Story & Lesson Highlights with Polina Stepanova of Manhattan

Polina Stepanova shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Good morning Polina, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What are you most proud of building — that nobody sees?
This year I’ve been embracing a lot of significant life changes – pivoting from architecture roles to software engineering, becoming a permanent resident of the U.S., and getting engaged to the love of my life. My existence has felt as a whirlwind of emotions relating to every possible area of life, and while it has been easier than ever to lose myself in this messy and chaotic motion forward, I have found my personal North star in a new exciting project – mapStep. Still hidden from the public eye, mapStep is a culmination of my decade-long expertise in the field of architecture and my intentional dive into the depths of the technology world.

I follow the philosophy of dreaming big, and I know for certain that every idea imaginable is truly possible, and that is why in 2025 I am consistently building my own software engineering startup revolving around the architecture industry. It might be easy to drown in doubts particularly when the project has not been externally validated yet, but I believe we own it to ourselves to explore our magnificent creative potential to its fullest and be courageous enough to persist even in face of failure. While I am not revealing mapStep synopsis in full detail just yet, it will hinge on the intersection of architecture and software engineering to introduce automated simplified solutions and help us understand the world of the built environment much better. As the outdated industry standards are becoming completely obsolete, the need for better solutions is becoming more acute, and instead of shying away from the challenge, I am excited to jump right in!

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Polina, and I have many diverse callings in life. I feel like for people like myself – enthusiastic just about everything – it can be challenging to allocate time for all pursuits imaginable and even harder to define yourself by a single role in a single industry. The most succinct I can probably do is this: I am a software engineer and an architectural designer who has a YouTube channel. My brand name – Real Polya – comes from a combination of an inner desire to be authentic and my Russian nickname (Polya). My YouTube channel has adopted an identical name, and my architecture work can sometimes be recognized for bearing the same title (in architecture competitions, exhibitions, and media articles).

My current life revolves around a deep devotion to all of my beloved areas of pursuit – I split my time between working as an independent contractor on architectural and interior design projects, coding for my mapStep endeavor and solving algorithms from Project Euler, or scripting, filming, and editing my Youtube videos. Maybe I am doing too much all at once, and it would be more fruitful to dedicate oneself to solely one goal, but I currently feel too excited about them all! I am also passionate about writing and sharing my self-discoveries, and I would love to dedicate this interview to the topic of perfectionism – one of the most dimensional and challenging aspects of my personality. Maybe others will recognize themselves in my writing and feel empowered by my words.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
The most recent video I released on my YouTube channel targets this specific question – and the answer is perfectionism. While some might argue that perfectionism can be perceived as an inherently positive quality, I think in my life it tends to wreak havoc and prevent me from fully living. The more I reflect on perfectionism, the more I realize how imperfectly perfect life can be with all of its nonlinear trajectories, beautiful serendipity, and incomprehensible complexity. Perfectionism is so often accompanied by procrastination that it results in ideas not explored, projects not executed, relationships not initiated, and ultimately – lives not experienced.

At this point, I firmly believe that I would much rather fail, overcome difficulties, and express my creativity through certainly less-than-flawless endeavors than spend my life entirely in my head concluding that doing nothing is the safest option without ever sharing my light with others. In my family, perfectionism, incessant self-criticism, and extreme rigidity are generational, and while they might have occasionally yielded some extraordinary results, they most certainly did not make any of us happy.

When did you last change your mind about something important?
Are you waiting for something to be happy? To enjoy life right this minute? The biggest revelation I had last year opened my eyes to a completely different definition of happiness. Instead of identifying happiness as a distant ephemeral concept barely visible on the horizon, I realized that happiness can only ever be experienced in the moment of now. By reading “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle and “The Surrender Experiment” by Michael Singer, I got exposed to the fascinating truth – the present moment is all we will ever have. Past and future are just an illusion conceived by our restless brains. After having this profound realization, I decided that I was not going to wait until I accomplish everything from A to Z before I allow myself to be happy. Instead, I choose to be happy in the process even when my perfectionist mind screams that I haven’t deserved it yet, even when it frantically constructs newer versions of the endless “to-do” lists so I can finally catch up to the external ideas of success. Right now is all I have, and I can rebelliously choose to be happy – despite all of my imperfections.

Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
One of the core tenets of my life philosophy is that our daily choices matter – we matter, every single one of us. We have been given incredible freedom – and thus we bear personal responsibility for so many things in this life, even though it might be counterintuitive to admit it. Victim mentality can be as hard to remove as a sticky blob of gum glued to the sole of a shoe, but you become so much more empowered when you finally peel it off. I try to remind myself on a constant basis that I establish the direction of my life and I impose any limits on myself. I truly believe in the unbounded power contained within our mighty beings, and this conviction encourages me to be extra mindful with what I say and what I believe. When I hear someone say something deterministic about health (“I am already thirty, we are getting so old!” or “running at his age is nearly impossible”) or about the state of affairs (“it is incredibly difficult to find a job in this market” or “dating in New York is terrible”), it instantly makes me feel certain discord because I think if there is a single word to describe our world, it is “diverse”. I believe we can shape our own narrative and prepave the unfolding of our lives with much more intention than a lot of us do.

Another example of the same philosophy I can give is me being vegan/vegetarian for the last 8 years. Sometimes I discuss with my friends how incremental actions ultimately lead to a big cumulative change, but sometimes I hear a pushback – “just because one person becomes a vegetarian, doesn’t mean the system will change”. I disagree with this point of view – I think each of us is slowly sculpting the world, and the change might be unobservable in the magnitude of a single day, but it garners a powerful tsunami-level unstoppable force over time. Thus, I am a big supporter of mindful, intentional, responsible living where you know exactly why you are engaging in your handpicked daily habits. Maybe believing in your unlimited choices sounds overly idealistic, but this is the most empowering mindset I have ever encountered.

Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What light inside you have you been dimming?
My perfectionist tendencies sometimes force me to perceive the external world as too intimidating – one must be perfect in order to succeed. The fear of failure takes on exaggerated proportions, and the impostor syndrome follows me like a shadow everywhere I go. It is interesting how most of my answers in this interview somehow revolve around the topic of perfectionism and self-acceptance, but I truly believe that it is the biggest factor that’s holding me back.

In a book titled “Too Perfect” by Dr. Allan E. Mallinger and Jeannette De Wyze, the authors capture the perfectionist personality astonishingly well, and reading this book definitely served as a much needed wake up call for me. I realized that I am constantly dimming my light plagued by incessant worrying and painful rumination. While I am too paralyzed by overthinking, I could be doing, and living, and sharing the fruits of my creativity with the world! No failure in the real world could ever compare to the hyperbolized horror I am depicting in my own head. If you find yourself constantly postponing life because of perfectionism, and if you can relate to my words – I urge you to take this text as a sign to start living right here, right now! The most beautiful adventure of life is waiting for you, and you deserve to share your light with the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://realpolya.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realpolya/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realpolya/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/realpolya
• Other: Github: https://github.com/realpolya

Image Credits
Portrait photo: Yana Kalina