for those who don't know it, it is a basic human trait that failure is more impactful (e.g. you think of a missed opportunity more than the ones you took) than success, it's called negativity bias[0].
Negativity bias is how a negative event is more impactful than a positive one, but turning down a job is not a negative event.
It may later seem like it was a loss, so some form of retrospective loss aversion might be more appropriate to apply to this phenomena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
On a general note wrt. failure/success then we actually tend to slightly exaggerate our successes when remembering them, and similarly downplay our failures.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias