rather than summoned. Nobody holds their attention anywhere by deciding to. They do something often enough that the attention goes by itself, and the verse treats that as the normal case rather than the lesser one.