A rejection is a small, specific, limited piece of information — one company, one role, one moment in time, decided you weren't the right fit for that particular opening. It is not a broad verdict on your ability, your worth, or your future, however much it can feel like one in the moment.
It does not mean you are not cut out for this field. It does not mean the course, or the months you spent on it, were wasted. It does not mean every future application will go the same way. A single data point, or even several in a row, cannot support a conclusion that broad — and treating it as though it can is a much bigger error than the rejection itself.
A fact versus a story about the fact
Watch specifically for one thought pattern: "I got rejected" quietly turning into "I am not good enough" in your head. The first is a fact about one outcome. The second is an unsupported and much larger conclusion your mind adds on top of it — and it is worth noticing the difference each time, deliberately.
A single rejection rarely tells you much on its own. A genuine, repeated pattern across several rejections — always stalling at the same stage, always the same kind of question catching you out — is real, useful information, and it is exactly what the diagnostic lesson later in this section is for. One instance is close to noise; a repeated pattern is a signal worth actually investigating.
Comparing this month's rejections to last month's — are your interviews getting further along, are you getting more replies, do the technical rounds feel any less shaky than they did before — is a genuinely useful measure of progress. Comparing yourself to other people's visible outcomes, which by definition never shows their rejections, is not.