Sometimes I admire people as examples of the kind of person I would like to be. This is a kind of admiration of an aspirational future self. 

But I try to also admire people who are utterly unlike me, people I could never emulate without undermine who I am trying to be. I admire them as collaborative partners with whom I might accomplish things I could not accomplish by myself.

I consider this admiration of otherness in potential collaboration superior and rarer than admiration of potential likeness. Both of these, however, are superior to admiration of inaccessibly distant otherness, which in extreme form is worship.