In addition to baseball, another national pastime that I’m keenly aware of  is comparing ourselves to others. Or, more particularly, comparing our entrepreneurial successes (or lack thereof) to others. It’s actually the ‘lack thereof’ I specifically want to address.

Every client I have and colleague I know (at least the ones who are being completely honest), at some point in her business life, feels that she is coming up short. When we’re riding high on sales, opportunities, press or personal successes, we’re less likely to play the comparison game. But when things are slow and our minds are not as occupied with how to spend all the money we’re making, those unfriendly gremlins pop up and remind us that our competitor or role model has reached a pinnacle we’re still aspiring to.

A few weeks ago I was reading about Cathie Black who’d been appointed as Chancellor of NY’s public schools. For a moment I wished that I was a personal friend of the Mayor’s and could get a high profile appointment based on his knowledge of my past successes. Of course, as fantasies go, this had no basis in reality. Just a desire to be recognized and rewarded, an admitted value of mine.

Now that Ms. Black has been unceremoniously dumped, I can let go of that comparison. I never compare the bad times that these wonder-people also have to traverse. Somehow they magically recover from the body blows with a comic book balloon “POW!” Ugly crying and dripping noses are the stuff of mere mortals only.

My point? When you begin comparing yourself to others, be sure to measure ALL the components of their lives and see how you fare then. You’ve heard the adage, if we all put our troubles on the table, we’d choose our own again to take back and live with. As with selecting a role model, no cherry-picking allowed. If you want to cook like Julia Child, don’t expect to also look like Anne Hathaway and play tennis like Venus Williams. Consider the entire package.