This comment may get a significant number of downvotes, but here I go. I think there has been an increasing number of these types of posts on HN -- especially i

This comment may get a significant number of downvotes, but here I go. I think there has been an increasing number of these types of posts on HN -- especially in the past couple of years (for some reason). Having a good attitude when faced with rejection is great. I'm not a fatalist in the sense that I would encourage anyone to jump off a bridge if they get rejected by YC. HOWEVER, it's important to understand the role that rejection plays. And it's also important to understand the baggage that rejection carries with it. Sort of blowing off rejection - to me - seems utterly stupid. Especially if it's something you want. The point of founding a start-up is to be successful (whether that's an exit strategy, positive growth, getting into YC, etc. is irrelevant). Failure/rejection loses all of its beneficial characteristics if all you do is blow it off ("oh it's just another notch"). You need to ask yourself: 1. Why did I fail? 2. What can I do to not fail again? In some cases (1) will simply be bad luck. Consider an athlete that slips and tears his achilles or consider me asking a pretty girl out that happens to have a boyfriend. Oh well -- that's just bad luck. However, if the athlete in question failed to train hard or I made a bad joke that completely irked a girl I'm interested in, that's something completely different. I truly believe that the start-up world is, in many ways, a lottery. By that I mean that not only do you need to be in tip-top shape, but you also need to get pretty damn lucky to end up like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Blowing off failure prevents any positive improvements (hey maybe I should've trained harder, maybe that was a bad joke, etc.) and encourages a kind of isolated entrepreneurship where you think you know best and you're convinced you're doing your best (even though you may not be). Also, lets face it: failure sucks. Being rejected by a cute girl/guy sucks. Not being accepted into YC sucks. Not getting into your school of choice sucks. I think that downplaying the suckiness of these events is not the way to go. Instead, figure out how to get what you want next time. It's a careful balancing act. On one hand, you don't want to be a fatalist that gives up after the first failure; but on the other, you don't want to be a hard-headed and obnoxious positivist that doesn't acknowledge failure when it's staring them in the face.