Thank you 2025.

A lot of lessons I walk away with this year.

Growing up is messy. There’s no way to avoid it. It will be filled with mistakes, and both love and despair so deep for the world around you. Every year, I tell myself “this has been the most transformative year of my life”. And the year after, I’m always proven wrong.

That’s how I know I’m doing something right.

2025 was one of the shortest, most spontaneous years of my life so far. I found myself at events with billionaires and CEOs as I worked in Silicon Valley, survived a shooting, became a hijabi, and almost dropped out of Berkeley (in no particular order).

Throughout the past year, I’ve kept a list in my notes app of lessons that I’ve learnt or that I am in the midst of learning. I’ve documented every time my opinion has changed, every time I’ve regretted something, and every time I had a passing thought I wish I could’ve shared with my younger self.

As an underlying pattern, some of my biggest struggles this year were self-esteem, comparison, impostor syndrome, cognitive dissonance, and cultural and familial expectations. Despite the outward success, I struggled a lot.

But through it all, I have always come to the same conclusion: I am capable of doing hard things and getting through my worst days.

As the end of the year approaches, I’ve compiled this list into something cohesive to post online as I continue to reflect on how much I’ve grown, failed, and tried again. Take from it what resonates.

So here’s the (brutally honest) lessons I’m walking away with this year:

• Your growth is not proof that people will be able to hold you better.

• Things could have been different, but they weren’t. Don’t live in an imaginary future.

• Ambition without purpose is just insecurity and people-pleasing in disguise.

• The only way to survive your twenties is to stop taking yourself so seriously. Treat embarrassment as a luxury for a life well-lived.

• Platonic love cannot replace romantic love, but it can set the standard for it.

• You can love a place and still know you’ve outgrown it.

• Picking apart your mistakes and flaws but never acknowledging your goodness isn’t self-awareness, it’s just intellectualized self-hatred.

• Sometimes it’s not that people have bad intentions, it’s that they have no intentions. And that’s equally dangerous, if not more.

• You are allowed to want a different life than your family.

• Success is a responsibility. Become the type of person who can handle it with dignity — and more importantly — humility.

• That said, if you come from an underrepresented background, being humble can harm you in certain contexts. You have to be audacious about your achievements in the right rooms.

• Don’t send that text if you know you won’t be apathetic to the response.

• You’ll be the villain in some stories, and the hero in others. Both stories hold an element of fiction and an element of truth.

• You’re not depressed, just play 2000s bangers while making pasta and dancing in the kitchen.

• Keep posting consistently even if you don’t have vanity metrics. Nothing is cringe unless you make it so, and you can delete and restart anytime.

• Publish the essay you feel is still in progress.

• Not every argument needs to be won. You don’t need to defend yourself in every situation if you can easily remove yourself.

• Even if someone is not present, defend them and their privacy fiercely. Never talk poorly about people you’re no longer connected to.

• Rest without guilt is not weakness. Not everything needs to be productive.

• Do NOT under any circumstances trust your mind the week before your period. You should probably get a PMDD diagnosis, too.

• Keep chocolate in your bag in case anyone has a bad day.

• Start treating your parents with the same patience as you would a child, but do whatever you want.

• Reading fiction is the easiest way to get out of a rut and stop rumination. It’s been how I’ve consistently pulled myself out of it during the lowest times in my life for the past five years.

• Lash lifts are a holy grail.

• Don’t overuse lash lifts or your lashes will look like curly fries (this was written three months after the last bullet point).

• The way you stumble into opportunities and friendships is to do a bunch of side quests. Meet people, go to events, try as many things as humanly possible.

• Text your friends paragraphs about how much they mean to you at 3 am.

• If you struggle with overthinking/anxiety read meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

• Modesty and religion is not a performance and should not be centered around male approval.

• Spend your twenties in a big city. Your future self will thank you for the network.

• For my Muslim girls: apply anyway, even if your family doesn’t approve. The only way to move forward is to make decisions for yourself.

• Unconditional love does not mean unconditional forgiveness.

• If someone doesn’t want you in their life, then you will disrespect yourself if you try to change their mind.

• Be terrifyingly open and direct and assume the same behavior from others. If someone doesn’t directly communicate their problems with you, it’s not your job to dwell.

• You don’t need another winter arc, your nervous system needs a break.

• Sometimes, you don’t get through things because you can, but because you must. The important thing is you do get through them. You just have to decide one day that enough is enough.

• Go to the gym at least 3x a week. Eat voraciously after.

• People are not entitled to your information, not everyone has good motives. Be kind but careful of what you say and to who.

• Learn to see the magic in how far you’ve come rather than how much you’ve yet to achieve.

• Stop comparing your success to that of those who have never known even half of your adversity and who grew up in environments that made their success easier. No two people have the same lives.

• Use your own success to uplift those whom you haven’t ever known half of their adversity and who grew up in more difficult environments. No two people have the same lives.

• Don’t take the brand partnership with Microsoft, no matter how tempting.

• The world confuses loudness with value, and virality with impact. If you aren’t grounded, you will too.

• Document your life.

• There will always be someone better, more beautiful, successful, wittier. But there are always people who are worse. Both types of people get to be loved.

• Convincing yourself people are thinking enough about you to be judging you is actually incredibly self-centered.

• Start seeing hijab as an act of love. One of my favorite things a friend said was “Malice and resentment should be regretted, but love ought not to be a regret. A commitment made of love ought not to be regretted.”

• People are not replaceable. Adult relationships/friendships require the art of repair as opposed to replacement.

• Rosters will never make sense to me.

• Learn the difference between networking and building friendships. Business is business.

• You actually can’t learn CS 2 days before an exam.

• Growing and learning from mistakes doesn’t mean you have to torture yourself over them.

• Don’t drop out just to join a startup. There are companies that will let you stay in school.

• Don’t let competitive environments convince you that social and professional capital are the most important things about you. The most groundbreaking, life-changing work is by who you are to the people you are directly in contact with. The kid you inspired, the friend you offered a shoulder to cry on. The world spins on that.

• Master the art of making those around you feel seen. Stop responding with advice when a friend is ranting and start asking questions.

• Learn to decipher which values were easier to follow in your environment, and which you truly resonate with.

• Start hosting public speaking events, you have so much to offer and say!

• Pray tahajjud.

• Out of sight, out of mind is overrated. True healing means that even if something is in sight, it can stay out of your mind.

• Ask favors back from transactional people.

• Your suffering and endurance is not the most interesting or absolving thing about you.

• Be obnoxiously audacious. Reach out to people, follow up. If you want something, ask. Closed mouths don’t get fed.

• Build diverse friendships. Don’t just stick to people who are similar to you, allow your views and mindset to be challenged. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck in an echo chamber.

• Confidence is a cycle. The key is learning how to ride the waves and having a belief system to fall back on.

• Glasses are NOT for everyone.

• You’d be surprised how many people are out there that you haven’t met but will love.

• Make a habit of praying Isha at the masjid.

• Befriend children and elderly.

• Admiration/love is not more valuable if it is earned by strangers rather than given freely by the people directly in your life.

• Get into the habit of making lists.

• May be controversial, but your friends’ drama is not your own. Don’t burn bridges on behalf of other people (case by case scenario ofc).

• Send regular check ins to those in your network building cool things.

• Some friendships are only held together by nostalgia, not shared identity.

• You can leave doors open without standing by them.

• It’s not embarrassing to be publicly excited and celebratory. Being in a regular state of happiness or gratitude doesn’t make you naive or ditzy.

• If you’re not going to do anything about it, there’s no point in wondering about it.

• A lot of your problems, limitations, and fears stem from a scarcity mindset.

• If you can’t believe in your own capability, then believe in Allah’s

• If you don’t actually have a startup idea, don’t start one.

• You don’t need to villainize or hate others or yourself in order to make peace with certain situations.

• Don’t accept work unpaid unless it’s for a good cause, and even then be selective of your time so you don’t stretch yourself too thin.

• The older you get, the more whimsical you should be.

• You don’t need to delete social media. You just need to stop looking at peoples stuff and only post your own.

• It’s okay to want more. It’s also okay to want less.

• Grief doesn’t go away overnight, your life just slowly expands outward.

• Forgetting the grief is also something worth grieving.

• Let the people in your life echo back to you who you are when you forget.

• You don’t need a good environment, you need sheer willpower to work your way out of a bad one.

• Not everyone is out to get you. Hypervigilance and paranoia are not always gut instincts.

• If you feel like doing something impulsive, schedule a deadline. Once you reach that deadline you can decide if you’d still like to act on your impulse.

• If you get the chance, spend hours swimming in the ocean.

• Order your family their favorite foods to surprise them regularly.

• Change your relationsip with money. Realize how much there truly is in circulation and demand more of it from your environment.

• Be proud of your achievements, but humble enough to remember who you are without them. Its not just your success, it’s Allah’s plan.

• Culture influences a lot of religion. Learn to see through it.

• Pick one side project and stick with it instead of doing multiple things at once.

• You will hurt people. People will hurt you. The world keeps spinning, you each keep growing.

Thank you guys for being here and growing alongside me, as always. Can’t wait to document 2026 and share what I’ve learned along the way!