I think of self-esteem as something you have—perhaps you feel it in yourself. In any case, you value your person, and most importantly, you don’t think you are a worthless canker sore on the upper lip of society.
Pride is different. Not really comparable. Pride has to do with how you feel about what you’ve done. If you’ve done a good job, then you might feel proud about that. Then again, you might not, if you don’t think it matches up to some standard you have internalized. If you’ve internalized a standard that is impossible to match up to by anyone other than a god, you never feel proud of what you’ve done. It’s never any good.
To such a person, having a moment of pride is an extraordinary thing. A revelation! A moment to be celebrated. It is not a moment of ego fulfillment or self-aggrandizement or something like that. It is an achievement!
Now there is a kind of pride that, I suppose, is one of the seven deadly sins. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m guessing it’s a pride that is announced to others. Quiet pride is something you know and you need. Public pride is about asking others to acknowledge your greatness (even if they don’t believe it). Or it is about exaggerating the significance of your achievements and trying to use that image as a way to get more from others than those who don’t act so prancingly prideful do?
Positive pride allows you to feel good about what you’ve done. Negative pride is an attempt to make yourself into something you are not. Negative pride can be one trick to compensate for low self-esteem. Positive pride probably requires good self-esteem for someone to allow themselves to feel it. It’s doubtful that someone with low self-esteem would feel appropriate pride. They’d either not feel proud at all, or they’d feel a hollow pride that they trumpet in order to get reassurance from others that they’ve done something to be proud of.