Put your own oxygen mask on first in 2025

Two hard years, at home and abroad

Muzamil opens with a new year greeting and an admission: he had been away on a short break. Then he looks back. Over the last two years, he says, Pakistan saw negativity, despondency and hopelessness. Supporters of one party may tell him it was not that bad, but the economic data showed hard conditions and instability.

He stresses that this was not only a Pakistani story. After inflation hit America in 2022, the Fed raised interest rates. The easy money that had been flowing into startups dried up, and layoffs and shutdowns followed. Politically, he sees people across the world unhappy and demanding change: Donald Trump elected again in America, unrest in Britain, and unstable governments in France, Germany and across Europe.

Why he expects 2025 to be better

Muzamil is optimistic. “Personally, I feel 2025 will finally be the year when hope and optimism come back to Pakistan,” he says. His reasoning is that Pakistan hit rock bottom in 2024 and things cannot get much worse. Once stability returns, whatever people think of the settlement, he expects them to breathe a sigh of relief. He expects no sudden turnaround. He does expect sentiment to improve month on month and quarter on quarter.

He also notes the scale of 2024 as an election year. More than 100 countries held elections, with a combined population of about 3.5 billion people. In his reading, Trump’s win marks an anti-establishment, anti-status quo narrative that will travel far, with a wave of populism in Pakistan, Europe and elsewhere. He expects established power structures to weaken and face pressure toward negotiated settlements. He adds that much of this sentiment is right-wing or anti-immigrant, and that whether its results are good or bad is a separate debate. His point is about mood: when people feel they got what they wanted, a sense of calm follows.

He also expects big shifts in geopolitics, economics and technology in 2025 that will change how people work and earn. But he leaves those for future videos.

Stop for two minutes and look at yourself

The heart of the episode is personal. A new year is an arbitrary date, Muzamil admits, but it is a good moment to reassess and restart.

He acknowledges that some viewers found his 2024 videos depressing. He had been warning about inflation, stagnation and coming changes. He explains that seeing a problem does not have to mean despair. Many people got rich in the Great Depression, and he says Hollywood’s big studios emerged in that period, as cheap entertainment. “Individuals find opportunity even in adversity,” he says.

Then he asks the viewer to do something specific. Forget, for a moment, the politics, the state of the system and the injustice in the world. “Stop for two minutes and just look at where your baseline is today,” he says. Where are you standing? What do you want? More money, better investments, peace of mind, a good relationship, marriage and a simple life, or better fitness? Goals differ, and all of them count.

The power of being selfish

Muzamil calls this being selfish, on purpose. People may blame the rich or an institution for ruining the country. “Maybe you are right, maybe you are wrong, I don’t know,” he says. “But the fact of the matter is that you have no control over any of those things.”

His example is migration. While many people spent the last two years angry and cursing everyone, he says, around 10 lakh Pakistanis left the country. You can read that as proof the country is falling apart. Or, thinking selfishly, you can see 10 lakh people who worked out a way to reach their goals in the middle of the crisis. They were not all privileged. Many were taxi drivers and labourers who decided at the start of the year that they would leave, and did.

He describes people stuck in a loop of depressing videos, political news and Twitter commentary, with no mental space left. That time, he argues, could go to learning new skills, upgrading a career, or finding a path abroad for those who want to leave.

He believes his viewers have the tools to do this. Anyone who found their way past vlogs and roasting videos to his channel, he says, likely has internet access, a phone or laptop, education, and the sense to use the knowledge online.

Ignore the noise and work quietly

Muzamil says growth is easy when times are good. The test is bad times. He talks to many freelancers and young people who keep their heads down and focus on their goals. Through his Ask Muzamil channel and his community, he says, he has seen Pakistanis inside the country build skills and earn thousands of dollars from global clients in 2024, while others said everything was ruined. He also knows overseas Pakistanis who shielded themselves from the political and economic noise and are calmer and happier for it.

He is honest about his own year. Being on YouTube in 2024 was hard, he says. Comment sections were full of abuse, and he admits it hurts, as it does for every creator he knows. But he does not blame those people. He sees negativity as a cycle: someone receives negative energy and passes it on to ten others. “Positive energy creates positive energy and negative energy creates negative energy,” he says.

His fix is the airline safety rule. Put on your own mask before helping others. In Pakistan, he says, people keep looking left and right at what others are doing. Instead, ask what is in your control: internet, information, a bank account, a smartphone, education. With those, he says, he is probably in Pakistan’s top 5%, so he should be able to improve his life, at home or abroad.

That includes hard personal steps. Keep a polite distance from relatives or friends who bring negative energy. Seek professional help or therapy for relationship or mental health problems. Calm yourself through meditation, prayer or yoga, whatever your system is. “I will not push my problems under the carpet,” he says.

A positive morning and slow, steady steps

Muzamil shares a personal change. When he started waking early to drop his son at school, he noticed the sunlight and the beautiful roads, and his mood improved. He worked better and had better ideas. In the same period, he says, payments that had been stuck came in, and new, better-paying projects arrived. In his experience, the energy you put out is the energy you get back.

He reminds viewers that life is a marathon. The last two years do not define a whole life, and the next two will not transform it. He looks back at his own small decisions and says he could easily have gone a different way, like some boys from his school who fell into drugs.

He has noticed the same thing in successful people he has met, including podcast guests. Many came from broken homes, lost parents early or struggled for money, yet they speak about it calmly and focus on solutions. “Whatever circumstance you come from, I can bring you a success story from that same circumstance,” he says. He empathises with real hardship, he adds, but believes hard work must continue and that good times follow bad in cycles.

His own plan for 2025

Muzamil closes with his own goals. He wants to give his family safety and security. He admits he has never built wealth, because he kept investing money in people. This year, he says, he will think selfishly: grow his income, learn to invest, raise his net worth, and find some peace. He plans to share what he learns in videos.

His last advice is to find mentors and growth-minded people, and to work on weaknesses such as communication, skills and confidence. He mentions that after moving to Dubai he struggled to find a good social circle, which is why he built an online community of educated, growth-minded Pakistanis around the world, with a weekly live session. Surround yourself with people who build and solve problems, he says, and hope comes back on its own.