Dhriti is one of those words people use to make themselves sound serious. Grit, determination, backbone, the kind of thing that goes under a finish line photo on a LinkedIn bio. The Bhagwad Gita is less impressed by that bio.
In chapter 18, verses 33 to 35, Krishna says there are three kinds of dhriti, and most of what gets called determination is either one of the bad two.
Sattvic dhriti is the steadiness that holds your mind, breath, and senses pointed at something true, and it is almost always invisible. It looks like the man in the back office who has been closing the books accurately for thirty years and gets mildly embarrassed when somebody thanks him. It looks like the swimmer in the slow lane at 5 AM in February, when the next race is six months away. The effort and the reward are not connected in this version, which is exactly why it lasts.
Rajasic dhriti is the version with a payoff attached. You are disciplined because there is a promotion, a body, a number, a medal, or a transformation post at the end of it. It is enormous fuel and produces some of the most impressive 90 day performances on the planet. It also tends to vanish about ten minutes after the prize lands, or when the prize starts looking further away than it did in January.
Tamasic dhriti is the part of the verse that made me laugh the first time I read it properly. Krishna lists, in plain words, what tamasic people are heroically committed to. Sleep. Fear. Grief. Despondency. Arrogance. Yes, you can be deeply disciplined about staying afraid. The promoter who has been "about to turn it around" for eleven years is exercising tamasic dhriti. The senior leader who will not retire because his identity is the corner office is exercising tamasic dhriti. The uncle who has not spoken to his brother since 2009 because of one sentence said at a wedding is exercising tamasic dhriti. So is the colleague who keeps defending the 2018 strategy in 2025 board meetings, with passion, while everyone slowly stops making eye contact.
Krishna calls this person durmedha, which translates literally to dull-witted, a translation that flatters nobody.
Dhriti only means holding on. The verses split it by what is doing the holding. The first is held by clarity. The second by appetite. The third by ego dressed as commitment. From the outside the three are indistinguishable. They all look like a man refusing to quit.
Most of the very determined people I have known are running on the second one and praying it stretches one more quarter. A worrying number are running on the third and calling it leadership.
The question worth asking yourself today is what is actually keeping you steady. The truth, the prize, or the fear of admitting you were wrong.