However, the former first minister said he would encourage anyone to take up the top job – including his own daughters – despite the level of toxicity they could face.
Reflecting on the last year, he said: “It’s been an absolute rollercoaster of a year and I actually look to 2025 with a bit of trepidation.
“When we got to January 1 2024, I wouldn’t have thought in that same year that I would have stopped being first minister.”
But he then added: “If I’m being truthful, I probably thought there was a chance because the party was always going to struggle in the general election.
“And the chances are very different to John – he was only in for a few weeks.
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“I would have been in for a period of time by then. I probably would have found it difficult to have held on.
“This is coming from me personally, regardless of the pressure I would have received, I probably personally felt responsible for that result given I would have been leader for over a year.
“I probably thought there was a chance that it would come to an end but not quite in the fashion and the speed in which it happened.”
Mr Yousaf went on to reflect on the sudden transition to the SNP backbenches, and the concern that caused him for the future.
“Leaving government and leaving the office of first minister was hard. It’s not just the circumstance because I’ve always believed that as soon as I entered politics, it’s obviously going to come to an end at some point,” he told The Herald.
“It’s more that it’s one heck of an adjustment in the first few days, weeks, even to a point, months.
“But certainly in the first few weeks it’s a really difficult adjustment in some respects. It’s like falling off the edge of a cliff and you’ve got to just find your way through.”
Humza Yousaf is interviewed by The Herald’s political correspondent Rebecca McCurdy in his Scottish Parliament office. (Image: Gordon Terris/NQ) Mr Yousaf resigned in May 2024 after he abruptly ended the power-sharing deal the SNP held with the Scottish Greens.
A saving grace for him came just over two months later with the birth of his daughter Liyana, now five months. He shares daughter Amal and step-daughter Maya with his wife Nadia El-Nakla, an SNP councillor in Dundee.
“Suddenly all of the concerns and anxieties I had were put into perspective with the wonderful birth of my child.”
But he admitted that he could not have prepared for the anxiety and silence that would come from leaving office.
“The silence is really strange,” he said.
“When you’re first minister, I always say you’re never alone, yet it is the loneliest job in the world because no one quite understands, other than the people who had been first minister before, what you’re going through.
“But you’re also never alone. Your private secretary is constantly in your room, special advisers want to talk to you, the phone is constantly ringing. There’s urgent submissions being put under your nose. You’re working until late, late at night.
“You are just never alone and there’s never silence.
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“But then you stop being first minister and there’s not many people ringing your phone. There’s no FMQs prep and all of the madness that goes with a Wednesday night FMQs prep.
“Actually, the silence really struck me in the first little while. But you definitely go through a transformation, it’s a journey that you’re on.”
He added: “You have that almost anxiety about ‘what do I do next?’ But then you suddenly get quite excited about the fact that you can talk about issues that you care about deeply.
“It’s definitely been a journey but one that is perhaps in a much better phase now that it was in the first few weeks.”
During his time as first minister, Mr Yousaf received a barrage of abuse, and he regularly spoke out on the Islamophobia he received.
A month before his resignation, racist graffiti was sprayed on walls and fences near his Dundee home. Before that, death threats had been made involving his children, and sexual threats involving his wife.
As he looks to the future, he has said he would “100%” tell any of his three daughters to enter politics – but he’d tell them to go in with their “eyes wide open”, particularly because “as women of colour they will get a different scale of abuse and misogyny”.