Low self esteem, I really need some help?

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I'm just driving myself down a hole really. You guys probably know me from a few of these posts.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postxf195626-0-30.html

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt221769.html

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4551753 ... t=#4551753


http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4587311 ... t=#4587311

E.t.c

Well, reading back on those posts. It all seemed like a rage of bottled frustration , trying to rationalise the situation I had at hand. I don't believe Maths is a subject I like. I think my obsession was just me, worrying over it. I never did badly in maths, I always managed to do well. I got a level 5 in my sats and in year 7 a 6B. But, I always kind of struggled with it. In year 8, I had a terrible teacher and I did nothing so that just kept me at being at a level 6B and in year 9 also.

So, I spent so much time, revising and learning maths. But, I didn't believe it was enough. So, I cheated on my year 9 maths exams by doing the questions on the paper before hand.

I just have no way of telling whether I'm good at the subject or not. I pick at the little things I do wrong in it and bring myself down about it.
To be honest, I'm not particularly fond of maths. I do like physics though, that's a truth.

For example, I couldn't recognise that this pattern was the cubes

1,8,27,?,125,216 and we had to tell which was the missing number. I feel my maths skills are very bad because of this and I'm not great at the subject at all, only average.

I was thinking if I do well on this additional maths exam paper, then maybe I should think of myself differently. But then my friend said this:-" Maths Olympiads don't give subjects necessarily related to certain topics.
They test the skills and thinking rather than knowledge."

So, it got me thinking maybe doing well on the additional maths paper will just be testing my knowledge rather than skill.

How do I stop this ruining my life, I swear all I do is alot of maths because I want to be better than others at it. But when I struggle with simple questions, I just feel like what the hell am I doing?

People say I'm clever, but I don't think so. I have no pride in myself what so ever. My other friend has helped me with my cheating problem by telling me I should think about answering questions as if I would win a ferrari out of it or something, so I should just try anyway. But my fear of failure, wanting to be better than everyone, and my doubt in my abilities are still a massive issue for me.

How do I deal with it, and what am I doing to myself?

Honestly, I think you need to realize you're obsessing about this too much. Is there someone in your life you feel you have to compete with on this subject? Parent, sibling, friend?

It's good to want to better yourself. When that moves into extreme self loathing and cheating to try to get better grades, that's not healthy.

Not everyone can be the best at everything. Just do your best and learn to be happy with that. I'm not saying don't push yourself, I just mean if you get a B instead of an A, know that you did everything you could.

Grades won't mean a thing to your boss. They want someone who can work hard. Believe me, if you know how to do hard work and push yourself, you'll do better in life than the person who never had to try to get an A.

Another thing, find something you like to spend your time doing. If you have something you love, you may stop berating yourself about other subjects.